Time To Tea Off
On a very cold and bitter Saturday morning, about 150 people who are mad at Dick Lugar about something, gathered just north of Tipton, Indiana to begin to plot his political demise. They represented the various factions of the tea party movement across Indiana and they claim to represent nearly 350,000 Hoosiers.
They did the usual stuff that you would do at a tea party rally, say the pledge, wave flags, cite the parts of the Constitution they agree with and play patriotic music in the background. Although someone could have probably left “Dixie” out of the playlist. And their emcee, Pat Miller from WOWO radio in Ft. Wayne could have made his point without telling a really inappropriate joke about the Taliban threatening to cut off America’s supply of convenience store clerks if the United States did not leave Afghanistan.
That said, the tea party folks said they need to organize behind one candidate to defeat Lugar in the primary. That’s putting it mildly. If they are going to do it they should have started two years ago. If you look at places where tea party candidates have knocked off incumbents in primaries, the incumbents were usually asleep at the wheel and didn’t know what was going on until it was too late. Of course, sometimes they come back, i.e. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
In one night, with the help of about 400 friends, Dick Lugar raised more than $400,000 and has nearly $2.3 million in the bank already. The tea party folks had to ask for $5 donations from the 150 so people in attendance to help pay for cold sandwiches and chips. Now we all know money isn’t everything, but if you’re going to run in a place like Indiana with several expensive television markets it helps to have it on hand.
In addition, the tea party won’t just be running against Dick Lugar, but they will also be running against Mitch Daniels. Lugar gave Daniels his first break in politics and the Governor considers the Senator a political mentor. I can assure the Governor is not going to sit this one out. And neither will the well-organized GOP establishment.
And while we’re at it, the tea party still needs to find a candidate to rally behind. Good luck with that one. Despite the rumor and buzz, from everything I have been able to gather, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock is not going to challenge Lugar in a primary. You are more likely to see him run for Lt. Governor when, oops, if, Mike Pence announces he’s running for Governor. Other possible candidates are State Senator Mike Delph, however Mike has family commitments that will likely keep him from running for anything soon, except the 5th District next year. Former Congressman John Hostettler has told me he’s done with politics. Marlin Stutzman already has a job in Congress. And the only two other possibilities are Don Bates, Jr. and Richard Behney who ran back in 2010. However the two of them combined pulled less than 10% of the primary vote.
And even if you did find a candidate to run, Dick Lugar is not going to take this lying down. Don’t let that smile and pat on the back fool you. Lugar has a very good and well-greased machine across the state. And while he has raised the ire of some county chairman by not being as visible as they would like for him to be, the man has created a network through his Lugar Series (20 years in the running) and his leadership program for high school seniors (30 years in the running) at the University of Indianapolis.
And before I forget, in 2006 Lugar ran virtually unopposed in a year when Democrats retook both chambers of Congress. He got nearly 1.2 million votes. His closet challenge, a Libertarian because Democrats did not field an opponent, got less than 170,000.
Now this is definitely not to say that Lugar is unbeatable, no one is. In politics, anything can happen and a day is a lifetime. However, I think the tea parties internal challenges (lack of leadership, bottom-up management, scarce policy explanations) as well as the external pressures are going to make this quite an adventure.
As Saturday’s program came to an end one of the speakers, who was from Texas, used the Alamo as a reference to going up against the incumbent Senator. Lisa Deaton of Columbus said the tea party had to unite and be focused and then said “Senator Lugar is Santa Anna, and we are that 189 men” at the Alamo.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t most of those guys get killed?
