The tea party scored a final victory in Tuesday night's primary, as their candidate Richard Mourdock trounced longtime Senator Dick Lugar 61-39. The results reanimate an almost dead tea party, and should reanimate the fears of the GOP, which saw similar establishment figures picked off in 2010 primaries only to have their more extreme substitutes lose in the general, potentially costing Republicans the Senate.
Lugar, the third-longest serving senator, was a far more centrist and conciliatory lawmaker than the type the GOP has been sending to Washington lately, as evidenced by the fact that even Obama released a statement bemoaning his loss. He also ran what is now considered an infamously bad campaign, believing he could coast to reelection and underestimating the strength of his opponent.
This is a classic pick-off for the tea party: identify an establishment candidate with a record of bipartiniship (treason!), and exploit his complacency. Now Lugar's scalp is being added to Olympia Snowe's and Ben Nelson's retirement in the Museum of Moderate Lawmakers. Lugar's defeat could rescuscitate the tea party, which had been left for dead circa last fall's debt ceiling debacle; the conservative umbrella group was almost entirely absent from the GOP presidetial primary, heard only in disparate objections to the political oatmeal that is Mitt Romney's positions.
Now it seems the GOP primary may have just been too big of a stage for the hodgepodge movement, which is much more effective at influencing state and local elections. A state primary is the perfectly-sized arena for the otherwise dissolute member groups to come together and make themselves felt. By dominating moderate Republican voters, many of whom don't even bother to vote in a primary, the tea party can quickly and quietly snatch an election.
And that's exactly the problem. The tea party can swing a GOP state primary much more easily than they can a state election, especially when their more extreme right-wing candidate is driving independent and moderate voters away. See Sharon Angle and Christine O'Donnell, both of whom swiped their 2010 primaries only to piss away the Republicans' Senate majority hopes in the general election.
Sure enough, Democrats believe Mourdock's nomination could put Lugar's seat in play. Joe Donnelly has a Blue Dog-ish profile, anti-abortion and pro-gun, and he survived a fierce House battle in 2010. He could seize the exact middle ground that a tea party candidate concedes.
This isn't likely to happen. Mourdock, as Steve Kornacki points out at Salon, is less a tea party nutbar than O'Donnell or Angle, and he's already a known, established state politician. And while 2012 isn't 2010 in tea party-mania terms, with no anti-health care, anti-stimulus hysteria to propel voters to the polls, Mourdock will surely benefit from a strong anti-Obama vote.
But Romney's none-too-exciting, which could depress GOP turnout; the ire over Obama might not be enough to counteract it. Lugar would have walked away with this election in November; the seat now up for grabs, and if the GOP loses, it loses its chance at the Senate majority, too.
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