Tea Party plans challenge for Lugar
Image via WikipediaLeaders of more than 70 Tea Party groups in Indiana gathered last weekend to sign a proclamation saying they would all support one candidate — as yet undetermined — in a primary challenge to Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Republican who has represented the state since 1977.Lugar has lost touch on foreign policy. In that regard he is like former Nebraska Sen. * who opposed the Bush administration policy in Iraq. He recently backed the administration's START treaty with Russia despite its many flaws. I suspect he will have a tough challenge in the primary.
They are organizing early, they say, to prevent what happened last year, when several Tea Party candidates split the vote in Republican Senate primaries, allowing the most establishment of the candidates to win with less than 40 percent.
The meeting in Sharpsville was hardly the exception. Just three months after the midterm elections, Tea Party organizers are preparing to challenge some of the longest-serving Republican incumbents in 2012.
In Maine, there is already one candidate running on a Tea Party platform against Senator Olympia J. Snowe. Supporters there are seeking others to run, declaring that they, too, will back the person they view as the strongest candidate to avoid splitting their vote. In Utah, the same people who ousted Senator Robert F. Bennett at the state’s Republican convention last spring are now looking at a challenge to Senator Orrin G. Hatch.
The early moves suggest that the pattern of the last elections, in which primaries were more fiercely contested than the general election in several states, may be repeated.
They also show how much the Tea Party has changed the definition of who qualifies as a conservative. While Ms. Snowe is widely considered a moderate Republican, Mr. Hatch is not. Mr. Lugar, similarly, defines himself as a conservative. He argues that he has consistently won praise from small-business groups, supported a balanced budget amendment and pushed for a reduction in farm subsidies and the closing of agricultural extension offices as part of an effort to reduce unnecessary spending — all initiatives that fall under the smaller government rubric of the Tea Party.
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Snowe has been an unreliable Republican vote and is likely to have a challenge. But Maine is a strange state and it might keep her anyway. I think Hatch may survive, but he is going to have to comfort the conservatives who dominate the party in Utah. That is something Bennett could not do. What seems clear is that it has become harder for Republican senators to ignore what the conservative base opposes. That will make it harder for Democrats to bring them across for bipartisan deals.
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