Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
At first blush, it looked so deftly orchestrated on Tuesday"”Mitt Romney giving his blistering "prairie fire" speech on the debt, and John Boehner telling Pete Peterson and crowd that he relishes forcing another debt-ceiling showdown. The old one-two. Dominated the headlines. The speeches appeared to reflect a shift in focus to debts and deficits. But is this really where Romney wants to go? And in the company of Boehner? What's next, an ethnic sensitivity speech at Mel Gibson's place? Chip Somodevilla / Getty ImagesFirst of all, Romney's...

Josh Kraushaar, National Journal
For those who think Sen. Richard Lugar's defeat was primarily attributable to running a weak campaign or for living outside of Indiana for decades, I've got one number in dissent: 38 percent. That's the shockingly low percentage of the vote the six-term senator won this month, with a margin of defeat larger than any other senator in a primary over the past three decades. That's a 2006 Rick Santorum-like loss, for a politician who had been accustomed to coasting to landslide victories. It suggests that even if Lugar had run a top-notch campaign, he would have been...

Drucker & Livingston, Roll Call
As Washington's tea party class endeavors to rekindle the movement's magic, this month's Texas Republican Senate primary stands as a crucial test of its strength and influence.The effort might backfire in Nebraska, where GOP Sens. Jim DeMint (S.C.) and Rand Paul (Ky.) and conservative organizations including the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks have been stumping for state Treasurer Don Stenberg in Tuesday's three-way GOP Senate primary. 

Sean Sullivan, National Journal
The tea party, an unsteady movement that was beginning to resemble a wayward ship in 2012, found its north star in Indiana on Tuesday night. State Treasurer Richard Mourdock defeated six-term Sen. Richard Lugar in the Republican primary, a victory owing to the incumbent's inept campaign, the outside groups that lashed him on the air, and a story about his out-of-state residency that would not go away. But well before those issues got a foothold, a grassroots-driven, local movement to unseat Lugar was well under way.

Embattled Indiana Republican Sen. Dick Lugar has fallen behind his Tea Party challenger in a new poll that finds the veteran legislator in danger of losing after 36 years in office.

The Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll released Friday puts Lugar a stunning 10 points behind state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, trailing 38 percent to 48 percent.

Voters go to the polls Tuesday.

Lugar has been one of Indiana's most popular political figures for decades, and had a reputation as a statesman, running clean, positive campaigns. But with Mourdock riding the Tea Party's enthusiasm and putting Lugar's political life in jeopardy for perhaps the first time, Lugar fired off a string of negative attacks.

They don't appear to have worked, and on Friday Lugar was trying a more positive approach in a new TV ad aimed at getting out the vote and stemming Mourdock's surge.

"America faces serious challenges, but Hoosiers' courage and determination are unbreakable," Lugar says in the spot. "It's this spirit that guides me every day in the Senate."

He goes on to list the conservative agenda points that Mourdock has said he has failed on, arguing that he's worked hard to "overturn Obamacare," to protect "our energy security" and to "destroy and keep from terrorists thousands of rogue nuclear and biological weapons."

Tuesday will tell if the reminder of what Hoosiers liked about Lugar for so many years will be enough.

The Truth-o-Meter says: Mostly False | Ad says stimulus tax credits funded traffic lights in China

Is our stimulus money paying for traffic lights on Chinese streets? A TV ad running in eight states blames President Barack Obama for sending stimulus money overseas while Americans are out of work. "Tell President Obama, American tax dollars should help American taxpayers," the narrator says. Instead, $2.3 billion in tax credits funded jobs in Mexico, Finland and China, the ad claims. Americans for Prosperity, a group dedicated to "educating citizens about economic policy" that works closely with tea party activists and has been funded ...

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The Truth-o-Meter says: False | Ad says stimulus tax credits funded jobs in Finland

Is your tax money paying for jobs in Finland? A TV ad running in eight states blames President Barack Obama for sending stimulus money overseas while Americans are out of work. "Tell President Obama, American tax dollars should help American taxpayers," the narrator says. Instead, $2.3 billion in tax credits funded jobs in Mexico, Finland and China, the ad claims. Americans for Prosperity, a group dedicated to "educating citizens about economic policy" that works closely with tea party activists and has been funded by the ...

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Timing is everything, especially in a political campaign. Come out negative too early and you can turn off voters. Wait too long to try to brand your opponent and you may find it hard to get your message across.

That seems to be the case with the campaign of six-term Sen. Richard Lugar, whose efforts to paint Tea Party-backed state Treasurer Richard Mourdock as "untrustworthy" last week had all the markings of a desperate attempt to toss anything and everything at Mourdock to see what might stick less than two weeks before the vote that could end Lugar's political career.

Allysia Finley, Wall St. Journal
'You can't beat up on Grandpa. You shouldn't beat up on Grandpa. But still, there comes a time when it's time." So declares Richard Mourdock, the Indiana treasurer who is trying to unseat 80-year-old Sen. Dick Lugar in the May 8 GOP primary.It's hard to find a better symbol of the "Washington establishment" than Mr. Lugar, who has lived in D.C. since he was first sworn into office in 1977. But the avuncular senator is beloved by many Hoosiers"”and for the very reason that tea partiers want to send him home: He's a statesman, not...

On a warm morning in early March, governor Nikki Haley calls three members of the South Carolina state legislature into her office. They look like truants sent in to see the principal: Haley is earnest and stern, smartly turned out in a black-and-white ruffled jacket, black pencil skirt, and platform stilettos, while the legislators, in baggy suits and cowboy boots, fidget and make excuses. The stakes seem pretty low—they are arguing over a restructuring of the department of transportation that would give Haley more control over it—but one gray-haired representative gets so angry his hands start to shake. He sulkily asks the governor whether she will even be around much longer to see through the agenda she is pressing on them.

Newt Gingrich tore into Fox News on Wednesday during a meeting with Tea Party leaders in Delaware, saying that his former network home has been deeply biased against him.

"I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through," Gingrich said, according to Real Clear Politics. "In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year. We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we're more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That's just a fact."

Gingrich's comments echo those of Rick Santorum, another former Fox News contributor. Both were dropped by the network when they began their presidential bids, and both have accused Fox News of favoring frontrunner Romney over them. Santorum even said it directly to Fox News host Brian Kilmeade.

"He has Fox News shilling for him every day -- no offense, Brian, but I see it," he told Kilmeade.

What is all the more remarkable is that, for a long time, Romney had near-poisonous relations with Fox News.

In his remarks, Gingrich said that he thinks Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch made the call to favor Romney. "I assume it's because Murdoch at some point said, 'I want Romney,' and so 'fair and balanced' became 'Romney,'" he said. "And there's no question that Fox had a lot to do with stopping my campaign because such a high percentage of our base watches Fox."

Ilya Shapiro, CNN
“Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?”  With those words, Justice Anthony Kennedy sent the legal establishment reeling.Was the Supreme Court really taking seriously the preposterous claims of the Tea Party-inspired hacks who were suing the federal government?  Was there really a chance that five justices, acting as would-be partisan hacks themselves, would throw out President Obama’s signature achievement?  Could Obamacare, which name everyone is now allowed to use because the administration itself has adopted it, really...

Author's note: This is the third entry in a three part series on the major party players in the 2012 presidential election. For the whole series, you can also read The Irony of the Tea Party here, and Is the GOP Losing Faith? Now for one evangelical Christian's take on the Democratic Party.

"Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up." That's the sort of thing you learn while growing up in small Kansas town. Robert Frost is reported to have written this sentence, but I like to think he cribbed it from a Midwest-hayseed at some point; after all, Frost did die on Kansas Day in 1963. "Don't make love by the garden gate. Love is blind but the neighbors ain't," is another helpful dictum. I don't think Frost wrote that one, but I digress.

The Democratic Party would do well to remember fancy sayings like these -- the one about fences mostly, but either one would do. Progress is important. Societies need to change and grow and this means some fences will have to be torn down to make way for what's next. Yet, not all fences should be targeted for removal. Liberals and conservatives will always fight over which fences should stay and which should go, and you know what? Maybe that is OK.

The root of liberal is the word "liberate." Some people are simply liberators; it's in their blood. The root of conservative is "conserve." Some people are conservers; it's just who they are. Any healthy society will make room for both kinds of people. We need liberators who say "yes" before the rest of us are ready to, thereby helping us tear down the fences which bar the way to a just society. We need conservers who say "wait a minute" and force us to think about our history and our actions before we make a mess out of things by chasing progress for the sake of progress.

Progressives have played an important role in the formation of our society. Yet, all progress doesn't involve tearing down fences, nor is a fence-less society something we should desire. Sometimes the path to progress will involve listening to the conservers as they remind us why certain fences are in place.

One of the fathers of the progressive movement, Walter Rauschenbusch, was not all about tearing down fences in order to satisfy every human appetite. He pursued the noble vision of a just and virtuous society. He was decried as a socialist or communist, especially by the conservers of his day. Yet nearly everything Rauschenbusch championed so long ago has become a normal part of our political and economic life: parcel post, public parks and recreation, public transportation, municipal housing programs, social security, occupational safety standards, progressive inheritance taxes, child labor laws, the right to organize labor and so on. His view of progress wasn't just about liberating, but the right ordering of a just society.

The glaring issue that faces the Democratic Party today is that they've put party before progress. They've forgotten that we will always need conservers in order to make progress and live to tell about it. Sometimes I think the difference between a progressive and a Democrat is that a progressive wants to press forward toward a just society; a Democrat just wants to beat the Republicans. Democrats have forgotten that the enemy is not the conservatives, the enemy is injustice itself. This most certainly cuts both ways. Republicans have done their best to make "progress" a dirty word. Not only that, the laissez faire capitalists need to remember that common sense regulation of commerce is essential to stave of the new and growing crop of robber barons. Conservatives can just as easily turn into regulation-cutting fence-busters.

Of all the critiques which one can levy against President Obama, we can't legitimately say he is unwilling to compromise. He takes as much heat from his own party on this as he does from Republicans. However, the Democratic Party itself no longer seems to appreciate the role of the conserver. Granted, contemporary conservatism can be shrill, but the value of preservation, the appreciation of historical perspective and the importance of setting up boundaries is essential to progress. We cannot expect a society to last when it is ruled by unlimited desire and the satiation of very appetite. Limits are a healthy thing. The conservers bring to the table a sensibility which the liberators must learn how to recognize.

As a Christian who grew up in the rural Midwest, I sometimes feel as though I'm a progressive trapped in the body of a conserver. I desire to see progress, and not just for rich white people. I am willing to work for social and economic justice. I want to see immigration reform, to defend against wealth concentrating in the hands of the rich while the poor suffer and the middle class continues to shrink. I find myself sympathetic to much of what the Democratic Party is doing, yet they can make it really hard for a natural-born-conserver to be a part of the conversation.

Here are three areas in which the Democrats need the conservers:

Size of Government

By any assessment, the growth of the federal government over the past century is staggering. As conservative Bill Kristol noted recently in The Weekly Standard, the problem concerns not only big government, but also big labor and big business -- all of them have grown beyond any sustainable level. We need to erect some new fences in order to reign in the expansion.

Recognizing Natural Limits

We can't have everything we want, whenever we want it. We can't cut taxes and increase spending. To become a more virtuous people we have to learn how to say "no" to some things and not be afraid this makes us closed minded or bigoted.

Abortion

Democrats need to work to accept more nuanced views on abortion and find a way to bring moderates back into the discussion on reproductive rights. A huge number of voters are up for grabs for whichever party will begin to allow those who are not in favor of abortion without limits to talk about common sense ways to reduce the number of abortions without swelling every conversation toward one absolutist position or the other.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A rookie Congressman with Tea Party support beat a veteran Republican twice his age on Tuesday in a primary contest between incumbents forced by Democratic gerrymandering of the electoral map designed to gain congressional seats in November. Freshman Republican Adam Kinzinger, 34, declared victory over 20-year Representative Don Manzullo, who turns 68 this month, in the second of 11 primary contests nationwide pitting incumbents against each other. "It's time for a new generation of leadership in Washington, D.C.," Kinzinger said in his victory speech. ...

U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo, a 10-term Illinois Republican, lost a grueling primary battle to a freshman congressman on Tuesday, as U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. easily won his Democratic nomination and an Iraq war veteran was chosen to face a tea party firebrand in November.

U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo, a 10-term Illinois Republican, lost a heated primary battle on Tuesday, as U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. easily won the Democratic nomination in another race, and an Iraq war veteran was chosen to face a Tea Party firebrand in November.

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When Barack Obama went into hibernation in December and vacationed in Hawaii, we noted that his poll numbers edged back up some. His advisers probably noticed the anomaly too: that the less the people hear and see of Obama, the more they seem to like the abstract idea of Obama — a young, charismatic postracial president. The reality of Obama is something else again: a highly partisan, divisive statist, who cannot finish a speech without blaming his predecessor, mangling history, or creating yet another straw-man bogeyman. The difficulty, then, is to convince the loquacious and crowd-adoring Obama to focus instead on private fundraisers, photo-ops, sporting events, and teleprompted studio speeches. He looks a lot more presidential when he’s golfing than he does when he’s giving yet another whiny speech about why high gas prices are somebody else’s fault and not drilling is sound energy policy.

Similarly, Obama realizes that the legislation he pushed for and that passed in the two years the Democrats controlled Congress before the tea-party revolt grows increasingly more unpopular. In any case, Obama is not keen on running for reelection on Obamacare or his stimulus package, given that his sinking polls bottomed out once the Republicans won the House and stopped much of his agenda. Somehow Obama must square the circle of blaming the Republican House for derailing the unpopular agenda of his first two years in office, and thereby giving him a far better chance for reelection.

Keep reading this post . . .

Redistricting is forcing a handful of congressional incumbents of the same party to run against each other in primaries. Next Tuesday, two Illinois Republicans square off in a battle of experience versus relative youth, Tea Party versus GOP establishment, and conservative versus conservative.

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David Corn, Mother Jones
As some readers may already know, my new book, Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Fought Back Against Boehner, Cantor, and the Tea Party (William Morrow) comes out soon. The book is a behind-the-scenes narrative covering the White House from the disastrous 2010 midterm elections until the promising start of 2012. It is a reporting-driven tale of how President Barack Obama got his groove back in time for the reelection campaign. The book chronicles the president's lame-duck session victories (a second stimulus, repealing Don't Ask/Don't Tell) and the subsequent...

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (Reuters) - Veteran U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch faced what may prove to be the toughest re-election bid of his 36-year tenure, as he battled a challenge on Thursday by two younger Tea Party candidates in Utah's Republican caucus amid high turnout. Heavily Republican Utah last elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate more than four decades ago, so the victor in the state's Republican party contest is usually considered the presumptive winner of the general election in November. ...

An elections board ruled Thursday that U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar can't vote at the Indianapolis home he sold in 1977 but can register elsewhere in the county, a partial victory for tea party activists who allege the Republican incumbent has committed voter fraud for decades.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (Reuters) - Veteran U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch faces what may prove to be the toughest re-election bid of his 36-year tenure, as he battles a challenge on Thursday by two younger Tea Party candidates in Utah's Republican caucus. Heavily Republican Utah last elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate more than four decades ago, so the victor in the state's Republican party contest is usually considered the presumptive winner of the general election in November. ...

Do you remember in the days leading up to the Republican electoral victory in 2010, how the Tea Party marched on Washington with signs saying “Birth Control Is Bad”?

Neither do I.

Keep reading this post . . .

As part of a new campaign, dozens of citizen groups around the country are searching voter registration lists, looking for problems. Critics say the effort is part of a campaign to suppress the votes of minorities, students and others who tend to vote Democratic.

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