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Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Indiana GOP Leaps Off Cliff

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) lost his bid for a seventh term as upstart Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock (R) won the Republican primary for the Senate nomination. It is true that Mourcock may well still beat his Democratic challenger Joe Donnelly in this comparatively conservative state, of course. But in a year when partisan control of the Senate is up for grabs with enormously high stakes, this toppling of a moderate Republican for an extreme ideologue in a primary contest opens the door for a Democratic pick-up where little chance of one existed before, and re-inflects the perceived terms and chances of the election for both Independents and Democrats in ways that yield up-ticket benefits for the President in a winnable state he actually did win last time but seemed a less likely to do before now.

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