After months of hard fought campaigning and millions of dollars in negative attack ads, Tuesday marked the end of the distinguished career of Indiana's longest-serving U.S. senator ever, Richard Lugar. This shocking turn of events was unthinkable for almost all of Lugar's 36-year career in the U.S. Senate. Just six years ago in 2006, the Indiana Democratic Party didn't even field a candidate to challenge Lugar. What a difference six years can make.
So what happened?
Dick Lugar's primary defeat in Indiana happened because of a combination of events and can serve as a lesson to incumbents in both parties. For starters, Lugar is partially to blame because he lost touch with the grassroots of the Indiana Republican Party. After years of being ignored by Lugar at Lincoln Day dinners and local Republican party events, 67 of the 92 Republican county chairs endorsed Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock. Lugar has always been granted what scholar Richard Fenno called "leeway" from the voters to focus on national and international issues. Over the decades that leeway eroded away and Lugar did not recognize it.
Along with losing touch with his Republican base back home, Lugar made efforts in Washington to reach across the aisle and work with Democrats. Lugar worked with then-Senator Obama to pass the Lugar-Obama Proliferation and Threat Reduction Initiative, served as honorary co-chair of the Obama-Biden inauguration and supported liberal Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagen. Those admirable qualities put him on the radar screen of some very powerful conservative groups.
The forces that aligned against Lugar are impressive and politically deadly -- Club For Growth, Tea Party Express, Freedom Works, Citizens United, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Indiana Right to Life. They recruited Mourdock to challenge Lugar. They helped him raise millions of dollars, made major third party expenditures on his behalf, and organized conservatives throughout Indiana. In all, outside groups poured over $2 million into Mourdock's effort to oust Lugar.
Mourdock's victory will stand as Exhibit A for 2012 on the growing power of outside interest groups. How will that impact the way he governs should Mourdock win this fall? Only time will tell but Mourdock's stated position that he hopes to build a Republican majority so big that no one has to seek compromise with Democrats is music to the ears of his powerful conservative supporters.
So what could Lugar have done differently?
Lugar should have spent more time back in Indiana, highlighted his conservative credentials (which are many) and recognized the powerful conservative forces that were gathering in the distance. Perhaps he was too busy doing his job as a senator, traveling around the globe learning and mastering foreign policy, and doing what he thought was best for the nation. Perhaps at the end of the day Lugar is too nice a person, too decent of a statesman to survive in the negative, nasty world that American politics has become.
Jeffrey Laurenti: Lugar's Loss and Jesse's Ghost
J.B. Poersch: Indiana Senate Race: What Do the Results Mean?
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
He did his job with SCOTUS nominees?
Do folks in Indiana ever look in the mirror?
The Indiana Repug voters want bigger extremists and not politicians who are willing to compromise.
Sadly, to run a big and diversified country like the U.S., we need leaders willing to compromise and do what is best for the nation.
In today's American political climate, compromise is a dirty word.
He was whacked by a bunch of freaks in a low turnout primary. Simple as that.
It is bizarro world territory when TP'ers call Dick Luger a "RINO". He was not a RINO. He was a conservative. He was once the pick to be the VP for RONALD REAGAN. Luger was a conservative. But he was primaried by the TP'ers because he actually talked to the other side. Which is bizarre. Isn't that what elected officials SUPPOSED to do? That's what we PAY them to do-to negotiate and make deals for the good of the public-not to imitate some brick wall.
Particularly the Tea Party.
Wait a minute, I thought the TP had lost its momentum; and the unions and Occupiers were on the ascendant?
BTW, what happened in Wisconsin yesterday?
LMAO!
Would these be "admirable qualities" for libs, if a Dem Senator had "reached across the ailse" like that with Bush and the Repubs?
I don't think so.
Oh and by the way..you should change that "Political correctness.." line of yours. Because the GOP hides behind political correctness a lot. Like when the Dixie Chicks criticized President Bush and the GOP somehow turned into "The Dixie Chicks are attacking US soldiers!"
Somehow the GOP thinks criticizing a wartime President is unpatriotic..when it's a Republican President. But if it's a Democrat president then they'll not only criticize him they'll do everything including threatening to kill him and launch a armed rebellion if he wins reelection.
The tea party Republican candidate who defeated Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar (R) after six terms in Tuesday's GOP primary says that his definition of "compromise" means that Democrats will have to come around the the right's way of thinking.
"What I've said about compromise and bipartisanship is I hope to build a conservative majority in the United States Senate so that bipartisanship becomes Democrats joining Republicans to roll back the size of government, reduce the bureaucracy, lower taxes and get American moving again," Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock told CNN on Tuesday.
"The fact is you never compromise on principles," Mourdock explained. "If people on the far left have a principle they want to stand by, they should never compromise. Those of us on the right should not either. Compromise may come in the finer details of a plan or a budget."
"We are at the point where one side of the other will win this argument," he added. "One side or the other will dominate."
There, from Murdouck's mouth. Compromise will come in the form of domination.
With the massive corruptions of elections and government, there's increasing likelihood the only way to reclaim government for the people is through the force of arms.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
-- Declaration of Independence, 1776
Would he have been good? I think he might have been very very good.
Also, when the fiscal bubble pops and we are all eating out of trash cans, will you take responsibility for not worrying about the money when there was still a chance?