Here Today----Gone Tomorrow

When the late great Washington, DC radio jazz disc jockey, Felix Grant, spoke about his initial success in convincing ABC to keep him on the air but then they ultimately fired him, he remarked, “I won the battle, but lost the war.”

Despite popular opinion, the Tea Party actually cost Republicans Senate seats in 2010 and they are poised to provide Democrats another gift in 2012. Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a poster child right wing attack dog, supported by the Tea Party, upset a united GOP establishment Senator, this time in Indiana. Now, the same GOP establishment who had their head handed to them in a teacup will want Indiana voters to think that Mourdock is a strong and reasonable candidate in a historically red state. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The reality is, Mourdock is a Tea Party extremist who makes Sarah Palin look like Eleanor Roosevelt and Indiana voters in the upcoming general election will reject him just as voters rejected the likes of Ken Buck, Sharron Angle and God save us all, Christine O’Donnell.

Richard Mourdock has put Tea Party politics and his own career ahead of Hoosier jobs time and time again. His position is in sync with the GOP in general and the Tea Party specifically. In this still struggling economy, Mr. Mourdock and his Tea Party cohorts reject protecting and creating jobs in favor of politics. When fighting against the Obama administration’s efforts to rescue the crashing and burning Chrysler Corporation he shared with reporters, “I didn’t take a pledge that I would support every job in Indiana” and later referred to his opposition to the effort to save Chrysler as his “Rosa Parks moment” because he knew that there would be consequences to him turning his back on thousands of Chrysler auto workers. First, for someone like Richard Mourdock to invoke the memory of Rosa Parks as analogous to any position he might take spits on the memory and life of this remarkable woman while trivializing the issues of the American Civil Rights movement.

Indiana is the most manufacturing dependent state in America. Hoosiers will likely respond to this assertion that their elected officials shouldn’t defend their jobs as well as Nevadans did to Tea Party candidate Sharon Angle’s insistence that those worried about job creation should call someone else and that it simply was not her job to protect the economy of the great state of Nevada.

Polling is one of those sciences wherein you can make the results fit whatever position you are trying to support vis-à-vis a poll. One issue however goes against that grain and that is the reality that Americans today want more bipartisanship from their legislators. With an elitist attitude that operates in complete opposition to that desire, Richard Mourdock has pandered to his Tea Party base by referring to bipartisanship as “part of the problem” (Probably taken from a page in Ronald Reagan’s strategy when he uttered the words, “Government is not part of the solution, it is the problem”). In his written statement on the night of the election, Senator Lugar said this about Mourdock: “He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate.’

Mourdoc’s playing to the base worked in the Indiana Republican Party, but as Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell discovered, it could all collapse for him in the general election. With Tea Party approval in Indiana in the 30s, Mourdock will face a long and exhausting campaign defending his beliefs that Social Security, the U.S. Department of Education and Medicare (among other things) are unconstitutional; his call for a national sales tax that would raise taxes on 80% of Hoosiers; or the two million dollars he spent as Indiana’s state treasurer when he took his challenge to the Chrysler rescue to the Supreme Court.

Since 2010, we have all witnessed the impact of the Tea Party in Congress: an angry, divisive body politic where bipartisanship and solutions are not the goal. Extremist legislation like the Ryan budget, which would end the Medicare guarantee and slash medical care for veterans passes the House with ease. Nationally however, Tea Party popularity is declining because Americans across the country recognize that extreme candidates aren’t interested in results. So, ultimately these same candidates will risk vulnerability in a 2012 general election contest.

Meanwhile, Democrats have a candidate in Indiana ready for the general election. Joe Donnelly withstood the Republican wave of 2010 in a Republican congressional district while facing well over $2 million spent against him by third parties and Super Pacs. Joe Donnelly knows what it takes to win under the most difficult of circumstances. Richard Mourdock meanwhile struggled to build a steady state-driven campaign operation and consequently relied mostly on outside dollars and support—much as Ken Buck did in Colorado in 2010.

While Richard Mourdock struggles to find ways to back off his extreme Tea Party record, Joe Donnelly already has a strong record of standing with Hoosier working families. Indiana’s middle class wants someone who will fight for them—not a knee jerk conservative ideology. This is why unlike with my friend the late Felix Grant who won the battle but ultimately lost the war¸ Joe Donnelly will be elected to the United States Senate in Indiana and on a national scale, President Barak Obama will be re-elected to the American presidency.