“Every person in Indiana who wants me to continue, every person
wherever they might be at this point, I encourage them to come
out,” the six-term senator exhorted. “Come out immediately, as fast
as you can.”
So the Indianapolis Star quotes Richard Lugar, first
elected to the Senate in 1976, as saying the weekend before his
state’s Republican primary. Are those the words of a confident
candidate? The Star
reports:
As a bell rang each time a volunteer won a commitment from a
voter, Lugar pleaded with groups that he has helped over the years
to now help him salvage his political career….
He appealed to veterans, Jewish voters who cared about his work
to help Russian Jews, women who might have benefited from his
program to build political networks and minority students who were
helped by his scholarship program.
Most of all Lugar is hoping for an inflow of Democratic and
independent voters to rescue him from the Republican base. “I’m not
asking anybody to cross over,” Lugar said. “I’m just saying
positively, ‘Register your vote, because if you do not, I may not
be able to continue serving you.’ At this point, help.”
How the mighty have fallen. Six years ago, Lugar was returned to
the Senate with 80 percent of the vote. The Democrats didn’t even
bother to run a candidate against him. Now the Democrats are
looking past him entirely.
In a Jefferson-Jackson dinner speech to 1,200 party activists
Friday night, Rep. Joe Donnelly, the presumptive Democratic nominee
for Senate, didn’t even mention Lugar’s name. He trained all his
fire on the longtime senator’s primary challenger, state Treasurer
Richard Mourdock.
“Richard Mourdock has said he is opposed to bipartisanship. I am
the fifth of five kids. As the fifth of five kids, if you are not
bipartisan, you do not eat at night,” Politico quoted
Donnelly as saying. This country works best when we work together
as a family.”
Peggy Noonan also stressed family ties when making the
case for sending Lugar back to the Senate: “What Washington
needs is sober and responsible adults.” Noonan didn’t disclose who
the children were in this relationship.
But it is the sober and responsible adults who have accumulated
a national debt larger than the country’s economy. There are two
ways to demonstrate one’s sobriety and responsibility in
Washington: to be as supportive of druken sailor-style fiscal
irresponsibility as possible or to be as timid as possible in
opposition to it.
Noonan’s brief misses a larger point: The very reason Lugar is
in trouble is that many Hoosiers see him as a creature of
Washington, not Indiana — to the point where his
residency has actually been challenged. Perhaps the handwriting
was on the wall when Dan Coats, a former senator turned lobbyist,
was barely returned to the Senate when two Tea Party candidates
split the conservative vote in the Republican primary.
This time, there is no split. Mourdock has Lugar’s right flank
to himself. Lugar has recently been aggressive in defending his own
conservative credentials and casting doubt on Mourdock’s. The
Democrats are already keying in on Mourdock’s resistance to the
unfunded Obama stimulus package.
Lugar has specifically hit Mourdock on the flag-burning
amendment and a comment in which the state treasurer seemed to open
to consolidating military service branches. A late April Lugar
statement asks: “Which military branch do you think is no longer
necessary in the 21st century — the Army, Navy, Air Force,
Marine Corps or Coast Guard?”
Mourdock’s conservatism has nevertheless been defended by
FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, and Americans for Tax Reform. He
also enjoys the support of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and
Michelle Malkin.
Perhaps Lugar can still overcome what certainly seems to be a
sudden drop in the polls. He is an experienced politician who has
won many times before. But the hour is getting late — and the Tea
Party is getting impatient.
