Lugar Will Not Campaign For Mourdock In Ind.

[rpannier]

NDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Sen. Richard Lugar says he will not campaign for the man who vanquished him in May’s Republican primary.

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.

Mourdock is in a tight race with Democrat Joe Donnelly for Indiana’s open Senate seat. Senate Republicans and Democrats are going on air in Indiana Tuesday with new ads and outside groups are spending heavily on both sides.

Polls have shown a surprisingly close race for what would have been a safe Republican seat had Lugar won re-election.

link:
http://www.nationalmemo.com/lugar-will-not-campaign-for-mourdock-in-ind/

[No Elephants]

1. A republican who believed in working across the aisle,

forced out at age 80 by an extremist.

Too old to run for other office, so he has no further need of the Republican Party, or even for voters.

I don't think I would endorse the guy who forced me out of office, either.

Then again, I would have retired voluntarily well before I was 80. So, I cannot pretend to understand the mentality.

[Enthusiast]

2. I have always wondered how

Indiana became such a bastion of "conservatism" when surrounding states like Ohio, Michigan and Illinois seem at least to be middle of the road.

I do know religious conservatism is more prevalent in Indiana, maybe that accounts for the differences. Is it the presence of Notre Dame University + Protestant universities? The proximity and influence of Kentucky? Maybe it was due to an influx of Kentucky Christians that have a very conservative brand of Christianity?

Anyone, Bueller, anyone?

[No Elephants]

3. Al From, whose brainchild the Democratic Leadership Council supposedly was,

hails from Indiana.

That's the first clue. (Maybe From was only the public face of the DLC, given he apparently had no aspirations to the Presidency and many of the founding members did?)

I googled and found a DU thread from 2004 wherein a poster asked why Indiana was so conservative and he or she got some responses from other posters.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x772

I found interesting the post that mentioned that Indiana had gone from swing state before Johnson to solidly red immediately after Johnson.

I don't think religion became the fairly reliable predictor of voting that it is today until the 1970s, when the SCOTUS decided Griswold v. Connecticut (contraception, sex education, etc.) and Roe v. Wade (federal constitutional right, regardless of state law, to choose voluntary abortion during the first trimester, less so during the second trimester and much less so during the third), along with the Reed (Reid?) case (equal rights for males and females--GLBT not at issue).

Of course, the Solid Democratic South also began going solid red after Johnson.

What was the reason that so many states switched from blue or purple to red, either immediately or gradually, after Lyndon?

Was it racism (aka, especially in the West, as "states' rights") vs. Johnson's civil rights act of 1964?

Was it "I don't want to pay taxes to fund Johnson's Great Society?"

Was it something else entirely?

Red states now benefit more than blue states from the taxes paid by all the states. Was that true in 1964? I don't know. Were voters even aware of things like that in 1964? I don't know. Bottom line, I have no personal theory on why Johnson seems to have been so decisive for Indiana. Or, were they losing faith in Democrats for some reason all along and he was simply the last straw for them?

There is also the city vs. suburb vs. rural distinction. Boston still is the most liberal part of Massachusetts.

Why? People use "urban" as a synonym for "African American" or "lots of minorities." That was not my family's experience. My family's experience was cities = factories = jobs. And, for them, "jobs" meant "union jobs."

Populations are growing in every state of course, but I think most people have tended to take the same political side as their parents? (I am not at all sure of that. That was just my personal experience, along with my sister and all our first cousins in my generational level.)

Here is another message board discussion to which google led me, also focusing on Kerry. Disclaimer: I know zero about this board or the posters on this thread and have only glanced very briefly at the content of the thread.

http://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=67054.0

If you google with more patience than I did, I think you very well might find more scholarly sources that I came up with on a quick look. Not that the opinion of scholars is necessary correct, but at least I would hope that they arrived at it armed with some facts, studies, etc.

And, of course, Obama did take Indiana in 2008 by all of one point. (I heard a respected Democratic television commentator say otherwise very recently. How quickly we forget!) T

Obama's victory had not been predicted by anyone, even Nate Silver in his purist days, even though Obama had outraised and outspent McCain there three times over. Draw whatever conclusions from all of that as you will.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Indiana,_2008

[Enthusiast]

4. Thank you, No Elephants!

I didn't want you to go to all that trouble. You've provided me with some interesting stuff to consider!

[No Elephants]

5. You're very welcome. No trouble. Your question was a good one and I wanted to

see if I could find a "smoking gun" answer quickly.

I didn't, but I did find thought provoking stuff, and that is good too.


I did not spend any more time or effort on it than I wanted to, for my own curiosity, so no worries.

Please never apologize for causing me to think!

[Contrary1]

6. I actually crossed over and voted for Lugar in the primary...

Yeah, he should of retired a few years back, but I would rather have a sane, sensible Repub, who is willing to honestly negotiate, than a TP darling like Mourdock.

I hope Donnelly wipes up the floor with him. Right now, it looks like a toss-up. In red state Indiana, that's good news.

[No Elephants]

7. I thought Massachusetts had open primaries, but it turns out that

if you are registered Democrat, the only ballot you can get is the Democratic ballot, period.

The only way you can get whichever ballot you want is to register "unenrolled."

If you think candidate A would be disastrous for your state, I think you should be able to vote against candidate A in the primary, regardless of how you are registered..

Honestly, I wish we had a federal elections law.