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Opening Arguments

Makeover

From a thoroughly depressing analysis by The Associated Press:

Richard Mourdock became one of the tea party's biggest winners of the 2012 primary season when he knocked off veteran Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar in a brutal campaign built on his contention that Lugar was too old, too out of touch and too friendly with Democrats – a RINO, Republican in name only.

But the movement's biggest RINO hunter is now changing his tune as he tries to woo moderate voters in a tight race that stands as a key test of the tea party's ability to win outside the nation's most conservative states.

Mourdock is matched in the general election against moderate Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly, who is running even in recent polls despite Indiana's Republican tilt. Suddenly, gone is the strident rhetoric in which Mourdock proclaimed that bipartisanship meant Democrats coming over to Republicans' thinking and that winning meant he would "inflict my opinion on someone else." In its place are support for parts of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, pledges to protect Democratic-championed programs like Social Security and Medicare, and even the once-shunned notion of compromise.

Welcome to "Extreme Makeover: Mourdock Edition."

So, our choice is between a Democrat who supported most of President Obama's big-government initiatives and now calls himself a moderate, and a Republican who said Richard Lugar was too friendly with the other side and now wants to be seen as a moderate? I guess the best those of us who might be passionate liberals or conservatives can hope for is that our guy is lying, right? Call yourself a moderate, do you? Might as well wear a sign: "Go ahead and lie to me."

I realize the important thing to focus on is what someone is likely to do in the office, not on what he says to get the office. Given Donnelly's voting record and Mourdock's real commitment to conservative causes and principles, I really don't worry about him abandoning a commitment to lower spending and less government. But he seemed like anything but a politics-as-usual type, someone who would be willing to run on a strong, clear, unwavering message that the voters couldn't fail to understand. Too bad.

Comments

gadfly
Thu, 09/27/2012 - 11:08pm

Ayn Rand said it best, but Donnally and the Dems would not agree:

"When people call themselves moderates, ask yourself: “Moderate—about what?” Since the basic question today is freedom versus statism, or individual rights versus government controls, to be a moderate is to advocate a moderate amount of statism, a moderate amount of injustice, a moderate amount of infringement of individual rights. Surely, nobody would call that a virtue."

 

Harl Delos
Fri, 09/28/2012 - 3:14pm

Barry Goldwater said, and I agree, that moderation in the pursuit of justice was no virtue. 

However, government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.  The reason we have a Bill of Rights is to protect the individual in our country from the tyranny of the majority. A political leader who doesn't recognize that an optimal solution delights almost nobody but is acceptable to virtually everybody is not serving his country well.

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