Tea Party Upstart Mourdock Defeats Longtime Indiana Sen. Lugar

LATimes ^ | May 08, 2012

[Steelfish]

Tea Party Upstart Mourdock Defeats Longtime Indiana Sen. Lugar

By Kim Geiger May 8, 2012 Richard Mourdock has defeated longtime Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana in the Republican primary, according to an Associated Press projection, ending the career of one of the Senate’s most pragmatic politicians and casting a cloud over GOP efforts to win control of the chamber.

Mourdock, state treasurer in Indiana, campaigned as a conservative alternative to Lugar. He became a darling of the tea party movement after he began a legal challenge to the terms of the Obama administration’s bailout of Chrysler.

Mourdock was endorsed by Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, and Lugar had the backing of the party establishment, including Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Mourdock will face Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly, a three-term congressman from the South Bend area, this fall. The matchup is the preferred outcome for Democrats, who view Lugar’s ouster as an opportunity to pick up a longtime Republican seat.

"Richard Mourdock is this year's Ken Buck," said Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Executive Director Guy Cecil. Buck was a tea-party-backed Republican who upset the establishment favorite in the GOP primary in Colorado in 2010, only to lose in November. "Tonight's results make the Indiana Senate race a toss-up."

[rogue yam]

The one guy who got this right in 2008 was Rudy Giuliani.

He said we can have the GOP be a big tent with respect to social issues and draw in all fiscal conservatives through originalism and federalism. Appoint strict constructionist judges and devolve power out to the states through federalism and it no longer matters what the personal opinions of the President are.

Unfortunately this reasoning fell on deaf ears here at FR and among conservatives in general. So instead of Rudy we nominated Juan McCain, a man who I hold in far lower regard based on ideological grounds than I do Mitt Romney. And further McCain had no lead in his pencil and he threw the election to the Kenyan Kommunist, and now we have bankruptcy, unilateral disarmament and surrender, abortion aplenty, and the gay. Great result, that!

Mitch Daniels spoke of a “truce” on social issues but that is the wrong approach. Social conservatives rightly see this as them being asked to drop their social conservative agenda in an effort to draw in more libertarian types who are asked to drop nothing. Rather than a truce it is more of an agreed-upon strategy. Originalism and federalism.

We can do this.

[StormEye]

Great post.
I saw you page and I feel the same way.