Hoosiers put all incumbents on notice

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

So, the Tea Party is dead and buried? Apparently the memo never made it to Indiana. On Tuesday, Hoosier Republicans decided against re-nominating Sen. Dick Lugar, 80, for a seventh term. The result wasn't even close. By a 20-point margin, the primary voters chose a conservative for their ballot-line, defying the media naysayers who insisted they were putting a Senate seat at risk.

Lugar, a former Indianapolis mayor and the longest-serving senator in his state's history, had not faced a serious challenge from anyone in either party since 1982. He had been perceived as so unbeatable in 2006 that Democrats failed to field a candidate against him. A foreign-policy specialist who once ran for president, he embodied the more moderate wing of his state's Republican establishment. He was a symbol of what happens when a senator goes to Washington and becomes chummy with the Beltway crowd.

Lugar had lost touch with his state and with his party's base voters. His F rating from the National Rifle Association, his 2002 vote for the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill and his support for both of President Obama's Supreme Court nominees were evidence of this, as was his lack of an actual residential address in Indiana and his primary focus on international priorities like the Law of the Sea treaty. If those facts seem insufficient to prove the point, Lugar was digging his grave -- and doing it quite sincerely -- until the very end of the campaign. Politico reported that he "spent his last full day on the stump defending earmarks ..." The national political mood had simply passed him by. As they made clear in 2010, voters increasingly resent insider deals, parochial spending projects, big government solutions and the heedless accumulation of debt.

State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who defeated Lugar, is not likely to follow in the footsteps of the disastrously unserious Tea Party candidacies of Sharron Angle in Nevada or Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. He has been elected statewide twice, and in 2010 won a landslide with more than 1 million votes. He is best known for fighting the Obama administration in court when it rigged the bankruptcy proceedings of Chrysler and steered the company's assets away from its secured creditors (including the Indiana teachers' pension and highway fund) and into the hands of the United Auto Workers' union. Mourdock will also have the advantage of appearing on the Republican line alongside two very likely statewide winners in Rep. Mike Pence for governor and Mitt Romney for president.