The Muncie Star-Press editorial page is mighty pleased that that nasty extremist, Tea Party partisan Richard Mourdock lost by 6 percent to that paragon of moderate virtue Joe Donnelly:
We, as many, still believe the Mourdock camp did a great disservice to the state and to a statesman in kicking aside Sen. Richard Lugar in the May Republican primary. Too liberal, too collaborative, too old. Those were the slams against Lugar, perhaps the best senator ever to serve Indiana and one of the best ever to serve the Republic.
Now, at least one tea partier, Greg Fettig of the Hoosiers for a Conservative Senate, says Mourdock lost because he distanced himself from his Tea Party supporters and was disserved by a poorly managed campaign. And Fettig took another shot at Lugar, calling him, according to The Associated Press, “a fixture of Washington, big government bureaucracy,” which is just so much rubbish.
In a contrast that was both good political strategy and probably sincere, Donnelly complimented Lugar often during the campaign, appealed to “Lugar Republicans” and, last week, talked about the big shoes he would have to fill in the Senate.
There is nothing in the whole editorial -- not a single, solitary word -- about the mounting deficicts, crushing national debt and unsustainable entitlement programs that Mourdock made the centerpiece of his campaign. How could there be, really? If you're going to prattle on about the beauty of "collaborative efforts" and other such rubbish, better not call attention to what such collaboration has wrought.
On the other hand, I have to admit that what Donnelly's been saying lately is encouraging. The Journal Gazette talked to both him and GOP Sen. Dan Coats about the looming fiscal cliff. Donnnelly, among other things, said this:
President Obama is insisting on higher tax rates for the wealthiest Americans. But Donnelly, who will join Coats in the Senate next year after his election Nov. 6, supports extending the Bush-era tax cuts for a year, and he predicted lower corporate tax rates along with the end of various corporate tax breaks.
Donnelly said he also would like to see a plan “that reduces spending in a very significant way.”
Keep the lower tax rates for everybody and reduce spending in a "very significant way." Mourdock couldn't have said it better. Now let's see what actions his words are followed by.
