Indiana Primary Postmortem

I’m happy today. Neither of Congressman Dan Burton’s (R-IN-05) nor Senator Dick Lugar’s (R-IN) names will appear on my ballot this November. In addition, after I agonized over whom to support in IN-05, I finally selected Susan Brooks, and she won. She’ll be a good Congresswoman. Jackie Walorski won her primary in IN-02, and I think she will likely win in November as well. People not from IN are going to be amazed by this woman if she makes it to Washington, DC. Watch out.

But enough about that. Let’s think about what happened and what it means. I want you to mull over some facts for a minute. We had no statewide ballot initiatives that would affect primary turnout significantly for either side. President Barack Obama (D-USA) ran unopposed, and I think we’re all finally in agreement that former Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) has sown up the Republican nomination. For Governor, both the Democrat and the Republican ran unopposed. There may have been somewhat of an uptick on the GOP side for the the Lugar/Mourdock Senate race. There were about 400,000 votes in GOP Pres primary in 2008, and closer to 600,000 this year. But in 2008, operation CHAOS was in full swing. Former Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) almost won IN, where there were over 1.2 million votes cast in the Dem primary. So, it appears that neither the GOP nor the Democrats should have had any kind of significant “built-in” enthusiasm edge. I’ll give you a slight one for the GOP, but I don’t think it’s huge.

So, comparing apples to apples, then:

Governor race:

Candidate	Votes
Mike Pence (R)	530,384
John R Gregg (D)	202,186

Even if you think there was an edge for GOP voters, you’d have to convince yourself it’s close to 3:1 to be able to spin this as good news for Gregg. This is a brutal looking result for the Democrats. Hard to imagine that Pence is not going to be our next Governor.

Presidential Race:

Candidate	Votes
Mitt Romney (R)	398,188
Barack Obama (D)	216,128
Ron Paul (R)	95,467
Rick Santorum (R)	82,620
Newt Gingrich (R)	39,769

 

Obama did a tick better than Gregg. Basically, it looks like we can set the bar at around 225,000 for Dem voters (and that’s probably on the high side) in this primary, and about 615,000 for GOP voters.

But, I said earlier there was little to no “built-in” enthusiasm edge. Yes. That means there was no intrinsic reason based on the ballots themselves for either side to have a big advantage over the other.  The 3:1 edge we’re looking at here is the result of an extrinsic enthusiasm gap. It appears to show that GOP voters in IN are much more enthusiastic about this election than Dem voters. This will likely carry over to November. I think we can write off IN as a swing state for the White House. It won’t be blue this time.

Finally, there’s the Senate race. I’m going to spend a bit of time talking about this:

Candidate	Votes
Richard E. Mourdock	387,982
Richard G. Lugar	256,108
Joe Donnelly	202,320

 

Donnelly did about as well as Gregg and Obama. And 50,000 votes worse than Lugar, who lost to Mourdock by over 125,000 votes. Again, this is not a good sign for Donnelly.

But the Democrats have a plan.

As I said yesterday, we’re a purple to red state here. We think of ourselves as conservatives, but also centrist. That’s why we had Senators like Dick Lugar (R-IN) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) for many years. The IN Dems will try very hard to paint Mourdock as an extremist and Donnelly as the centrist willing to cross the aisle.

It’s going to be a hard sell. Donnelly is a little bit of a Blue Dog Democrat, only voting with Dems 69% of the time in his term. But, Mourdock will be quick to point out that in every single key vote, Donnelly sided with his Democrat brethren and against Indiana. He voted for ObamaCare. He voted against ObamaCare repeal. He voted against the GOP budget. He voted in favor of the Senate Payroll tax bill. He voted against debt reduction. He voted against defunding NPR. In short, every time he could have voted to save Hoosiers money, he voted the other direction. Frankly, of the two, Mourdock seems more likely to be the one to cross the aisle on a vote where his vote might matter.

Honestly, the IN Dems have to be kicking themselves this morning. There’s no doubt that Lugar’s loss gives them an opening. Centrists are now in play, and we have a lot of them here. But Donnelly is an exceptionally weak candidate. He’s a two-term Congressman, that wasn’t likely to be re-elected (he would’ve been facing a rematch against a better funded and better organized Jackie Walorski). They never really thought that Lugar would be defeated, and Donnelly was the only person they could find willing to run against him.

But, facing what looks like a GOP headwind in November, at least in IN, Donnelly has a big challenge. There’s six months to go, and you never know who’s going to make the key mistake in a campaign, but it’s hard to see Donnelly coming out on top right now.

UPDATE: Earlier version of this post had stated incorrectly that Donnelly was a one-term Congressman. He has served two terms. My mistake.

Senator Lugar, It’s Time For You To Go

I voted for you in 2006, 2000, and 1994. But this e-mail clearly shows that you’ve lost touch with your constituents. I’ve included the entire text of the e-mail from your campaign (emphasis mine).

After giving his second of three commencement addresses this weekend, Dick Lugar continued to question President Obama on the cost of military operations in Afghanistan and its effect on national debt. At the same time, Richard Mourdock’s campaign invited Democrat Joe Donnelly into the race for the U.S. Senate.

“Right now, Richard Mourdock is Obama’s favorite Republican because if he wins that primary and Joe Donnelly is the nominee that’s their (Democrats) shot at the Senate seat held by Dick Lugar,” said Indiana’s own Peter Rusthoven, former Reagan White House Counsel and conservative political commentator on Indiana Insiders Sunday, April 17, 2011.

Common wisdom says that Dick Lugar would easily win a general election in 2012 with a recent poll showing that he is the most popular public official in the state of Indiana.

Unfortunately, a large number of Republican County Chairmen have been duped into participating in the same failed scheme that resulted in Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle and cost us two crucial Senate Seats in 2010. (If the Republican parties in Delaware, Nevada, and Colorado had taken the Reagan “big tent” approach, we would have already repealed Obamacare.) Mr. Mourdock has hired the same consultants that brought us these unelectable candidates, and with Mr. Donnelly joining the race the pattern is complete.

Dick Lugar’s record as a fiscal conservative and leader on following Constitutional values (including the correct interpretation of the Constitution on war powers and judicial appointments) is impeccable. I encourage all Republican leaders to rally around the Dick Lugar flag now; you have been led down a wrong path and it’s time to come home.

Republican candidates in DE, NV, and CO did not take this threat seriously. We do. And, we will be happy to rally Republican voters to this view a year from now. We would rather do it with your support than without you. But do it we shall.

Dick Lugar looks forward to a vigorous re-election campaign, and has been mobilizing his supporters the past several months for both the primary and general elections. He will continue to focus on the best opportunities to create an economic climate that produces more jobs for Hoosiers and Americans, and growing new markets for our products at home and abroad.

Sincerely,

David W. Willkie
Political Director
Friends of Dick Lugar

Ok, first highlighted section. He calls out Mourdock as “Obama’s favorite Republican”. I guess he has to do that. Use your favorite search engine and look up that phrase. The #1 hit likely includes the name “Dick Lugar”. So, he’s trying to make a positive out of a negative, but all it does is remind us that Lugar really is Obama’s favorite Republican.

Second highlighted section, “Common wisdom says…” that there’s no way the Dems could lose the house in 2010. Or at least it did in May of 2009. ‘Nuff said.

Third highlighted section. Leon H. Wolf nails it at RedState, so I’ll just borrow his words:

A few things. First, while a candidate might think voters are morons for not wanting to vote for him, it is generally a bad idea to say it out loud, on the off chance that some of those voters might be persuaded to come home.

Second, while I agree that O’Donnell and Angle were bad candidates (and strongly disagree on Buck), it’s ridiculous to claim that the GOP would have done better if it had nominated the candidates who were routed by the aforementioned bad candidates in the primary. This is the same line of thinking that posits that we lost to Obama because McCain was such a crappy candidate, and we should have instead nominated… one of the people who lost to McCain. Does not compute.

Third, math is apparently not a strong suit of Dick Lugar. The GOP currently controls 47 seats in the Senate. Adding three more seats (CO, NV, DE) would put us at 50. Thus, even supposing Castle would vote to repeal Obamacare, the best we could accomplish on an Obamacare repeal vote would be a tie, which would be broken by Joe Biden. Which is completely academic anyway, since a) the Democrats would filibuster the vote and b) failing all of that, Obama would just veto it. But, yeah, if those TEA Party people weren’t such morons, we’d totally have repealed Obamacare by now.

But if that’s not egregious enough, the fourth highlighted section should get your blood boiling. It’s very plainly a thinly veiled threat to go the independent route should things not work out for Lugar in the GOP primary.

Senator Lugar, the people of Indiana deserve better. We don’t need people with that kind of attitude in our lives. My advice for you is the same as the Club for Growth. Retire. Retire now with some dignity and class.

I’ve not been the most ardent supporter of Richard Mourdock. It would not be wrong to say it’s been tepid, at best. But no more. I don’t want someone representing me with this kind of entitlement attitude. I deserve better. Indiana deserves better.

Joe Donnelly Wants Lugar’s Seat

Robert Costa at The Corner noted this weekend:

Rep. Joe Donnelly [(D-IN-02)], a South Bend Democrat, will run for U.S. Senate:

Following redistricting, Donnelly’s South Bend district stands to be become more Republican — a factor that was a notable part of his decision-making process as he considered his political future. What’s more, Republican Jackie Walorski, who Donnelly narrowly defeated in 2010, will once again run for the 2nd District seat in 2012.

As I noted in my comment there, this is good news for both Jackie Walorski and Richard Mourdock.

Jackie narrowly lost to Donnelly in 2010, and has already announced she’s running again. I think she was likely to win, regardless, as she made a few mistakes during the campaign season, and redistricting makes the district a bit more solidly red.

But it also helps Richard Mourdock, who is hoping to win the Republican primary against sitting Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN). Mourdock is running as a Tea Party candidate, and considerably to the right of Lugar who has drifted farther and farther to the left over time. Obviously, Indiana Democrats are hoping Mourdock wins (they didn’t even field a candidate against Lugar in 2006). But Donnelly is a weak candidate. Walorski should have beaten him and I really don’t think Mourdock will have any trouble. In fact, I think Mourdock’s biggest challenge will be defeating Lugar. Mourdock has been winning several straw polls and while some news organizations are reporting that “Lugar has to be regarded as the underdog”, he has the benefit of name recognition and a sizable war chest. And he’s well respected by the “centrists” in Indiana. In fact, were Lugar to go the Joe Liebermann (ID-CT) route, I really don’t think he’d have much trouble winning.

Bloomberg Reports on Mourdock, Makes Stuff Up About Tea Party

Interesting article in Bloomberg this week on Richard Mourdock, who is attempting to unseat Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) in next year’s Republican primary for the Senate seat. There are some interesting quotes, such as:

At this point, Lugar “has to be regarded as the underdog,” and his decision to take time off during Congress’s April recess is surprising, said Stu Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. “It seems to reflect what I see as a failure to understand the environment out there, and possibly his unwillingness to see the difficult political shape that he’s in.”

With all due respect to Mr. Rothenberg, Lugar has about a gazillion dollars in his war chest, and is owed political favors from practically every organization in the state. With 16 months to play, he’s not the underdog. Yes, Mourdock has momentum right now, and has been saying all the right things to all the right people, but it’s going to be an uphill battle, regardless.

I have a couple problems with some other points in the article as well.

In a new era that stresses confrontation over compromise, Lugar is a top target of a Tea Party movement that last year ousted three-term Utah Senator Robert Bennett and fielded a winning Republican primary opponent to Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski.

No, we do not stress confrontation over compromise. We stress winning over losing. There’s a big difference. Most of the “compromises” the right has made with the left over the last 50 years have turned out to be disasters for both the country and the GOP. We have to get away from the idea that it’s ok to compromise with people who want to take the country in a totally different direction than that envisioned by the Founding Fathers (yes, I still say that, not the PC “Founders”).  If you compromise with someone going the wrong direction, you still end up going the wrong direction, just slower.

And here we see an example of the media “just makin’ stuff up”:

The Pike County results provide a glimpse of the challenge that Lugar, 79, faces from the influence of anti-government, anti-tax Tea Party supporters.

The Tea Partiers are not anarchists. They are not anti-government. They are pro federal government and pro republic. Over the last two hundred years, we’ve forgotten what the words “federal government” mean and have re-defined them to mean this large monstrosity out of Washington, D.C.

Federal means that the states were to be a federation of independently self ruled entities. These entities gave up limited power to a central government in order to become “united states”.

Republic means that we don’t vote on everything, we vote on people to represent us. True democracy results in mob rule, something that liberals want, but something that every thinking person should fear.

So, Tea Partiers want rule that is close to home, and don’t believe “that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves”.

And Tea Partiers are not anti-tax either. TEA stands for “Taxed Enough Already”. Tea Partiers understand the need for taxation, but also understand when we’ve reached the point of excessive taxation. Tea Partiers face fiscal reality. They know that we can’t tax our way out of the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. We can only grow our way out of it, and even then, only if we face the facts that our government growth is unsustainable.

Richard Mourdock

I tend to stick to items of national interest, rather than local, but there are a few things on my mind locally. Perhaps they even are of national interest, I don’t know. I’m not the one to say.

Anyway, this is a very good video from Richard Mourdock, directly reaching out to the Tea Party and like minded conservatives. If you don’t know who Richard Mourdock is, you’re hardly alone. He’s formerly the State Treasurer for Indiana and is running to unseat Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN) in 2012. I’ve voted for Lugar three times. I’d prefer not to do it again.

Mourdock deserves at least your attention, if not your support. Watch the video.