NRA usually doesn’t get involved with primary challenges, but it looks like they are getting involved in an attempt to unseat Dick Lugar:
Cox said the NRA isn’t waiting for the presidential election to get involved, turning to key Senate races to endorse pro-gun candidates even in primaries. Wednesday, for example, the powerful lobby backed Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock over Sen. Dick Lugar in the GOP primary. “The Supreme Court is certainly running in every Senate race in the country,†he told Secrets.
Looks like NRA wants to hedge its bets and try to improve the Senate in case we’re looking at another 4 years of Obama. I think the Senate is a weak check against Obama when it comes to court nominees, but any little bit can help. Lugar is not on any committees that could generally cause trouble for NRA, but he’d be quick to vote for cloture on a nominee who was just plainly unacceptable.
Hat Tip to Instapundit
They need to be much more involved in primaries for both parties. Their current policy is nonsense.
+1 jake! At this rate they better, because 4 more years sure is going to happen.
Just look at the super Tuesday Primary turnout. Nobody gave a shit.
Different Jake, but same sentiments.
Lugar was an especially offensive anti-gunner. Being a Republican from Indiana (generally pro-gun), he should have been at least minimally pro-gun, but in fact he went out of his way to stick a thumb in the eye of gun owners. He even refused to sign onto the Heller brief, which was signed by such radical right-wingers as Olympia Snowe and, for that matter, Russ Feingold.
Dick Lugar is the poster boy for term limits.
He’s the poster boy for never electing him in the first place. He also has the air of an incredibly nasty person. Generally, I don’t approve of the strategy of “I won’t vote for X if he’s the nominee,” but I’d make an exception here. Let Republicans know that Lugar will lose one way or the other, and he won’t be the nominee.
Also, getting rid of Lugar would help the GOP in the long run. Political consultants (generally the stupidest and shallowest people in the political field) only look at the very short term: in this case, the likelihood of Lugar winning vs. another Republican winning in November. The problem is that this has a much bigger negative impact to the GOP for two reasons.
First, it makes the GOP less believable on an issue that is popular with the American people. People who are pro-gun but generally slightly liberal will vote GOP if they think it can deliver pro-gun victories, but won’t vote for it if it tolerates such as Lugar.
Second, realistically, the GOP establishment gives money preferentially to liberal Republicans like Lugar. For instance, in 2000 Sen. Rod Gram of Minnesota, a staunch conservative, lost to Mark Dayton by a hair, due to lack of support from the national GOP. Meanwhile, the national GOP was throwing money at Jim Jeffords’s reelection, which he won easily, afterward switching parties. If Lugar is the nominee, he will cause the defeat of incumbents like Dean Heller, who will have their share of the RNC cash given to Lugar.