Dick Lugar Doesn’t Go Quietly, Handing Democrats Plenty Of Ammo

[ProSense]

Dick Lugar Doesn’t Go Quietly, Handing Democrats Plenty Of Ammo

Evan McMorris-Santoro

Sen. Richard Lugar (R) delivered a bruising attack on the man who defeated him in the Republican primary as he conceded Tuesday night, giving the Democrats the ammunition they’re looking for to cast newly-minted Republican nominee Richard Mourdock as too extreme for the voters of Indiana.

Lugar actually gave two responses to the primary. The first, delivered from a podium in Indianapolis, didn’t mention State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed challenger who defeated the veteran Lugar thanks largely to millions in negative ads funded by conservative groups. In the largely positive speech, Lugar said he was “optimistic about the future of Indiana and the United States” and said the deep partisan divides exemplified by conservatives like Mourdock “are not insurmountable.”

But Lugar staffers gave out a second statement after Lugar was done speaking that took a much different tone, taking a direct swipe at Mourdock.

“If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good Senator,” Lugar said in the statement, according to the Evansville Courier and Press. “But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington.”

But wait, there’s more:

He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign is reflexive votes for a rejectionist orthodoxy and rigid opposition to the actions and proposals of the other party. His answer to the inevitable roadblocks he will encounter in Congress is merely to campaign for more Republicans who embrace the same partisan outlook. He has pledged his support to groups whose prime mission is to cleanse the Republican party of those who stray from orthodoxy as they see it.

The statement specifically namechecked FreedomWorks and the Club For Growth, the conservative groups that paid for negative ads tearing down Lugar in the closing weeks of the primary.

Read the full text of both statements here.

- more -

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/dick-lugar-doesnt-go-quietly.php

Link to statement: http://www.courierpress.com/news/2012/may/08/text-sen-richard-lugars-two-primary-election-state/

[sufrommich]

1. Unfortunately, this will probably fall on deaf ears. nt

[FreeBC]

12. "rejectionist orthodoxy? Haw, he talk funny"

- typical republican voter.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

13. You're probably correct.

[LonePirate]

2. Lugar has no room to talk since he usually votes as a rejectionist and opposes all Democratic ideas

[ProSense]

3. He should

get all the room he needs. It's not like anyone is trying to save Mourdock.

[karynnj]

6. Not completely true

Lugar is a fiscal conservative - his votes reflect that. But, on foreign policy, he has been - for the most part - in close agreement with Obama and the SFRC chair Kerry. (He did disagree on Libya - but most of DU preferred his position to theirs) He was incredibly important in opposing START - and he called out the Republicans for opposing something that was a continuation of an effort that had passed almost unanimously. (

) He also voted for Kagan and Sonameyer and for the Dream Act.

[Walk away]

23. That's nice but now a Dem has a shot at his seat! nt

[karynnj]

4. Lugar is as gentlemanly and genial as anyone in our government - that second statement shows how

concerned he really is. It also is dead on.

Ignoring politics, Lugar's loss will be a very major loss for the Senate's Foreign Relation Committee.

This makes it even more important that we keep the Senate. Not only is the winner far more extreme than Lugar, this means that one of the other Senators will be the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - or (heaven forbid) the chair. It looks like a relatively junior Senator would be their top person because they have no one other than Lugar who has been there for a substantial time. Scroll down this link ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Senate_Committee_on_Foreign_Relations ) to see the list of SFRC members in the 109th Congress - NONE other than Lugar is on the current committee. Hagel, Brownback and Martinez declined to run, Voinvich, Chaffee, Allen, Sununu, and Coleman all lost their elections, and Alexander and Murkowski left the committee.

In addition, the current committee ( http://www.foreign.senate.gov/about/ ) is loaded with extreme conservatives - DeMint, Inhoffe and Lee - in addition to tea party favorite Rubio. (There are other ultra conservatives like Risch and Barrasso. This leaves Corker and Isakson as the most reasonable. This committee would be obnoxious if the Republicans take the Senate.

I wonder if this will become an issue in Massachusetts, where in 1996, Senator Kerry successfully used the reality that control of the Senate meant that Weld winning would be a vote for Jesse Helms chairing the SFRC. This time it is personal for Massachusetts - the choice could be their honorable senior Senator or someone like DeMint. There are rumours that DeMint could challenge McConnell for the leader position. If McConnell has the upper hand, I worry that he could cut a deal to avoid the challenge - giving DeMint the chair. It is pretty impossible to get more far right on foreign policy than DeMint.

[CrispyQ]

18. This is worthy of it's own thread.

Wish I could rec it.

[Little Star]

5. Rachel had a good segment about this last night...

I looked for the video clip but couldn't find it but here's a write-up about it on her blog. It's good.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/09/11615238-evidence-of-a-party-beyond-redemption

[AlbertCat]

7. The video....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#47347316


I think that's it (haven't gone thru the whole thing.)

[bupkus]

8. I think we're missing the point here

Teabaggers using millions from conservative groups (Crossroads GPS? and others) to unseat a long sitting senator. That's the same tactic that they'll use to unseat a one term president. And judging by these results in West Virginia

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014116863

They have a pretty good chance, too good a chance, that their strategy will work, or at least keep things close enough so they can steal another election. And we know for a fact that that strategy works.

[emulatorloo]

15. +1

[cali]

9. it's too articulate to be of much use

[lunasun]

10. During our primary for local & state awhile ago it seemed the teabagger candidates were infused

with cash to go after conservative/ 'moderate' repugs they were running against.

Daily postal mailings tearing down the incumbents / robo calls and they also have their volunteers( or people who profit?) knocking at the doors.

Glad he name checked but they go under so many banner names it may do no good ie:Club for Growth-waa?.

This is country wide and every place it happens it moves the country more to the right....remember Lugar lost because ads convinced voters he wasn't extreme enough to do anything . Mucho cash involved in the advertising.

And I do believe it has a lot to do with the advertising - most don't follow politics enough to sift through the hype or lies.

Some of the mailings and robo calls here had such bizarre attacks on the less conservative repugs but someone uninformed/or wanting change may be swayed by the dirt

and let's face it a lot of these people are the many who live to hear the latest dirt on some sports player or Hollywood type and make moral condemnations quite easy...so they have been groomed to reactionary decisions based on a few facts as being de rigueur and they then vote IMO
Hate to paint so many citizens as lemmings. So perhaps that is not the case, & half the country is turning in to fulltime Nazis and are truly informed voters?

[Myrina]

11. I think maybe a handful of Republicans in Indiana ...

... can actually decipher what you've got bolded in the statement.

Not too keen on book learnin' around here, they ain't.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

14. Maybe if he had been more liberal, more voters would have turned out for him.

Why did he lose?

Not enough votes, mostly.

Let's hope that the Indiana Democratic candidate for the Senate runs while emphasizing Democratic values instead of I-want-to-be-a-Republican-lite.

[emulatorloo]

16. Republican primary voters are not "liberals," especially in states like Indiana

Additionally Lugar was overwhelmed by Lie Ads from the Koch Brothers and Club For Growth.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

19. Indiama is an open primary state. Some voters stayed home.

If Lugar would have been more liberal, no ads from the Koch Brothers and Club For Growth would have hurt him more than the ads that they ran.

And any additional ads that the might have otherwise ran to show an even more liberal slant to whatever he did might might have turned out more votes for him.

A losing formula for any candidate, R or D = be more like conservative Republicans.

[Scurrilous]

17. K & R

[groundloop]

20. The more important question, does a Democrat stand a chance ??

Do we have a realistic chance of beating the teabagger in Indiana?

[zzaapp]

21. Same old same old

[red dog 1]

22. Mourdock looks like Alfred E. Newman...only spookier

[Laxman]

24. Another Mile Marker On The Road To The Bottom

I posted this in response to a different thread about the Indiana Primary. I got the chance to meet Senator Lugar about 12 years ago. We had some time to discuss some issues over lunch at the restaurant inside the Indianapolis Speedway and we agreed on some and disagreed on others. From the hour or so we spent together I came away with the impression that he was a thoughtful person and a decent man. Even though I may not have agreed with his politics, I can live with people like that in the Senate. This guy who beat him just seems like a creep. Just another nasty mean ideologue. We should all be very happy because this should put Indiana in play for the Democrats and changes the dynamic of the potential breakdown of the Senate. However, the more guys like this are successful, the more polarized things will get. To a certain extent meeting people from Indiana was like meeting people from a foreign country. I'm a liberal from the northeast. The Lugars were decent people, just different from the folks back home. I don't mind people who disagree with me as long as they're respectful of my point of view. We've gone down the rabbit hole and these Tea Party people have more in common with the Mad Hatter's Tea Party than the Boston version.

[Ter]

25. He lost?

I'm so out of the loop. Any other pukes lose their primaries, or are in danger of losing? How about Orin Hatch?

[Little Star]

26. The Tea Party targeted him, that seems to be why he lost.

[Tom Rinaldo]

27. Talking Point to Indies

"Outside money destroyed Dick Lugar, don't let them win." I would hope Dems there push that.

[seabeyond]

28. i like that the very supreme court they put in, allowed this unidentified money to flood campaigns

is what is taking down these long established republicans.

[TheKentuckian]

29. Lugar isn't moderate, in fact he is quite conservative. He is sane and even tempered, which is

about as appalling to the Freepbaggers as communism

[GoCubsGo]

30. Hell hath no fury like a republican scorned.

Just ask Lisa Murkowski. And, if they do the same to Orrin Hatch, I'm willing to bet we'll be seeing even more of this kind of thing.

[JNelson6563]

31. Wow.

End of an era. An interesting end at that. I am sure hoping for a Dem win here.

Julie