Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Sen. Richard Lugar, who is 80 but appears to be closer to 90 in this video, is railing against the Tea Party. He says that the Tea Party is the reason why Republicans weren't able to retake the Senate. And he's warning voters from voting for his conservative primary opponent. (You remember 2010, the worst electoral defeat for any major party in 50 or 60 years.)
Now, I covered the Sharron Angle race in Nevada and whatever bad things you think about the Tea Party there, I could tell you stories that would horrify you even more. And my husband had an editorial meeting with Christine O'Donnell that was so bad -- before she won her primary -- that he called me to tell me about it. So I'm no Tea Party partisan here. But Lugar's claims are ridiculous.
For one thing, the moderate Republican Lugar's opponent is not Angle or O'Donnell. It's Richard Mourdock, Indiana's well liked state treasurer. When he first won statewide office, he won with 52% of the vote. Four years later, in 2011, he won with 62% of the vote. Lugar's claims that he alone could win statewide office as Senator are silly.
Lugar, who is criticized for the lack of time he spends in the state, first became Indiana's senator in 1977. When I was two years old. And, like I said, he appears to have lost his natural teeth a decade ago.
Mourdock ran for a Congressional District 20 years ago and lost twice. He learned from that experience, and went to work more in state politics before running for statewide office. Before deciding to run, he did extensive polling showing that he could win (hint: this is something Christine O'Donnell wouldn't even have known to do). Two-thirds of Republican primary voters are fine with Lugar being primaried and their support for Lugar falls precipitously once they hear more about his voting record. Mourdock has the support of more than 2/3 of GOP county chairs and 12 members of the state central committee.
And that's just publicly. While some politicos have publicly endorsed Lugar, word on the street is that they'd be more than fine with Mourdock pulling off an upset. He's the "Pat Toomey of Indiana" as one reporter explained it to me.
But even the larger claim that the Tea Party cost Republicans the Senate is laughable. The only thing that Republicans had going for them was the Tea Party or the belief that voters could elect people who could fight the explosion in the size and scope of government. Whether you're looking at someone as liberal as Sen. Scott Brown or someone as conservative as Sen. Rand Paul, these wins should be credited to the Tea Party. And even the bad candidates helped things overall. If the media -- and GOP consultants such as Karl Rove -- hadn't focused all of their ire and hatred on Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle, they would have focused it on people such as Rand Paul. In fact, I think this should be the new GOP strategy -- run a bunch of people including a couple of less-than-stellar candidates who can take all of the heat off of the rest.
In the meantime, Lugar should try to win his seat on the merits of his own views not by fearmongering about conservatives.
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Feb '11
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
More power to Mourdock. The term RINO could have been coined to describe Lugar. Good riddance, hopefully.
Sep '10
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
This from P. J. O'Rourke told me everything I needed to know about Richard Lugar (and John Kerry) long before I knew much about either man. It's O'Rourke's account of the civil disobedience sparked by supporters of Corazon Aquino after she lost the presidential election to Ferdinand Marcos in early 1986, events that eventually led to Marcos's ouster. In other words, what Lugar's doing now does not at all surprise me.
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Nicely put, Mollie. Had it not been for the Tea Party, the Republicans would have caved entirely in 2009; Obamacare would now be regarded as a bipartisan triumph; and both houses would be in the hands of the Democrats. That Lugar does not realize this suggests that he is beginning to lose his marbles and that his day is done.
Mar '11
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
RINO squishes akin to Sen. Lugar are walking, talking advertisements on why the Tea Party is needed if conservative views are to be represented in government and how far the Republican Party has strayed from the principles of limited government and fiscal responsibility. His screeching tirades are praise and the more he bellows the more I know we are on the correct track to bring the Washington leviathan to heel.
One hopes you were paying close attention to events in Pennsylvania Sen. Lugar. Perhaps you should contact Mr. Specter to learn how he coped, your services are no longer required.
Edited on Dec 26, 2011 at 10:07amJun '10
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Not to worry all you Lugar fans. If he loses the Republican primary, he could run again as a Democrat. It always amazes me listening to the Roves and Murphys of the R Party explaining how, if not for those Tea.... folks, they would control the Senate or be able to pass, without comment, a useless two month extension of the payroll tax relief. I say, first of all, how about counting the victories as well as the losses: Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Tim Johnson, Allen West (the last two being Congressmen), and many more I am sure that I left off this list. Secondly, if the R's had won with some of their preferred candidates, which they couldn't have, what good would it have done anyway?
Mar '11
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Exactly so. A statist Republican akin to Lugar differs from his Democratic colleagues far more in style than in any material substance. How is a Republican controlled Senate enticing to conservatives if it simply enacts some variation of a liberal, big government agenda?
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Sometimes it's just plain time. Go home, Sen. Lugar. Relax. Read some good books. Take afternoon naps. Give the odd speech. Enjoy the esteem of your fellow Hoosiers. But go home.
Dec '10
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Senator Lugar may have been a cool head and had a decent respect for democratic ideas in the 80s. However, he was playing off the most conservative administration in the 20th century. He could afford to go out on a limb. Now, frankly, he is senile. This is bizarre behavior. Virtually nothing he is saying is true. His picture of the Tea Party and the current political situation is 180 degrees off course. He would be a ludicrous candidate for anything at this point. Too bad for him that he is not 30 years younger and Ronald Reagan is no longer President.
Not even close.
Dec '11
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Supper-annuated politicians like Dick Lugar only care about one thing: holding on to the prestige that comes with political office. So long as they're in office, they're surrounded by staff and rent-seekers who fawn upon them and cater to their every demand. At taxpayers' expense, they live like multi-millionaires.
Once out of office, they're of little interest to anyone other than their grandchildren. No staff, no limousines, no luxury hotel suites on foreign junkets.
I have more respect for Barney Frank, who at last has stepped down, than I do for Dick Lugar.
Sep '10
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
I wrote about this in 2008. Not Lugar himself but the whole Senate and the fact these doddering fools will not retire, so important is their personal service to our country.
It's Not Just Ted Who Has a Brain Tumor
And,
Jan '11
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Lugar should retain the seat on the merits of his own views and positions?
That's Mission Impossible 4.
But don't worry - his fate will be a mere hiccup compared to the appalled shock that will consume the national media when Senator Hatch is defeated in his primary. I mean, if Senator Bennett's loss in 2010 floored David Brooks, what will the "purge" of Ted Kennedy's old pal and the author of the bipartisan "Dream Act" do to the Big Government conservatives?
The anti-war Left in the Sixties had a saying: "Two, three, many Vietnams." Freesmith has updated it.
"Two, three, many 2010's!"
Edited on Dec 26, 2011 at 1:23pmOct '10
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Nobody's Perfect:
I have more respect for Barney Frank, who at last has stepped down, than I do for Dick Lugar.
Respect neither of them ... Barney Frank only dropped out because he was sure to lose in a re-configured district ... he deserves none of your generosity of spirit here.
Lugar proves that term limits are a bad idea whose time has come. He is pitch-perfect for the life-long politician's sense of entitlement to their post after six Senate terms.
Mar '11
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
To all who say that Lugar is "senile", that's an insult to people suffering from senility. Lugar is just arrogant, pompous, and filled with a snotty sense of entitlement.
May '10
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Just turned 60, and 80 is looking better every day. I've had to deal with a lot of age discrimination in the job market so I know about it firsthand.
That said, and being bipartisan here, somewhere between the age of 70 & 80 it's just flat out time for politicians to step down and let the next generation have their day. Examples abound: William Rhenquist, Harry Blackmun, Robert Byrd, Strom Thurmond, even Henry Hyde (who was quite ill and nearly incapacitated his last couple terms).
The Senate cloakroom shouldn't double for God's waiting room.
Dec '10
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
HA! I love it.
Red Shirt (Expendable) Candidates.
So, when they beam down to the surface of the electorate, and you see they've sent Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Sharron Angle, you know which one isn't going to see their bunk again.
Nov '11
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
. . . he . . . lost his natural teeth a decade ago.
* * *
Lugar should try to win his seat on the merits of his own views not by fearmongering about conservatives.
I hope Lugar loses . . .
. . . but mocking him about his age seems not right.
If his mind has slipped too far, someone should find a respectful way to tell him. Years in office and age are not necessarily arguments against him. The Constitution disqualifies for neither. The Senate needs some octogenarians, for more than continuity--for institutional memory, for resistance to trends, for old-fashionedness, for preservation of forms, for a sense of changelessness, to remind younger ones they're mortal and the senate existed a long time before they got there.
Lugar seems lucid. His reminder that losses by Angle and ODonnell cost the GOP the Senate is not senile talk. It's simple math. He doesn't even blame all Tea Partiers everywhere, only the ones who nominated those undeniably weak candidates. He politicks well within bounds with his roundabout implication that Mourdock might be another weak Tea Party candidate.
Unless you think Romney a fearmonger, it's not fearmongering for Lugar to argue he, too, is more electable.
May '11
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Gov. Daniels used to work for Lugar and will barnstorm the state in support of him. That will make a successful primary very difficult.
Oct '10
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Astonishing
I hope Lugar loses . . .
. . . but mocking him about his age seems not right.
Disagree … first off I’m not sure “mocking” is the right word. It was a way of highlighting his age, an entirely legitimate topic to raise. But let’s assume it is mocking. You think Lugar’s general election opponents will be so considerate of his delicate sensibilities? [Of course, last time Democrats didn’t even run a candidate against Lugar … smart move … save the campaign funds since he votes your way every time it really matters regardless.] Ridicule is a favorite Alinskyite tactic, so even if you consider this reference to age to be ridiculing, I’d suggest ‘get over it’ is the best advice to take.
To unilaterally disarm of your opponent’s weapon of choice is simply to wish for your own defeat. You are better off staying out of the fray in that case. Lugar’s 35 years in the Senate has amply demonstrated why he is the enemy. He demonstrates here that misrepresenting the Tea Party is fair game to him. So, all legal and effective means to defeat him are, likewise, fair.
Oct '10
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
He was Chief of Staff to Lugar in his first Senate term, according to Wiki. If you are correct, won't Daniel's support for Lugar demonstrate that lamentations over his non-candidacy for President were misplaced? His relationships/careerism should count less than getting rid of a pernicious RINO.
Re: Grandpa Lugar Tells Tea Party To Get Off Lawn
Astonishing
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
. . . he . . . lost his natural teeth a decade ago.
* * *
Lugar should try to win his seat on the merits of his own views not by fearmongering about conservatives.
I hope Lugar loses . . .
. . . but mocking him about his age seems not right.
While I do think his many decades in office are a great argument against re-electing him, I agree. I should not have made fun of his age. Thanks for the gentle reproving.