msnbc.com
….that is what becomes more and more clearer as we enter the Home Stretch to the Indiana Primary next week….
Lugar is in BIG, BIG Trouble.
The Super PAC of State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, Lugar’s Opponent in the Republican Primary has pulled their Ads convinced that the 7-Term Senator in the Hoosier State will lose in next weeks Primary…
The Super PAC of Senator Lugar has pulled their Ads as well declaring the Race OVER….
Political Wire is reporting this…
MY FRIENDS, I’m ready to celebrate and TEA PARTIERS should be too.
Daniel G.
Share on Facebook
Update:
More Lugar Woes (This is from Howey Politics in the Hoosier State)
The national media – fueled by an extremely questionable Wenzel Strategies Poll conducted on behalf of a Mourdock advocacy group Citizens United – is now writing Sen. Dick Lugar off. The floodgates opened on Tuesday when Roll Call, Politico and The Hill all published stories describing Lugar’s probable defeat. The Hill even began speculating on Lugar’s “K Street” career and included quotes from Richard Mourdock that he would like to see Lugar join the next Republican presidential administration. “I would love to see him use his foreign policy expertise and be there for whoever the next president is, whether it’s Mr. Obama or Mitt Romney,” Mourdock said.
It was followed today by the Washington Post’s Wonkbook by Ezra Klein (” Lugar now looks likely to lose”) and the New York Times’ respected FiveThirtyEight blog by Nate Silver (“key Republican officials are certainly acting like it is Mr. Mourdock’s race to lose”). The Wenzel poll was published last week and has been cited in the Washington Post, Roll Call, Indianapolis Star and number of Indiana newspapers which don’t act like they know a credible survey from a push poll.
Incredibly, today’s New York Times, which up until now had extremely rigid guidelines on the use of independent polling, joined in on the altering of perception. When Howey Politics Indiana asked Citizens United’s Jeff Marschner for the Wenzel top lines – which reveal what questions were asked and in what sequence – I received three pages that began with “question No. 3″ (see upper right). Citizens United blew off my request to see questions one and two, though WISH-TV’s Jim Shella was reporting early last week of hearing a push poll.
This appears to be fueling a wave of reaction from Indiana Republicans attuned to Washington media that Mourdock is going to win the Senate race (see Mark Souder’s column from the Fort Wayne Lincoln Dinner on Monday at left side of the page). Klein’s story today notes “how Washington changes if Lugar loses.” Silver explores the race between Richard Mourdock and U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly. He writes, “The rule is that a poll commissioned by a partisan group exaggerates their candidate’s standing by an average of about 6 points – sometimes more and sometimes less. By that measure, then, the Wenzel Strategies poll could be read as showing the race as more of a tossup.” But it appears to be a departure from the Times’ past guidelines that vets methodology and rejects polling methods such as robo-calling (which is why you don’t see Rasmussen Reports polling in the Gray Lady).
A post-election story line may well be how a partisan poll fueled a perception that then became reality. What the national press has picked up on from Hoosier Republicans is that the momentum has turned toward Mourdock. There hasn’t been any other credible survey data since the Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll was published on April 5.
A critical question after the primary will be, when was the tipping point? And if that is, indeed, the case that Lugar loses, Citizens United and Mourdock may have pulled off the epic “fast one.” Not only are we seeing the selling of a U.S. Senate seat with more than $4 million of outside money spilling into this race, we are also witnessing a continued decline of credible news media and the watchdog filters it once had. And, I might add, Hoosier Republicans might want to ponder not only Mourdock’s hubris as a Lugar post-Senate career employment advisor, but how this “fast one” may have altered the winner of a U.S. Senate seat.
In the Indiana I grew up in, getting caught up in such a scheme was the source of embarrassment.
The most credible survey data will come exclusively to HPI subscribers on Friday morning with the second Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll, conducted by Republican pollster Christine Matthews of Bellwether Research and Democrat pollster Fred Yang of Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group.
FINAL POLL OF THE INDIANA GOP SENATE PRIMARY will come Friday Morning. The last Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll had Lugar ahead by 7 Points BUT that Poll was done a Month ago.
A Lugar loss could mean more Trouble for the Establishment including Utah Senator Orrin Hatch (R) AND the more moderate Texas Lt. Governor & Senate Candidate David Dewhurst (R)…
Lugar is a decent guy
Theres no room for him in the Republican “club”
True that Jack…
Guilty of consorting with the enemy!
we got our own hot senate race in my state of connecticut. i already got my chris murphy for senate bumper sticker on my car. mcmahon going down in flames again in the general.
Big part of the problem in Washington, D. C. is actually that most of the elected lawmakers in Congress serve too many consecutive years and lose touch with their voters, taking re-election for granted since the re-election rate is something like 98% for Senators and somewhat less for House members. Even those House members who were elected as advocates for the Tea Party now care far more about re-election than about the dying Tea Party subset of Republican voters. You can’t get re-elected by cutting programs in your state or district even if some of the voters actually want you to do that.