The Day The World Began
by digby
Apparently, the world was invented when Barack Obama was elected president:
The advocates in Indiana, which national Tea Party groups say has the most organized of the primary efforts, point to Mr. Lugar’s push for the New Start nuclear treaty, which the Senate approved in December; his sponsorship of the Dream Act, which would grant a path to citizenship for limited groups of illegal immigrants; and his votes for President Obama’s picks for the Supreme Court, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
“The senator would call it bipartisanship, but we think you’re siding with the other side,” said Greg Fettig, a Tea Party supporter in Indiana.
Another, Mark Holwager, said, “He may have been a conservative at one time, but he definitely leans to the left now.”
It must be galling for a stalwart conservative like Lugar to realize that he didn’t exist before the Tea Party came to power. These Know-nothing are going to oust him because he crossed the aisle on START and DREAM, two issues that were thoroughly bipartisan until five minutes ago and he voted to confirm Obama’s two choices for the Supreme Court, something that used to be done as a matter of course.
His entire career is irrelevant:
In Indiana, several Tea Party supporters met with Mr. Lugar last month, and he argued his conservative credentials. Unconvinced, they announced that they would pursue a primary challenge, and that the first step would be to unify behind one Republican. Potential candidates include a state senator, Mike Delph, and the state treasurer, Richard E. Mourdock.
At the meeting this month, the Tea Party organizers signed a letter that “with deep gratitude and respect” asked Mr. Lugar to resign. With the rise of conservative awareness in America, “the emergence of the modern day Tea Party, and your own more social-liberal perception on issues, we find ourselves at odds,” they wrote.
Mr. Lugar won his last term with 87 percent of the vote after Democrats declined to challenge him. He says he intends to run aggressively, and not change his positions.
“A lot of conservatives believe you have to kowtow to the Tea Party,” said his spokesman, Mark Helmke. “We reject that premise.”
Mr. Holwager argued that there is a disconnect between Tea Party supporters and many of their representatives in Washington.
“Heartland America doesn’t feel the same way as people in the cities,” he said. “We do believe in religion, we go to church all the time, we shoot and fish, and love our families. Some of the time you wish folks in the cities would come live with us and see how we live.”
That’s fine. But until they change the constitution to be more to their liking, they still share the nation with us city folks. And there’s a whole bunch of us. Can they wrap their minds around that? And what that means in a democracy?
Good for Lugar. He may end up winning with Democratic votes if he keeps that up. Which is too bad — it means the goalposts have moved so far to the right that it doesn’t even matter anymore.
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