And the wingnut caucus just pitched Dick Lugar out, allegedly because he is not “conservative” enough.
“Reasonable Republicans” everywhere will have to think of a new excuse for why they are remaining in a party of fanatics, bigots, homophobes, and fascists.
Hunter Gathers
Ladies and Gentlemen, meet your new Secretary of State.
gaz
If they need help with that, they can ask a Catholic.
Smiling Mortician
OK, that’s funny.
Cassidy
Did Mittens do this too? Busy android.
cathyx
What is going on with this country? I’m stuck in an insane asylum, and I can’t get out.
Baud
So will Indiana go Dem? Otherwise, what does it matter?
PIGL
@gaz: You’se in our base, pwning our tubz.
Elizabelle
Chris Cilizza told me it was (partially) because Lugar didn’t own a house in Indiana.
They smart over there at the Washington Post.
Tom Q
Is my memory off, or do alot of these Tea Party purges of party stalwarts happen late? Lugar was ahead in polls most of the way — at points even above the magic 50% — but the last few weeks Mourdock just gained and gained. My recollection is Castle/O’Donnell went the same way…for a long time, the party regulars were perfectly confident Castle would survive.
We know what these purges are doing to the GOP — pushing the Congressional caucus ever-rightward, while at the same time opening up seats to Dems that were otherwise un-gettable. But what’s with this late attack capacity?
gaz
@PIGL: Feel free to donate my internetz to the poor. And pregnant women in red states.
JPL
@Tom Q: But what’s with this late attack capacity?
money, money, money
The dems have better buy airtime now for the last two weeks of the election because that’s when they hit with their lies.
Steve
Dick Lugar was my favorite Republican in the Senate, even though unlike my previous favorite Republicans (John Warner, etc.) he actually wasn’t liberal about much of anything at all. It’s amazing to see some of these people who are being thrown out for not being conservative enough.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m really sick of hearing him called a moderate. On most domestic issues he’s been been been a staunch conservative.
David Koch
gay marriage is getting reamed in north carolina.
gaz
@David Koch: I feel sorry for the gays in North Carolina. Both of them.
rikyrah
bye bye Lugar.
he was always a conservative….
but, he wasn’t crazy
Comrade Jake
Well, he was a Dick after all.
Southern Beale
Michele Bachmann has claimed Swiss citizenship. Not joking.
Elizabelle
I admire Lugar for going out fighting, and for not going with low blows.
Please, please let Joe Donnelly pick up the seat, even if he’s been compared to Joe Manchin.
Raven
@Steve: I always thought he was a lispy little shit.
Baud
@Southern Beale: I’m sure the Swiss are thrilled…
Steve
@Raven: Well, there’s no rule that says you have to have a favorite Republican. It may be hard for me to appoint a replacement at this point.
lamh35
@Tom Q: i think from what I read that the change begin to happen around the time that it was reported that LUgar hadn’t lived in IN for years.
mai naem
@David Koch: Are you trying to be funny?
I think this Moundrock guy should be constantly called Dumb as Box of Rocks. There’s something allterative about that.
Also too, I posted this in the other thread – if Obama wins a second term I do believe Lugar will get some bigwig foreign policy job. And no not SOS. I don’t think Obama’s gonna be rewarding some Repub with the SOS job, esp. when you figure the SOS in the line of succession. And I kinda wish Lugar would campaign for Obama if it would help him. Dunno if it would help Obama, though.
SiubhanDuinne
@David Koch:
There just has to be a better way to phrase that thought.
TheYankeeApologist
This cannot be a sustainable plan long-term for the party. Right? RIGHT?
David Koch
@Hunter Gathers:
I don’t think so – Lugar is 80 years old.
Raven
@Steve: True dat
eemom
Orrin Hatch is probably feeling a little queasy right about now….
burnspbesq
Because Democrats are icky and uncouth.
Irving
@Southern Beale: …this may well qualify as the weirdest thing I hear all week.
DonkeyKong
Here is hidden camera footage of the senate primary in Indiana.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=929ceD32uVo
Dick Luger is the one strapped to the table.
PeakVT
@SiubhanDuinne: Not for a spoof.
jl
Lugar was willing to put pure partisanship aside when working on foreign policy, to his credit. Other than that, I see very few ‘RINO’ or even moderate aspects to him.
Sometimes he talked moderate for (in retrospect, what he perceived to be) political PR reasons, but his votes on domestic policy were not.
And he is so RINO he gets bounced out?
The GOP is being taken over by crazy people.
I was reading some pundit blather about how the US was more stable because the two party plus first past the post electoral system prevented extremist parties from taking over.
Well, that reasoning doesn’t apply if extremists take over one of the two major parties, and that is what we are seeing now. Far far more than anything that ever happened to the Democratic party.
burnspbesq
@gaz:
You’ve been waiting all day to spew out that little nugget o’ crap, I’d wager.
mai naem
@Southern Beale: Its because Marcus is born of Swiss parents. OMG there’s something about the vision of Marcus in one of those Swiss male outfits like in the Sound of Music(yeah, I know its Austrian.) Quite gay, in a happy way ofcourse. And Michelle in the Drindel dresses. Both yodeling. Singing in the hills, herding sheep. Has a Sound of Music/Brokeback Mountain kind of feel to this vision.
gaz
@DonkeyKong: awesome
Lockewasright
Well thank goodness we don’t have any counter productive purity buffoons on our side of the fence.
Citizen_X
@Hunter Gathers:
Fixtimicated.
ETA: Still, Joe Donnelly can’t be as obnoxious as Evan Bayh, can he?
mai naem
@Raven: That would be lithpy little shit.
Peggy
Lugar stood up for nuclear arms control. Too much saniy.
Suffern ACE
Glad he’s gone. It’s going to be messy, and sloppy, but I don’t think it pays to keep around any one of the Senators who have been strutting around for the past decade or so, or in Lugar’s case, since the Ming Dynasty. I’m not going to regret this one.
gaz
@burnspbesq: No, I expounded at great length on another thread.
I don’t care if you don’t like it. Sometimes, the truth hurts. Suck it up. The man in the pointy hat is an evil bastard, as is the entire hierarchy. If you buy into it, you have only yourself to blame.
Maude
@mai naem:
Your internets are in the mail. Thanks for the laugh.
Just Some Fuckhead
Lugar was one of the only Republicans to vote for a cap on credit card swipe fees so he was targeted by the American Bankers Association.
mai naem
@Suffern ACE: Are you kidding me? If the Box of Rocks who’s running against him wins the general you are gonna get the same nuts who have taken over the House where the debt ceiling is just another crisis to be exploited. I would not count on Donnelly winning. Furthermore, I am glad that Durbin, Leahy, Kerry and Schumer are around in the Senate on our side.
MikeMc
How fucking dumb are conservatives? Lugar would have easily held that seat. Now they have to run this dick-wad in a general. Have fun!
Mnemosyne
@jl:
In this case, “RINO” means, “conservative, not neo-con.” Lugar maintained a Cold War type of foreign policy stance, which didn’t have a whole lot in common with Bush Jr.’s “bomb ’em all” stance. He supported the Iraq War at first, but turned against it by the end of Bush’s term.
Poopyman
@mai naem: Lederhosen, I think you mean. Crotchless lederhosen in Marcus’ case. But enough of that mental image.
Don’t the Swiss have mandatory military service? It’d be awesome if that was a condition of Michele’s citizenship. That’s a reality show I might actually watch.
Sly
@Just Some Fuckhead:
But the Tea Party hates the banks!
gaz
@Mnemosyne:
Clearly, he committed the mortal sin of learning from his mistakes. Burn HIM! He’s a witch! Burn HIM!
jl
@Just Some Fuckhead:
@Mnemosyne:
thanks for the info. Lugar did stray from conservative dogma on votes from time to time, but he was pretty conservative. But just one or two wrong votes means you are dead with the money bags, if they think they can replace you with a nutcase fanatic.
@Sly:
But those are just the poor misguided plebian dupes among the teabaggers, not the money bags funding anything that actually gets done in the name of the teabaggers. But you probably knew that.
Elizabelle
I’m genuinely sad about Lugar’s loss. Mind you, glad there’s the possibility of a Dem pick-up. Glad to hear of his vote protecting credit card consumers.
Saw Mourdock interview this week. He seems to be stupid and single-minded, if relentlessly focused.
Hoping Indiana voters have been paying attention to buyer’s remorse in Wisconsin and Ohio.
mdblanche
Tonight a clear message has been sent: we’re not all in this together. A conservative senator has been removed from office for cooperating with the other side over issues like figuring out what the heck happened to all those nuclear missiles the Soviets misplaced when they were collapsing and signing a treaty to look into dismantling some of them. And for that he is losing. In a landslide. This is the grassroots speaking. Don’t blame gerrymandering; the “district’s” boundaries haven’t been changed since 1816. Conservatives really would rather literally destroy the country than let someone else be in charge. They are not our neighbors, they are our enemies and they need to be defeated in November. We can no longer pretend otherwise and we can longer pretend there will be another chance if we lose. Has there ever been another election like this besides 1864?
scottinnj
Meh, its just Oakeshottian in nature.
Crza
I’m not gonna miss Lugar much. He talked a better game about reasonable/moderate conservatism than he voted. And this puts the once-100,000,000%-Republican seat in play for the Dems. I never thought I’d see that in my lifetime.
Granted, Joe Donnelly is a blue dog Dem, but here in Indiana that’s still a huge improvement over any Republican, especially a tea-partying crazy like Mourdock.
devtob
Tonight’s result is good news for the Dems, because mow they have another Senate pick-up opportunity.
And if Donnelly can make the “fanatics, bigots, homophobes, and fascists” case against Mourdock, he will win.
And the Dems will hold their Senate majority.
BC
What I want to know is – did Lugar and his wife commit voter fraud by registering to vote at a residence they did not own and did not live in? His 30 some years of living in DC and using an outdated address for voting in Indiana seems to me to be the definition of voter fraud. Indianapolis elections officials didn’t allow him to vote from this residence this year.
James E. Powell
It would be hilarious if nominating the teabagger leads to a Democrat getting elected as with Harry Reid. But I will be damned if I shed a single tear for Lugar. He’s been a solid, a-hole Republican on almost every issue of importance. Like McCain, he’s got a better reputation than he deserves.
Did he ever, even once, call out the Republicans for their filibusters? Did he ever vote for cloture?
Patricia Kayden
They remain in the party because they like it. I don’t think there’s any downside to being crazy if you’re a T’Bagger. They have their supporters no matter what they say or do.
ET
Did anyone read his letter. Bitter party of one……… (don’t agree with everything but there is some truth- despite the sour grapes)
re Mourdock: 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. This is not conducive to problem solving and governance. And he will find that unless he modifies his approach, he will achieve little as a legislator. Worse, he will help delay solutions that are totally beyond the capacity of partisan majorities to achieve. The most consequential of these is stabilizing and reversing the Federal debt in an era when millions of baby boomers are retiring. There is little likelihood that either party will be able to impose their favored budget solutions on the other without some degree of compromise.
sherparick
Chris Cilizza and the WaPo are idiots.
Lugar was far from a saint. But Murdock will be a creature for these guys.
It wasn’t the Tea Party, Part II
by digby
Looks like those vicious Tea Partiers out to destroy the comity and bipartisanship we used to enjoy when Tip and Ronnie got drunk together are getting a little help. Lee Fang of the Republic Report writes:
After years of bipartisan policymaking, veteran lawmaker Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) is expected to go down in defeat in his primary election today. With the likely defeat of Lugar, political observers are sure to start speculating over the meaning of the election. Is it a rebound for the Tea Party? Is bipartisanship dead? Was Richard Mourdock, Lugar’s opponent, unpatriotic for deceitfully smearing Lugar for working with Obama to secure loose nuclear weapons?
These are legitimate questions.
But it’s worth noting that a primary factor in Lugar’s desperate fight for reelection stems from the power of banking lobbyists. The Indiana Republican can be viewed as a demonstration of Wall Street’s political muscle. In the words of Politico, “The banking industry is making an example of Sen. Dick Lugar.”
In a rare loss for Wall Street, the Senate last year rejected legislation to delay a rule to limit the amount banks can charge businesses for credit card swipe fees. The financial industry mounted an incredible lobbying campaign — as Bloomberg reported, banks hired high priced K Street hacks, used conservative blogs like RedState, and developed Beltway advertising — to pass the measure. But a coalition of big box retailers, like Wal-Mart and Target, along with small businesses and other vendors, persuaded enough legislators from both sides of the aisle to kill the measure and limit the fees. The rule affected some $16 billion in bank profits.
Lugar was among the few Republican senators up for reelection in 2012 to vote against the banks. As Anna Palmer and Robin Bravender reported, bank lobbyists decided early on to use the Indiana primary today to make an example out of Lugar:
Financial Services Roundtable’s Scott Talbott, Lisa Nelson of Visa, Peter Blocklin of the American Bankers Association and Vincent Randazzo of PNC hosted an inside-the-Beltway fundraiser for Lugar’s opponent, Richard Mourdock, this week. The Electronic Payments Coalition, which represents the industry, also sent out an email fundraising blast that included the event. […]
The ABA supported Mourdock on June 23 — soon after the Senate vote on the swipe fee amendment — sending him a $5,000 check, according to federal campaign filings. […]
“There are just a lot of sour grapes out there,” said a GOP financial services industry lobbyist.
But with more battles over swipe fees on the horizon, bankers want to make it clear that there will be consequences for Republicans who vote against them.
Lugar has also been pummeled by front groups tied to the financial services industry. The Club for Growth, which is funded by several highly ideological hedge fund managers and investors, has aired numerous attack ads against the senator. FreedomWorks, run by Dick Armey, who served as a bank lobbyist after retiring from Congress and C. Boyden Grey, a current lobbyist working to chip away at Dodd-Frank, also ran anti-Lugar ads.
Well, you know, corporations are people too and have just as much right as you do to buy elections. It reminds me of this famous quote from Anatole France:
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/it-wasnt-tea-party-part-ii.html
Coupon the Movie
Anyone notice that Mourdack likes to rock Confederate neckwear?
Example 1
Victory Speech
Anglo-Confederate Tie
Pangloss
“It’s not so bad, Homer. They…go in through your nose and…they let you keep the piece of brain they cut out. Look! [holds up a jar with a piece of brain in it] Ooh! Hello! Hello there! Who’s that big man there? Who’s that?” — Moe Sizlak, Treehouse of Horror V
Moe could be a reasonable Republican.