The biggest threat all along was Jon Huntsman. Thankfully, Republicans were too stupid to nominate him.

By Michael J.W. Stickings

After decades of trying, the Manchus finally crossed the Great Wall in 1644, taking Beijing and establishing the Qing Dynasty. They had an easier time of it than Huntsman in the Republican Party.

The WSJ's Washington Wire is reporting that early on the Obama campaign was worried about one really appealing Republican in particular: 

Jon Huntsman is the former Utah governor who took a moderate stance in a GOP field that leaned to the right. He didn't get very far in the Republican nomination fight, but team Obama viewed him as a serious candidate who could pose real problems in a general election. 

"We were honest about our concerns about Huntsman," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said at a Politico breakfast event Tuesday. "I think Huntsman would have been a very tough candidate."

As for the president, he liked Mr. Huntsman enough to appoint him ambassador to China in 2009. Mr. Messina, who was working in the White House at the time, said he helped Mr. Huntsman win Senate confirmation.

"As someone who helped manage his confirmation for Chinese ambassador, he's a good guy," Mr. Messina said. "We looked at his profile in a general election and thought he would have been" a formidable candidate.

Absolutely. In fact, I wrote a post way back in June 2011 called "Huntsman the Formidable."

Don't get me wrong, I never thought it was going to be him. The Republican Party is just too extreme right now, too ideologically absolutist, to go with someone like Huntsman.

This is the party, after all, that tossed aside conservative-but-not-conservative-enough Dick Lugar in Indiana, who would have been a shoe-in for re-election, and ended up with Dick "pregnancies from rape are a gift from God" Mourdock, who lost badly in what this year was a solidly red state, a race that was his to lose. A party that was so uncomfortable with Mitt Romney that it flirted seriously with the embarrassing likes of Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum before finally settling, reluctantly, on the guy who would end up losing. It was not going to get behind a guy, however conservative, who refused to kowtow to the far right, who exposed Republican ignorance, who was just too sane and civil for the current Republican zeitgeist.

Not in 2012. Absolutely not. He just had way too many strikes against him, as I noted here:

Not that Republicans will ever nominate him, mind you. They're too stupid to know what's good for them, and Huntsman just isn't the right sort of Republican for 2012, what with the party getting ever more extreme, particularly with the rise of the Tea Party, and old-school establishment figures, not to mention moderates, or those who just aren't conservative enough for the extremists, even those with a single questionable mark on their record, being purged from its ranks by the right-wing Bolsheviks who run the show.

I wrote a post way back in January 2011 called "If I were Obama, I'd be worried about Huntsman." In retrospect, I was wrong. Obama had nothing to be worried about. Huntsman was never really a threat.

I was actually talking up the Huntsman thing even earlier, with a post in May 2009 called "Huntsman 2012?" What did I say then? "Huntsman may make us all a little queasy, but, thankfully, Republicans are just too stupid to know what's good for them."

He was undeniably formidable, as I wrote in June 2011:

[T]here's no denying he's an awfully impressive man. I might even go so far as to say he could very well be Reagan 2.0, or if not that, given how transformative Reagan was for movement conservatism, at least a leading Republican in the Reagan mold. He just seems to have it all, even the somewhat more tolerant and even liberal positions on some social issues that show him to be a man of the times, not a man against the times, a conservative who is open to progress and change while remaining committed to his fundamental beliefs. Perhaps he could be zeitgeist conservative, the forward-looking proponent of conservatism at a time of massive global change.

Alas:

But not likely, not in today's Republican Party, which would likely rather expel him that have him as its leader.

Yes, Republicans really are too stupid to know what's good for them. Which is good for us, but not good for Huntsman, who will have to wait until 2016, or forever, to make his mark in a party that has abandoned him and all those like him.

 

Do you get what I'm saying?

 

Republicans. Stupid. Huntsman. Never.

That bad man is being mean to my brother George

By Richard K. Barry

Who's a big baby? Yes you are.

I'm the first to admit that Jeb Bush presents a hell of a lot better than his dimwit brother. It must have been hard to watch W. be president knowing if there was any intelligence in the family, George didn't get it. But give me a major break that Jeb is bellyaching because President Obama is blaming everybody else for everything, including poor brother George.

Here's the quote from Jeb:

His entire strategy is to blame others -- starting with my brother, of course. Basically, he blames every possible thing rather than having the humility to be able to reach out and to find common ground.

But here's the thing, Jeb. It's even worse than you thought. Nobody, not even the Republicans, want to talk about your sorry brother. Nobody wants to blame him. They just want to ignore him. He's not worth anyone's trouble anymore. Unless you're talking about casually mentioning every now and then what an economic mess George left for the country and Obama. In which case, well, yeah, what's your point?

But my favourite part is Jeb bitching that Obama hasn't the humility to reach out and find common ground. I actually think you're smart enough to know your GOP brothers and sisters decided from the start they were not going to work with the Obama Administration.

Or maybe you think like Republican Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock that partisanship, that "working with" Republicans, means doing what they want you to do. That's probably what you mean. That's always what Republicans mean when they say Democrats won't work with them and lack humility.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Behind the Ad: Thank you, Richard Mourdock, for saying what's on Paul Ryan's mind

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive " Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC).

Where: Indiana.

What's going on: We expect the Democrats to be making effective use of Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock's despicable comments on God and rape, and so they are.

Here's the latest.


(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Quote of the Day: Haley Barbour on Richard Mourdock's rape remarks

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Said the former Mississippi governor, and one of the most quintessential Republicans (a very nearly perfect Republican, in fact), yesterday:

I don't agree with what he said. I thought that what he said was kinda crazy.

Of course, good surrogate that he is, he tried to put some daylight between Romney and Mourdock by saying that the latter's remarks have nothing to do with the presidential race and pivoting to the usual pro-Romney talking points about the economy.

To which I make two points:

1. Far from distancing himself from Mourdock, Romney continues to embrace him. There was a terse statement of discontent from the Romney campaign shortly after the remarks were made, but Romney still enthusiastically supports him in Indiana's Senate race. (And, of course, Paul Ryan's views on such matters are pretty much the same as Mourdock's.) So, yes, it's an issue, and a bad one for Romney, however much Barbour may protest otherwise.

2. Even Haley "Boss Hogg" Barbour thinks what Mourdock was said was crazy. That says something. Just as it says something that Romney, shameless panderer with an unprincipled core that he is, won't take a stand against Mourdock and say enough is enough. (He needs the crazy Republican vote, which is to say, he needs Republicans to vote for him.)

Which is to say, the loathsome Barbour is making Romney look even worse than usual. And that's saying a lot.

With him or against him (and why Romney still stands with Mourdock)

By Mustang Bobby

(Ed. note: Make sure to read the hilarious Onion article MB links to at the end of this post. To whet your appetite: "Responding to inflammatory remarks made by Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock during a debate Tuesday night, Our Lord God the Almighty Father sought today to distance Himself from both Mourdock and the entire right-wing fundamentalist Christian movement, sources confirmed." -- MJWS)

The backlash against Indiana senate candidate Richard Mourdock and his comments about God and rape continues. Some notable Republicans (John McCain and Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire) are distancing themselves while others (Mitch McConnell) are supporting him.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney, who cut a commercial endorsing Mr. Mourdock, is still with him. Via TPM:

[Wednesday] night the Romney campaign put out a statement disagreeing with Mourdock's comment but not denouncing him. And the campaign did not respond to questions about whether he was withdrawing his endorsement.

The key though is the ad. Democrats are pushing hard for him to ask Mourdock to take it down. And if the Mourdock story grows, I suspect he'll have to ask him to take it down, which would be devastating for Mourdock — not so much because of the ad not showing but because of the merciless press it could spawn so close to election day.

The fate of the ad is what I'd watch to see where this story is going over the course of the day.

Late Update: The Romney campaign has now said they have not asked Mourdock to take down the ad.

Later Update: Freshman GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte cancels trip to campaign with Mourdock. 

Even Later Update: Romney reaffirms support for Mourdock candidacy.

One reason might be is that Paul Ryan's view on abortion is basically the same as Mr. Mourdock's.

When Missouri senate candidate Todd Akin brought up the subject of "legitimate rape" back in August, the GOP couldn't run away fast enough. Now Mr. Mourdock has said something equally outrageous, and yet he's still got support from big names in the party. Why?

It may have something to do with the fact that Mr. Mourdock invoked God in his statement, whereas Mr. Akin only went with pseudo-science. It's far easier to distance yourself from someone who only offers what he thinks are scientific facts as proof rather than incur the wrath of the Almighty by seeming to contradict His Will. Scientific facts are debatable; God is not.

P.S.: According to The Onion, God is not pleased with these recent developments.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Behind the Ad: Richard Mourdock is Mitt Romney's kind of candidate

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our extensive " Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: American Bridge (pro-Obama super-PAC).

Where: Web video.

What's going on: Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said pregnancies resulting from rape can be "something God intended." And while the Romney campaign has said they don't support the comments, they indicated yesterday they would continue to support the candidate. In fact, they made an ad for Mourdock featuring the GOP presidential nominee that Romney is not asking Mourdock to take down.

The Obama campaign had this to say:

"The president felt [Mourdock's] comments were outrageous and demeaning to women," Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Air Force One.

"This is a reminder that a Republican Congress working with a Republican president Mitt Romney would [feel] that women should not be able to make choices about their own healthcare... This is an issue where Mitt Romney is starring in an ad for this senator [sic] and it is perplexing that he wouldn't demand to have that ad taken down," she said.

American Bridge, a pro-Obama Super-PAC, has produced an ad to draw attention to Romney's support for Mourdock. Mitt may be able to convince some people he has moved to the middle, or was always there, but it's harder to do when he has so many radical conservatives on his team.

In this ad, attention is drawn not only to Mourdock's views on rape but also other positions that place him far outside the mainstream.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Richard Mourdock

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Raped? Pregnant? Hey, there's a silver lining. It's God's will!

It's just not Todd Akin. Republicans generally seem to have some seriously disgusting thoughts about rape. Here's the latest -- another shot in the Republican war on women but also an assault on decency and justice:

Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said Tuesday that pregnancy that results from rape can be "something that God intended to happen."

"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God," Mourdock said at a debate. "And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

Yes, that's right, Mourdock -- not some fringe Republican without standing in the party but the GOP's Indiana Senate candidate, having defeated long-time and highly respected Sen. Richard Lugar in the primary earlier this year -- said that his "God" is behind rape, that rape is... divine. As his opponent, Democrat Joe Donnelly said in response:

"The God I believe in and the God I know most Hoosiers believe in, does not intend for rape to happen -- ever," Mourdock's opponent, Rep. Joe Donnelly (D), said in a statement. "What Mr. Mourdock said is shocking, and it is stunning that he would be so disrespectful to survivors of rape." 

Mourdock later issued a statement clarifying his remarks but also lashing out as his critics:

"God creates life, and that was my point," Mourdock said in the statement. "God does not want rape, and by no means was I suggesting that he does. Rape is a horrible thing, and for anyone to twist my words otherwise is absurd and sick."

Mourdock is obviously an extremist on abortion, and perhaps he did speak a tad inelegantly, but what he said was pretty clear: pregnancy from rape is something that God intended to happen. He can try to rewrite that any way he wants, but it would seem that he's only trying to cover up his real views on the matter: Rape can be a good thing. It's what God wants.

Indeed, even the Romney campaign -- and Romney's a big Mourdock supporter -- ran as far from his comments as possible. "Gov. Romney disagrees with Richard Mourdock's comments, and they do not reflect his views," said his spokesperson, Andrea Saul.

Yes, even Romney understood that Mourdock said something, and believes something, truly crazy and utterly reprehensible. 

Mourdock: "More Dick"

By Carl 

I'm not sure what it is about rape that Republicans find so attractive.

No, I'm sure: rape is not about sex, it's about power, but Republicans want to pretend it's about sex: 

[Indiana Senate candidate Richard] Mourdock, who's been locked in one of the country's most expensive and closely watched Senate races, was asked during the final minutes of a debate Tuesday night whether abortion should be allowed in cases of rape or incest. 

"I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," Mourdock said.

You may remember Mourdock as the Teabagger who ousted Senator Richard Lugar from re-election mostly by painting Lugar as too moderate and too willing to compromise.

Compromise: after Teabaggers are gone from Congress, I think they'll realize a harsh lesson has been given to them. Governing and legislating 330 million people demands compromise because you can't have an army of goose-stepping sheep agreeing with every extremist position you pull out of the Koch brothers' asses.

Mourdock is the second Teabagging candidate to say something repulsive about rape and its consequences. You may recall Todd Akin and his comments about the impossibility of pregnancy during a "real rape."

It's an interesting trope to believe, to be frank: by allowing for degrees of rape, you immediately deflect any challenge from people who's feelings about abortion are more flexible and compassionate than yours. You basically take compassion out of the argument by claiming, in effect, "she had it coming."

It doesn't matter if she was pinned to the ground by a man twice her size, had a knife held to her throat and brutally assaulted, penetrated over and over again: if she got pregnant, she wanted to have sex.

I've never been much for bondage fantasies, and I can't imagine too many women would find this exciting and welcome. I wonder if Akin or Mourdock were in a prison shower and this happened to them, would they still believe in "illegitimate rape"?

Akin at least had the good timing to reveal his disgusting lunacy before the campaign geared up and allowed Romney the opportunity to decry him and to put distance from Akin. Mourdock, however, is currently running television and radio ads featuring both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Romney can't be sitting comfortably with this. The whole Akin affair took the entire Republican ticket down a peg in polls, and to re-energize the population of women is going to not only hurt Mourdock's chances, but the story will remind women across the nation of the GOP antipathy towards anything in heels.

So Richard Mourdock? Thank you. Thank you for being a heartless dickless bastard.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Jeb Bush takes a shot at today's GOP

By Richard K. Barry

They said they'd let us know
about our application.

If you think Mitt Romney's campaign will put Obama surrogate Cory Booker's critical comments about Obama's attacks on Bain Capital into numerous campaign ads, you're right. If you think they will do the same with Bill Clinton's statements praising Romney's stellar business career, you're right about that too. But, ultimately, the best self-inflicted wound from a campaign may come from recent comments by Jeb Bush that neither his father nor Ronald Reagan could get elected in todays radical right-wing Republican party:

Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad — they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party — and I don't — as having an orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement, doesn't allow for finding some common ground," Bush said, adding that he views the hyper-partisan moment as "temporary."

Back to my dad's time and Ronald Reagan's time – they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan support. Reagan would be criticized for doing the things that he did.

Jeb also took his shots at Obama for his own partisanship, which is what you would expect. But saying the Republican party as currently constituted is blindly partisan, and having the words come from one of the most respected members of the GOP could be very useful to the Democrats.

It's not particularly new. Even Mike Huckabee once said the same thing about Ronald Reagan having a hard time getting nominated for the presidency in this iteration of the party, but it's still a very intriguing perspective.

You'll recall Indiana GOP Senate nominee Richard Mourdock saying that bi-partisanship means Democrats agreeing to do what Republicans want done. Yeah, well, that's Jeb's point.

The ad almost writes itself: one part Mourdock, two parts Jeb, with the message, "Today's Republican Party doesn't care about governing America. They just want to impose their radical agenda. Even Jeb Bush says Ronald Reagan wouldn't be welcome in today's GOP."

Compared to this, Booker and Clinton would be small potatoes.

Forget your enemies. It's your friends who will bury you.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Sharpening distinctions

By Infidel753

One of the few remaining Republican giants of the old school, Senator Richard Lugar, was teabagged into political oblivion this week. The Nutty faction of Republicans, no longer able to stomach Lugar's record of compromise with Democrats and concessions to reality, demanded a properly insane ideologue instead -- and they appear to have gotten one, in the person of new Republican candidate Richard Mourdock.

This was a sharpening of distinctions, the presentation of a starker choice, one which more realistically reflects the contrast between the parties today.  Moderates and centrists who felt comfortable voting for Lugar will feel much less so about Mourdock. Can the Democrats now pick up this seat? It's far from a sure thing -- Indiana's a pretty red state, and Mourdock isn't as obviously out in orbit around Pluto as, say, Christine O'Donnell was. But our chances have surely improved.

An even greater sharpening of distinctions took place this week around another hot-button issue -- gay marriage. North Carolina's already-infamous Amendment One passed, not only affirming the ban on gay marriage but also obliterating all intermediate rights such as civil unions and domestic-partner benefits (it has been claimed that many North Carolina voters favored such concessions and would not have voted for Amendment One if they had realized it prohibited them -- if so, let's hope buyer's remorse is settling in). Within days of this triumph for the Godhatesfagsian theocratic right, the President of the United States personally endorsed gay marriage. Again, a stark contrast, highlighting the real differences between the parties.

Some have argued that Obama was pushed into this move by Biden's recent remarks about gay marriage (the latter branded as a "gaffe"); others consider the administration too savvy to have let itself be put in such a position, and insist the whole thing was orchestrated. To me it seems just as likely that Obama had "evolved" to his newly-stated position some time ago, and felt it appropriate to make a public statement now in order to reassure a reliable but embattled constituency in the wake of the North Carolina vote.

Was it risky? I question how many extra knuckle-dragger votes the Republicans will really gain from Obama's announcement. Those who believe him to be a Muslim communist Nazi Kenyan America-hater have no doubt long been convinced that he's pro-gay-marriage whether he explicitly said so or not; their votes were in the bag for the Republicans all along. It's the less-motivated part of the left, the naïve both-parties-are-the-same cynics, the ones who aren't paying attention, who are more likely to be reachable here.

I myself, for example, have been somewhat relieved at the victory of the Sane faction of Republicans in nominating Romney -- while Obama is far better, and is guaranteed my vote, at least we don't need to worry about Bachmann or Perry becoming president. A site I regularly read to follow thinking among the Sane faction is the pro-Romney Race42012, far removed from the ravings of RedState or Hot Air. Yet even there, when Obama's announcement hit the news, the same old dehumanizing clichés and knee-jerk bigotries ambled forth (see comment thread here), knuckles dragging, to remind us that these people, whether Sane or Nutty, are The Enemy. (For the Nutty faction, there was this.)  One would have to be an impossibly naïve cynic to look at all this and still claim there is no meaningful difference between the parties.

Remember, getting people fired up is good for us. When turnout is high (2008), we win. When turnout is low (2010), they win.

As Mourdock himself recently said, "We are at that point where one side or the other has to win this argument. One side or the other will dominate." If that's what they want, I'm up for it. Let's make sure it's our side.

(Cross-posted at Infidel753.)

Say goodnight, Dick Lugar

By Richard K. Barry

Everyone knew it was coming, but the time is upon us. After three and a half decades in the U.S. Senate representing Indiana, Republican Richard Lugar has lost his party's primary bid to run in the general election in November.

With about half the votes counted, the winner, Richard Mourdock, had 59% of the vote to Lugar's 40%, which was enough to call the race.

Lots of outside money involved in this one. Indiana has also been trending more conservative of late, but perhaps the biggest problem for Lugar was incumbency itself. It used to be that incumbency was a guarantee of success, or very nearly. Now it's a weight around any Republican candidate's neck as the incumbent attempts to prove he or she has not been co-opted by Washington or jaded by inside-the-beltway experiences.

Tea Party favourite Richard Mourdock will now face three-term Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly in the fall. It would be nice if Mourdock were the kind of crazy right-winger who beat himself, much as Christine O'Donnell did in Delaware and Sharon Angle in Nevada. Unfortunately, Mourdock has been elected to state-wide office twice and will probably not trip up like the aforementioned pretenders.

As noted, Indiana is trending redder, and it would be a surprise if the GOP lost this Senate seat.

In explaining race dynamics, RealClearPolitics said this:

Mourdock used Lugar’s moderate streak against him. The campaign went after the senator's support for TARP and the DREAM Act, and his votes for President Obama's two Supreme Court justice nominees, for example. FreedomWorks, the National Rifle Association, and other conservative groups rallied behind Mourdock and spent millions campaigning against his opponent. Club for Growth recently ran ads accusing Lugar of "clinging to power." Lugar had support from super PACs, and the candidate's campaign spent roughly $2.4 million on the race, using ads to paint Mourdock as beholden to outside interest groups.

Strike another blow for a dysfunctional Congress.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Republican purification and the coming end of Richard Lugar

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Steve Kornacki at Salon:

It sure doesn't look like Richard Lugar is long for the political world. The news that the major super PAC supporting his candidacy is bailing on him a week before the Republican primary reinforces a growing consensus that the six-term Indiana senator will likely be defeated next Tuesday by his conservative challenger, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock.

And there's a good chance Mourdock could win in November. The Democrats would have a better shot against him than against Lugar, to be sure, but, as Kornacki notes, Indiana is "a traditionally Republican state that's expected to land in the Romney column this fall," even though it went for Obama in '08.

The real significance of a Lugar loss, though, would extend far beyond November. The fact that he's now fighting for his political life in a GOP primary is a reflection of the endurance of the Tea Party phenomenon. The term itself may feel tired and even dated, a relic from 2009 or 2010, but it's really just a colorful synonym for "Republican Party base." And as Lugar's perilous standing shows, that base is waging the same kind of purity crusade in 2012 that it did in 2010.

(Read the whole thing. It's a good piece that delves into the dominance of party's right-wing base, "Tea Party" or otherwise.)

It's important not to ignore this, to overlook what's happened to the Republican Party over the past few years. It's easy to dismiss the Tea Party, but the mutual co-optation of the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party has resulted in the latter becoming even more extremist.

Long one of its most sensible members, appealing to the center and even to Democrats, particularly with respect to foreign affairs, Lugar is about to become the latest victim of the Republican Party's ongoing, and deepening, campaign of self-purification.

It's starting to feel like Lugar is going down in Indiana

By Richard K. Barry

Here's an interesting footnote to the recent story about Sarah Palin endorsing Republican, and Tea Party-backed challenger, Richard Mourdock in his bid to unseat long-time Senator Dick Lugar in the Indiana GOP primary on May 8th.

The American Action Network (AAN), a "top Republican spending group," according to Politico, has decided that it will drop efforts to assist Dick Lugar's embattled candidacy through a series of ads attacking Mourdock, particularly in the Indianapolis media market.

As Alexander Burns at Politico writes:

Republicans have told me the ads appear to have helped move the needle in Indianapolis, but the sense across the party is that the race has broken in Mourdock's direction throughout Indiana.

For a group like AAN, that would raise the question of whether it makes sense to keep going after a man who looks likely to be the Republican candidate against Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly. Lugar may have been the GOP's strongest general election candidate, but if he is beyond recovery -- or close -- then the next-best thing is a relatively undamaged Mourdock.

Rep. Joe Donnelly

Lugar's unpopularity among some Tea Party voters relates to his positions regarding immigration, voting to confirm then-U.S Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elana Kagan, the DREAM ACT, the START Treaty, some gun control bills, and congressional earmarks.

The only polling I could find on various scenarios for the general election are based on a March 26-28, 2012 Howey Politics/DePauw University poll, which found that Dick Lugar ran ahead of the Democratic challenger, Joe Donnelly, by a margin of 50% to 29% (14% undecided), but Richard Mourdouck and Donnelly were in a dead heat at 35% apiece (23% undecided).

These are small samples sizes at 503 for each scenario, but it does give you a sense that, with Mourdock as the GOP nominee, this gets interesting.

Sounds like the smart money in the GOP might be abandoning Lugar. Of course, if they were that smart, they would do no such thing.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)