That darn Richard Mourdock. He just won't play the game the way he's supposed to:
The old Nixonian axiom of run to the right in the primary, run to the center in the general, seemed to be a cogent path for Mourdock. While the Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll in late March showed Lugar easily leading Democrat Joe Donnelly 50 percent to 29 percent, Mourdock and Donnelly were tied at 35 percent. If Mourdock moderated his pitch to a degree, he could position himself to pick up the needed independent and even moderate voters. He already has the tea party base in his pocket, but even in Indiana, you have to carry moderate Republicans and independents to win.
[. . .]
What is emerging in late summer is Mourdock is still playing to his tea party base and not making inroads with voters who don’t buy into the parts of his candidacy that favored voting against the debt ceiling and allowing the U.S. to go into default, as well as attempting to derail the Chrysler-Fiat merger, once calling it his “Rosa Parks moment."
Actually, I find it kind of refreshing that someone is willing to stick to his philosophical guns rather than pandering to the so-called moderates. That gives voters a clear choice, and if Mourdock wins, nobody should be able to say they're surprised by the positions he takes.
I realize there is a danger for any of us that we can look at the political landscape with wishful thinking bordering on delusion, and that I'm as prone to it as anyone. Still, I can't help observering that analysts such as this one can't seem to grasp that this is not a politics-as-usual year. With wins like those of Mourdock and Ted Cruz in Texas and now with the addition of Paul Ryan to the presidential ticket, this is a year for Americans to choose one of two very different and easily grasped paths. Pine away for your mushy, josh-the-voters-along-wth-crap politics; ain't happenin' this year.
