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SALT LAKE CITY — A majority of Utah voters believe Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has been in office too long and should be replaced, a new Deseret News/KSL-TV poll shows. The poll by Dan Jones & Associates found only 38 percent of registered voters agree that it's important to re-elect Hatch in 2012 because of his seniority. Fifty-nine percent said after 36 years, it's time for someone new.(snip) Hatch's most likely GOP challenger appears to be Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah. In a primary race, 40 percent of poll respondents said they would vote for Hatch and 41 percent for Chaffetz....

Plenty of Sunday morning airtime was devoted yesterday to Sarah Palin. George Will says it's common knowledge she shouldn't be trusted with nuclear weapons. Andrew Sullivan says he's afraid she will run because there's a possibility she could beat Obama. David Brooks essentially thinks she's a joke. "Yeah. But, you know, being president is waking up, somebody hands you the crisis and said, "There's a crisis in Venezuela. What are you going to do about it?" Does any, does anybody think Sarah Palin's ready for that? I don't think so. So she can manage her brand. But running for president...

Conservative columnist and commentator George Will has slammed Sarah Palin saying she should not be trusted with nuclear weapons. Will was speaking on ABC yesterday and his damning words,coming from the right, may give many people pause. Here is what he said: "Two things are infinite. One is the expanding universe, and the other is media attention to Sarah Palin, who is a genius at manipulating it. But she has several political problems. The first of which is there's no undecided vote in this country anymore about Sarah Palin. Sure, second, the threshold question, not usually asked, but it’s in...

Among the New Hampshire electorate as a whole, Palin is viewed favorably by just 28 percent, according to a recent survey by the Democratic automated pollster Public Policy Polling. In PPP surveys in 31 states over the last six months, just three states had smaller proportions of Palin fans, and all were in the northeast: New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. (Though the firm is partisan, its results generally track with polls by other organizations. PPP’s results were used in this analysis in the interest of consistency across different states.) Continue Reading Text Size -+reset Listen Palin’s highest ratings, in...

Republican U.S. Senator Dick Lugar's campaign sent an email to his supporters complaining: "The large number of [Indiana] Republican County Chairmen" who endorsed Richard Mourdock were "duped." Well, apparently, due to my conservative values and long history of meeting and listening to Hoosiers, tens of thousands of them have now also been "duped" into supporting my campaign. Will you join them today by making a contribution? Adding insult to injury, Senator Lugar's campaign said to Conservatives that you must "rally around the Dick Lugar flag; you have been led down the wrong path and it's time to come home." Like...

Sen. Dick Lugar's (R-Ind.) campaign said Monday that State Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R) would meet the same electoral fate in 2012 that Republicans Sharron Angle and Christie O'Donnell did last November should he win the Senate nomination. Lugar is facing a tough primary challenge from the right in the form of Mourdock and has generated significant opposition from Tea Party groups, but his campaign is betting that Rep. Joe Donnelly's (D-Ind.) entry into the race will wake primary voters up to the electability argument. In a letter to Indiana Republicans on Monday, Lugar's political director warned them not to be...

The tea partiers take legitimate credit for much of the upheaval in the 2008 congressional election, when Nancy Pelosi was tossed from her position as House Speaker and the Republicans were handed a new majority there – with enough party members to control the vote results without any help from Democrats. But things have deteriorated a little bit since then, and activists joined today in a news conference to issue a warning to the GOP members they describe as "RINOs," for Republicans in Name Only, to start responding to what voters want, or else. "We're deeply disappointed. Instead of a...

Club for Growth President Chris Chocola gave six-term Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) some unsolicited advice Tuesday: Retire. Chocola, a former Congressman from Indiana who served in the House from 2003 to 2007, told ABC’s “Top Line” that his fiscally conservative organization is considering getting involved in Lugar’s 2012 re-election campaign in the Hoosier State. The club has already met with Lugar’s primary opponent, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R). “We are looking at that race very closely,” Chocola said. “We do have some concerns about Sen. Lugar and his service. We think it would probably be best if he would retire...

Nevada Sen. John Ensign (R) plans to announce Friday he will resign his Senate seat, aides said Thursday. Ensign has been under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee over whether he violated Senate rules during his affair with Cindy Hampton, a former campaign aide. Hampton’s husband, Doug Hampton, was Ensign’s deputy chief of staff during most of the extramarital relationship. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53557.html#ixzz1KCVouaTc

Washington (CNN) – Though Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe hasn't drawn a Democratic challenger yet, she's plenty prepared for a re-election battle. According to fundraising numbers for the first quarter released Monday, Maine's third term senator has over $2 million in cash on hand. Snowe raised $877,019 in the first quarter of 2011 and spent $62,433 on her 2012 U.S. Senate campaign. She will report $2,050,053 in cash on hand 17 months before the Senate election, according to numbers released by her office. Snowe for Senate Treasurer Rick Bennett said, "It's a good start for her campaign fundraising effort. The total...

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is a ripe target for a Tea Party challenge as she runs for re-election next year. She won't be able to count on support of all of her Republican colleagues -- at least not Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. Asked directly in an interview with Jonathan Karl's "Subway Series," "Will you be endorsing Sen. Snowe?" Toomey had this to say: "Look, I think this is a very dynamic environment and probably almost every Republican senator's going to face a primary challenge." While Toomey said he won't be supporting Snowe, he won't oppose her either. "I'm not going...

REYNOLDS, Ind.—Two meetings in recent days in this Midwestern state showed the predicament facing Sen. Richard Lugar, a six-term Republican with a centrist profile, as he runs for re-election next year. When Mr. Lugar came to this farming town of 500 people Saturday to build bridges with a local tea-party group, he found mostly skepticism. "You seem to feel you're somehow indispensable in Washington," Bob Callahan, 65, a retired salesman from Monticello, told the senator at meeting in an elementary-school gym. He compared Mr. Lugar to the professional football quarterback Brett Favre, saying: "There's nothing sadder than an athlete that...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney continues to be seen as the favorite for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination according to a special National Journal Political Insiders Poll released on Tuesday. The second favorite for the GOP nod is former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor who was John McCain’s running mate in 2008 and was once viewed as a potential party standard bearer, was ranked ninth by the GOP Insiders—tied with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Texas Gov. Rick Perry—when they were asked who was most likely going to be their 2012 presidential nominee....

(snip) Among other criticisms, Tea Party activists have taken Lugar to task for supporting the new START nuclear arms treaty with Russia, claiming the U.S. is giving up too much and Russia is not giving up enough. "I've been working systematically for 20 years going to Russia trying to help direct a situation in which we're taking warheads off of missiles every day, destroying missiles that were aimed at us; destroying submarines that carried misslies up and down our coast," said Lugar. "I've got to say 'Get real'. I hear Tea Party or other people talking about they were against...

Washington (CNN) – Still swaggering after its recent electoral successes, the Tea Party movement appears to be growing more emboldened as it tries to blaze a path to power. One new bold move: An activist group is publicly parading a list of lawmakers the group is determined to oust from office. On Thursday, the Tea Party Express added two more names to its "2012 Tea Party Target List" - Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. (snip) "Olympia Snowe dishonors the notion that the Republican Party is supposed to be the fiscally conservative, constitutionalist...

(snip) A Facebook page called “Massachusetts RINO Hunt” is dedicated to “the aggressive and immediate removal of all RINO’s from the Republican Party of Massachusetts.” The page’s logo is a red, white and blue rhinoceros shaped like the GOP elephant in crosshairs. Comments on the page include one follower saying, “Cocked, Locked and Ready to Rock,” and another spouting, “Locked and Loaded!” The page’s mission statement reads: “Massachusetts is having a good ole fashioned ‘RINO Hunt.’ That’s right! Conservatives of the Commonwealth are tired of having their Party defined by a bumbling herd of RINO’s!” There is a posting targeting...

I have coined a term for CONSERVATIVE VOTERS who are going to be strongly courted and counselled by the MSM and Beltway pundits to vote for someone in the GOP primaries other than Sarah Palin and then ultimately cut their own throat by doing so, bowing to elitist pressure and propaganda being brought to bear against them on a regular basis by telling them they have a sacred obligation to the moderates of America not to vote for someone so extreme and polarizing and who is unelectable, to the urban minorities to reject Palin because she is not a legitimate...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Tea party activists from across the state will gather later this month to try to agree on a candidate to challenge incumbent U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar in next year's Republican primary. Representatives from more than 50 tea party groups will meet Jan. 22 in Tipton, said Monica Boyer, co-founder of the northern Indiana group Kosciusko County Silent No More and one of the organizers of the anti-Lugar group Hoosiers for Conservative Senate. Unlike the 2010 Senate primary, when tea party activists were divided among five candidates, "we don't want to split the vote. It is vital and...

Outgoing Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) said Thursday that a "credible conservative" movement that doesn't focus on "hatred" of President Obama is needed. Inglis was defeated in a landslide by Trey Gowdy in the June primary runoff. Gowdy, a staunch conservative and Tea Party favorite, went on to win the 4th District seat in November. Inglis lamented on CNN that the current wave of populist conservatism is unlike that of Ronald Reagan. "We'll get through and we'll get back to optimistic conservatism," he said. "We just got to get through this unfortunate period." The congressman said he was wounded in his...

(RTTNews) - A prominent Tea Party group sent a message to members on Monday identifying five current Republican Senators that they intend to target in 2012. Tea Party Nation named Sens. Dick Lugar, R-Ind., Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn., as Republicans that need to be sent into retirement, accusing them of being Republicans In Name Only, or RINOs. The message cited Lugar's vote against a ban on earmarks as well as a his votes in favor of the DREAM Act and the START Treaty. Hatch was also criticized for being a "pork...