Free Republic

The 36-year Senate veteran is trounced by Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, whose business and Tea Party backers spent $2.7 million to defeat a once-powerful pol they portrayed as out of touch.That cracking, thudding sound emanating from Indiana on primary night Tuesday was the crumbling of a Washington institution, punctuated by muffled shrieks of terror from incumbent office-holders everywhere.Republican Sen. Richard Lugar—a towering figure in the national-security, arms-control, and foreign-policy realms who six years ago was so popular in his home state that local Democrats didn’t bother to field an opponent—lost his bid for a seventh term to a lesser-known,...

Conservative Mike Pence has won the governor’s office in Indiana, despite a stumble by Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock. With 87 percent of precincts in, the former congressman had 50 percent of the vote compared to 46 percent for Democrat John R. Gregg. Pence will replace term-limited GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels. Pence is former chairman of the House Republican Conference and also former leader of the conservative Republican Study Committee. He’s also a member of the Tea Party Caucus. Republicans also picked up a governor’s seat in North Carolina, with the victory of former Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory. McCrory becomes...

Attempting to read the divine will is a notoriously perilous enterprise, all the more so in the middle of a hotly contested Senate race. Richard Mourdock, the Republican nominee from Indiana, has come to appreciate this fact since answering a debate question about his views on abortion in cases of rape. “I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” Mourdock was not saying that God...

Both candidates for Indiana's U.S. Senate seat agree that Capitol Hill is dominated by partisan gridlock – but they differ on if and how Congress can solve the problem, even as they compete for the same undecided voters. U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly, D-Granger, has preached a message of centrism and bipartisanship while relentlessly painting Republican state Treasurer Richard Mourdock as an extreme, right-wing ideologue.

In response to repeated queries from conservatives as to whether Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) is supporting the conservative Republican who defeated the 36-year incumbent for renomination this year, Human Events called Lugar’s office and asked whether the lameduck incumbent is backing State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, now locked in a tight contest with Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly. “Yes, the senator is supporting Treasurer Mourdock,” Lugar press secretary Andy Fisher told us Friday. “On the night of the Friday election (when Mourdock defeated Lugar by a margin of 3-to-2), he said he would vote for him in November.” Fisher also pointed out...

<p>NDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Sen. Richard Lugar says he will not campaign for the man who vanquished him in May's Republican primary.</p> <p>Lugar told conservative Indiana blogger Abdul Hakim-Shabazz in an interview posted Monday that he would not actively support Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock on the campaign trail. The six-term senator had previously left the question unanswered. But he raised eyebrows in July when he introduced Mourdock to Senate Republicans at a weekly lunch.</p>

Instant analysis of Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar’s crushing defeat at the hands of state Treasurer Richard Mourdock in Tuesday’s Republican primary cast it as yet another example of a tea party-aligned GOPer ousting a prominent face of the party establishment. And that instant analysis would be wrong. Lugar lost — and lost badly — for a number of reasons, the vast majority of which had nothing to do with the relative tea party-ness of his opponent. At its heart, Lugar’s defeat was attributable to the fact that he broke the political golden rule: Never lose touch with the people who...

The U.S. Senate race in Indiana remains a dead heat between Democratic Congressman Joe Donnelly and Tea Party-backed State Treasurer Richard Mourdock. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the Hoosier State finds Mourdock earning 42% of the vote, while Donnelly draws support from 40%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate in the race, but another 15% are still undecided.

Four years ago, President Obama became the first Democrat since 1964 to win Indiana. He looks unlikely to repeat that feat.

A new law in Indiana authorizes the general public to use deadly force against public servants (including law enforcement officers) who unlawfully enter private property. The measure, approved by Gov. Mitch Daniels in March, (who himself is a Bilderberg member, making the situation even more interesting) is a real game changer as the script has been flipped on the police when it comes to deadly force.

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Mitt Romney stumped for tea party Senate candidate Richard Mourdock here on Saturday, arguing that as president he will need such supporters in Washington to help him enact policies to restore fiscal order. Mourdock introduced Romney, noting he had done so four years ago when Romney came to Indiana stumping for 2008 Republican nominee John McCain. “He is back and he’s here in part because he’s the ultimate team player, and politics is all about being a team. This is not a solo sport,” Mourdock said. “And for that purpose alone, governor, thank you so much for...

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels on Tuesday dismissed suggestions that Richard Mourdock's upset victory over incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) last week was a "tea party phenomenon."

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I'm gonna break this down in even more detail as the program unfolds. Lugar has issued a very lengthy and quite telling statement. Lugar is comparing his defeat to the end of reason, the end of the Republican Party, the end of compromise, the end of people working together. Lugar is saying that his defeat is a bad thing. It's gonna lead to partisanship and rancor. It's gonna lead to the end. The Senate is gonna descend now. It's not gonna be nearly the august body it has been. Not because he's not there. He's not that...

In a tough year for Senate campaigns, Democrats will take everything they can get. This year's map of Senate races heavily favors the GOP, which will defend only 10 seats to Democrats' 23. Six Democratic incumbents have declined to run, and Democrats will have to defend seats in 11 competitive races, while Republicans will only defend in five. All of which makes Sen. Dick Lugar's loss welcome news for Democrats, who seem to have figured all along that their candidate, Blue Dog Rep. Joe Donnelly, would fare better against Tea Party-backed, Saran Palin-endorsed state Treasurer Richard Mourdock in November. Now...

Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana lost his party’s nomination tonight because he had lost touch with the party’s grassroots. Since his election to the Senate in 1976, Lugar had cut a profile as a moderate Republican: He had supported the ethanol mandate, backed the Brady Bill, and opposed the Iraq surge. In previous cycles, Republicans had forgiven Lugar his ideological transgressions, but in recent years, he had become more brazen. Not only did Lugar support the DREAM Act; he cosponsored it. Not only did he vote for New START, he spoke forcefully in its favor. True, Lugar wasn’t Arlen Specter...

Statement from Chris W. Cox on Richard Mourdock’s Significant Win in the Indiana U.S. Senate Primary Election Thanks to your votes, Richard Mourdock has won the Republican primary election for U.S. Senate in Indiana defeating 36-year incumbent, Sen. Richard Lugar. Since the 1990s, Sen. Lugar has become notorious for his zealous support of gun control schemes and his fervent anti-gun positions.

Not only did Tea Party-backed Richard Mourdock just put an end to Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar's 35-year U.S. Senate career, but it wasn't even close. NBC projected Mourdock, the Indiana state treasurer, the winner of the Republican primary shortly after polls closed, as he was trouncing Lugar by over 20 points. In and of itself, the crushing defeat of such a long-time veteran of the Senate would be a big story, but the importance of this development will be felt way beyond Indiana. As I wrote earlier this week, a lot of pundits have been prematurely writing the obituary to...

If Indiana Senator Dick Lugar loses his Republican primary race to Tea Party challenger Richard Mourdock tonight, as polls indicate is likely, his defeat will signal the end of moderate Republican internationalism in the US Senate and the GOP more broadly. Lugar, a two time chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee best known for his work on arms control and nonproliferation treaties, used to be one of the GOP’s leading figures on foreign policy. Now he’s an outlier. The Senate Republican caucus was once filled with the likes of Dick Lugar—sensible realists such as Lincoln Chafee, Chuck Hagel, George...

FRANKFORT, Ind. — Sen. Dick Lugar is accusing tea party members of trespassing on his family farm and erecting ‘Retire Lugar’ signs on the eve of the Senate primary. The six-term Republican incumbent said Monday he was alerted by his son that members of the Owen County tea party climbed over a fence at his Marion County farm to take down his campaign signs and put up their own. “[They] had their pictures taken in front of a sign that said, ‘Dick Lugar, tree farmer of the year, 2003,’” Lugar said during a stop at an assisted living facility, speaking...

At 2:51 p.m. eastern time on Friday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who many in the Republican establishment try to dismiss as being irrelevant, endorsed Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock on her Facebook page over establishment Republican incumbent Richard Lugar. Four hours later, at 6:36 p.m. eastern time, Politico ran a story about how the “American Action Network,” previously described as the establishment cavalry, would be pulling out of the Indiana race.