Free Republic

A storm is not a good time to be at the wheel of a ship and a worldwide economic disaster is not a good time to be at the wheel of the ship of state. Hard times are supposed to bring great men to the fore, but instead we have some of the sorriest men in history trying to find the wheel, sleeping off a bender in their cabins or debating whether a wheel even exists. Obama is bad, but he's not exactly up against rival statesmen. After parading around with a one-man cult of personality, launching international projects with...

(CBS News) In his first interview since he lost his primary earlier this month, Indiana Republican Senator Richard Lugar said he had no plans to campaign for Richard Mourdock, who beat him. "For the time being, I don't plan an active campaign," Lugar said on "Face the Nation." The 80-year old lawmaker, known for reaching a landmark post-Cold War agreement on weapons reductions with Russia, has served in the Senate for 36 years. He lost to Tea Party-backed State Treasurer Richard Mourdock by 20 percent during the May 8 primary. Lugar told host Bob Schieffer that Republican voters in Indiana...

INDIANAPOLIS -- U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar said he doesn't intend to campaign for the man who defeated him in Indiana's Republican primary. Lugar said Sunday on CBS' "Face The Nation" that he would not actively campaign on behalf of GOP senatorial nominee Richard Mourdock. The state treasurer will face Democrat Joe Donnelly in November.

You might have thought that we vanquished Dick Lugar from the levers of power a few weeks ago. But if nothing is done to stop the impending 5-year Farm Bill, he might harm us with his regressive policies long past his time in Washington. Last month, the Senate Agriculture Committee passed a 5-year farm bill that continues to serve as one of the most potent anti-free-market vehicles in the statist arsenal. There is nothing more vital to American consumers than fuel and food, yet the farm bill is loaded up with subsidies for farming, biofuels, and other inefficacious “fuel” sources...

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."

Towards the end of the interview Bradley expresses his sadness at Lugar's loss and the dumb sheep that voted Lugar OUT.

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Richard Mourdock's Senate campaign is now the subject of a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission. It has to do with the accusation that the Mourdock campaign improperly downloaded information from a GOP database. The state Republican Party last week cut off the campaign's access to the database known as Salesforce. The complaint was filed by John McCane, a former mayor of Rushville, who alleges that Mourdock used a state campaign committee to pay the $125 fee to access Salesforce and then illegally transferred information including email addresses to his federal campaign.

It’s not enough for Operation Counterweight to get a candidate through the primary. We need to support the candidate immediately to keep the momentum going. Richard Mourdock is not running to the left (often mischaracterized as running to the center) one bit. Listen to this interview, which has the mainstream media up in arms because Mourdock defined bi-partisanship as Democrats coming over to our side on issues (3:25): “What I hear you say is you’re not going to compromise,” O’Brien observed. “In fact, the only compromise you’ll do is really getting other people on the other side of the aisle...

Tuesday's Results: The Tea Party shows it's alive and well, Wisconsin's embattled governor gets more votes than the top two Democrats and a federal inmate gives the president a primary battle. The natives are still restless. Conservative pundit and IBD contributor Ann Coulter once said she, like many Americans, would rather vote for Jeffrey Dahmer, known for his unusual culinary choices, over President Obama. Federal prisoner Keith Russell Judd, 49, is not quite in Dahmer's league, but for a substantial portion of West Virginia Democrats, he is also preferable to our campaigner-in-chief. Judd is serving time at the Beaumont Federal...

A few weeks after the recent synod of the bishops of journalism — known to us taxpaying chumbolones as the White House Correspondents' Association dinner — the secular clergy pronounced sentence on Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock. Mourdock had the audacity to whomp the heck out of six-term U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar in Tuesday's Indiana Republican primary. Mourdock's sin, according to the high priests of establishment journalism? He's a conservative, and a constitutionalist, backed by the tea party. Watching all this from the bordering state once called Illinois — now known as the wind-swept economic wasteland of Madiganistan — makes me...

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 landslide defeat of U.S. Senator Richard Lugar in Indiana sent an ominous message to Washington: unprecedented partisan gridlock in Congress likely will worsen next year and make difficult efforts to cut the record U.S. debt even tougher. Tuesday's vote also delivered a punch to the gut of the Senate's "old guard," which for years has sought to restore the chamber's reputation as "the world's most deliberative body." Widely hailed as an elder statesman, Lugar lost the Republican primary in his home state to a Tea Party-backed challenger, largely because he was seen as not conservative enough and too willing...

With Sen. Richard Lugar’s defeat in Indiana, is the Tea Party back? Yes, but it’s going to hurt the GOP in November Yes, and not a moment too soon. Republicans were starting to get soft No. The Indiana victory was a fluke for the Tea Party, and a one-time thing this year The Tea Party never left

Dear Friends, The Tea Party Express had an amazing week last week thanks to all your support and involvement and would like to thank you.  Everyday our buses traveled to a different city in this great nation rallying conservatives.  I think you can agree that the Tea Party is answering our critics and is just as passionate and energized as we were in 2010 and are poised to have another banner year at the ballot box in 2012.We wanted to share with you some of the highlights of the last week that were made possible through your support and...

"I think it's a generational issue," syndicated columnist and FOX News contributor Charles Krauthammer said about the Lugar-Mourdock Senate primary in Indiana. "I think Lugar is a lion of the Senate. I think he's served very well, he's been very important in foreign affairs over these years but that doesn't appeal to voters. He's been in there for very long time. He's had a lot of moderate opinions. He's not a Tea Party favorite and I think his time will likely will have come. I'm not sure that there is anything he could have done differently in campaigning. He is...

Now that Indiana RINO Richard Lugar will be vacating his Senate office, what other Senate RINOs would we most love to see follow him? I nominate John McCain.

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...

Jim mentioned this earlier, but it's worth highlighting Dick Lugar's shrill parting statement. Though he says "I hope my opponent wins in November," it doesn't sound like he means it: If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good Senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised in this campaign...

I got a happy email Dick Armey celebrating the defeat of Richard Lugar in the US Senate race for Indiana. Not that I would EVER say I told you so, be here are two columns I wrote about that race back in September of 2011 and October of 2011 telling you so before I told you so…sooooo…:  Tea Party Favorite Blasts Lugar on $165k Fed Subsidies Sep 14th, 2011US Senate candidate and Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock blasted US Senator from Indiana, Richard Lugar, the incumbent Republican he’s trying to unseat, over farm subsidy payments that Lugar received from 1995...

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...