What is it about ideologues and rape? Will it help or hurt Hoosier candidate

I’ll give Richard Mourdock, the Hoosier Republican who’s running for U.S. Senate, one bit of credit. He’s not offering up some phony-baloney non-apology for his comments concerning rape and pregnancy.

MOURDOCK: What was he thinking?



He’s standing solidly behind his statement that makes him sound like a buffoon.

THAT’S CALLED PRINCIPLES, I suppose. But at least the current Indiana state treasurer is not adding to the verbal trash that he initially spewed.

For it seems that the political people who want to appeal to conservative ideologues didn’t learn much of anything from the outcry that Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri caused when he referred to “legitimate rape.”

As though some acts of rape can be justified. A nonsense statement if ever there  was one.

Until Mourdock, the Republican with “Tea Party” alliances who knocked out long-time Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., in the May primary, came along.

WHAT BROUGHT UP the issue was a question about whether abortion should be restricted even in cases where a woman wants to end a pregnancy in a case involving a rape or incestuous conduct.

Even many Republicans who like to use the “pro-life” label and like to think they identify with the ranks of people who wish abortion were still considered a criminal act accept those areas as one where exceptions should be permitted.

Not Mourdock!

DONNELLY: Will he benefit?

As he put it, “I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

IS THAT REALLY how a rational human being thinks? God intends for some women to be raped? Perhaps Mourdock thinks that rape and pregnancy is “God’s way” of punishing the wicked! What hurts is that Mourdock’s attempts to clarify his meaning have been vague to the point of meaningless.

I really don’t know what to make of such a thought. Personally, I always thought of rape as another example of how some fairly crummy acts happen in life. The idea that there is some sort of thought process that can justify it is nothing more than absurd.

Yet this is the man whom Indiana Republicans picked to represent their political party in the Nov. 6 general elections, and for six years further should he manage to defeat Joe Donnelly – a South Bend attorney and member of the House of Representatives who has his own conservative ideological leanings.

But Donnelly gets Democratic backing – including some financial help in the way of fundraisers organized by Mayor Rahm Emanuel – because he will occasionally go along with President Barack Obama.

UNLIKE SOMEONE LIKE Mourdock, who seems to want to be a part of the faction that views itself as the “firewall” for society protecting us all from an Obama presidency.

The real question is how the Indiana residents (including those who live just across State Line Road from us) will react.

The Mitt Romney presidential campaign went so far as to issue a statement saying it “disagrees” with what Mourdock said, although later it came out with another statement clarifying that it still supported the Mourdock campaign. A part of me would not be surprised to learn that some Indiana residents react to that statement by dumping on Romney.

It might be construed as yet another example of how Romney isn’t really “one of them,” and how the party might have been better off with somebody like Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum.

AS IT IS, various polls show the U.S. Senate from Indiana campaign to be a close one – so close that we don’t really know who’s leading (the dreaded statistical tie).

I don’t really know if this will weaken or strengthen Mourdock’s position. Among society as a whole, it hurts him.

But it becomes all too easy for the zealots to turn out in force and rely on the apathy of the masses to keep them at home on Election Day.

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Healthcare reform a case where partisanship makes absolutely no sense

Anybody delusional enough to try to claim that partisan politics isn’t behind their opposition to health care reform ought to pipe down.

OBAMA: Bulls-eye on his back?



Because a lot of the rhetoric we’re going to hear this week – both for and against – is so blatantly partisan and oriented toward Nov. 6. The legitimacy of healthcare reform as an issue is going to get buried.

FOR IT SEEMS that sometime this week, possibly on Monday, we’re going to get a ruling from the Supreme Court of the United States that will be meant to put an end to the legal issues that cropped up in the wake of the federal government attempting to approve a new law meant to provide health care benefits to all – even those who are not currently insured.

The ideologues have always hated this issue, partially because they don’t want Barack Obama being able to claim it for his legacy and also because many of them consider it a waste of time and resources to be concerned about uninsured people.

They probably are deluded enough to think that those people choose to be uninsured – which is such nonsense. About the only people who are more delusional on this planet are the ones who think the Chicago Cubs are going to win a pennant anytime soon.

Which is why I find it ridiculous that people are claiming health care reform is “unconstitutional” because it “forces” people to purchase a plan to help them cover the cost of medical care.

SO LONG AS the federal government also is helping people come up with a plan they can afford, where’s the problem? Except to those who would just as soon leave those uninsured off the rolls and with nothing!

That’s what this issue is really about, except their choice of rhetoric is meant to make their opposition seem more high-minded than it ever could be in reality.

MOURDOCK: Premature?



Yes, I am a health care reform supporter, because I view the problem of so many uninsured people as one that can drag down our society. It is something we must address, even if we’d prefer to think that “we” have insurance and the lack of it is someone else’s problem.

But I expect the conservative-leaning Supreme Court to find some way of restricting the measure – which the ideologues will use to spew rhetoric meant to say that the whole measure was “struck down.”

OF COURSE, THERE also will be enough of the measure that survives that will allow its backers to claim it was upheld.

Which means the “truth” will have to lie somewhere in the middle.

It certainly won’t lie anywhere near where Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock says it does.

He is a candidate for U.S. Senate from the Hoosier state who put together a video of himself praising the Supreme Court for rejecting the health care reform measure and put it on YouTube.

EXCEPT THAT HE goofed, and that video went up and became public on Thursday (which was the day that some originally thought there might be a Supreme Court ruling on the issue).

Somewhere, I can’t help but envision soon-to-be former Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., hearing about this, shaking his head in disgust, and thinking to himself, “I lost to this nitwit?”

For that reason alone, I’d like to see the high court wind up upholding significant portions of the health care reform plan – even though I know there are enough ideologues on the court who came into this issue viewing it as their “job” to put this thing in check.

Not that I think, as some want to believe, that such action would make Obama look weak in the weeks leading up to the Nov. 6 general election.

IF ANYTHING, I think the fact that the ideologues are out gunning for this may well convince some wavering people to think in terms of voting for Obama’s re-election – just to keep the ideologues from having too much control over government.

It may wind up making them look like such bullies that people could become sympathetic. Think I’m kidding? I couldn’t help but chuckle about the new poll commissioned by the Reuters wire service.

People are buying into terminology and the rhetoric being used by the Republican opposition (that Reuters poll only had 14 percent of Republicans saying they favor health care reform, compared to 75 percent of Democrats). Yet upon further questioning, they approve of the intent of the various provisions of health care reform.

Could it be that many of us realize there is a serious problem, but have had our minds warped by all the nonsense-talk being spewed by the ideologues who have always viewed this as a campaign tactic – and little more?

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Is this the new political trend – out with moldy incumbents cause they’re old?

With the primary elections in neighboring Indiana coming up in less than two weeks, a part of me would like to say that I’m finding some humor in the battle for the U.S. Senate seat up for grabs in that state.

LUGAR: Too statue-like?



Then again, there really isn’t anything humorous about blatantly-partisan political brawls. Because invariably, someone – if not everyone – is acting irrationally.

IN THE HOOSIER state, long-time Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., would like to think he’s such an institution in the U.S. Senate that he’s unbeatable. He may turn out to be.

But there’s no way that Lugar will get through this primary election without a brawl that will leave many bloodied – including himself.

Lugar may have to campaign more aggressively than Rep. Jesse Jackson, D-Ill., -- who managed in the Illinois primary to defeat former Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson by a good margin  but had to campaign aggressively for every vote.

And in the end, the impression in Illinois was that it was Halvorson’s short-comings that caused her defeat – rather than any sense that people really wanted Jackson back in Washington on their behalf.

THAT MAY WIND up being the same explanation that gets used for a May 8 electoral victory for Lugar over his primary election opponent – Richard Mourdock, who is the Indiana state treasurer.

Yet the Mourdock backers are really nothing more than ABL’s – as in they want to ensure that Anybody But Lugar gets the Republican Party’s nomination for the Senate seat come the Nov. 6 general election.

MOURDOCK: Too many scary 'friends'?



Seeing that Indiana is likely to revert back to its usual Republican ways (unlike 2008 when a majority of Hoosiers were willing to back Barack Obama), they probably feel that this upcoming primary IS the general election.

And the ideologues who want to believe that “Tea Party” is permanent (rather than just the fad of ’10) would like to think that if they can get their ideologue-sympathizing official through the primary, they can have another seat in the U.S. Senate seat.

WHICH MEANS MORE gridlock for a “President Obama,” or the ability to ram through a blatantly partisan agenda without having to regard the concerns of the masses if, by chance, a GOPer were to win a future presidential election!

Such an attitude may well be the Democratic Party’s biggest dream, since their candidate, Rep. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., (who represents the area around South Bend and can reach out to all those Notre Dame alums scattered around the world) has gone so far as to do some fundraising in Chicago.

Politically-connected people in Illinois have been willing to write out their own checks in support on the off-chance that it would mean one-less member of Congress who is openly hostile toward urban interests (which is what most of the Tea Party types truly are).

It is why I found it humorous to read stories on Friday putting great stock in the idea that the 2008 Republican pairing of John McCain and Sarah Palin are split on Indiana.

McCAIN SUPPORTS HIS Senate colleague Lugar, while Palin prefers Mourdock on ideological grounds. Which should have been blatantly apparent from Day One of this election cycle. That’s what this whole election cycle taking place just east of State Line Road has devolved into.

What I found more interesting is the way in which the two announced their support – McCain with a statement issued live, while Palin put a blurb on her Facebook page for people who want to live in her world and don’t want to be reminded about reality!

So can Lugar’s establishment credentials fight off the ideologues, many of whom argue that Lugar has been around for so long (John Travolta as “Tony Manero” was the pop icon image back when Lugar first got elected to the Senate, and Farrah Fawcett still was a “Majors”) that it’s time for him to go.

DONNELLY: Can he 'slip' by?



I’d like to laugh at the idea of Hoosiers being so short-sighted.

BUT THEN, I’D have to admit we, in Illinois, pulled a similar maneuver back in March.

Remember long-time Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill.? He wound up getting dumped into a primary fight with rookie Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill. – and Kinzinger won!!!

Evidence indicates many people in that district thought of it in terms of age, and preferred the image of a young guy over an old coot, no matter how experienced he was or how ideologically in-line to the residents of his district he truly was.

Because I really think that the people who rant and rage about Lugar being some sort of liberal freak are seriously misguided. They’re showing their own short-comings by engaging in such trash talk.

THE FACT THAT Mourdock is willing to let himself be aligned with such people makes me wonder about him – even though I know there are Dems who will argue that I should “Shut up!” and let him win, so that their guy can prevail in November.

Will that happen? I don’t know. Personally, my ‘gut feeling’ says Lugar will win the primary and general election, and come Nov. 7 will feel so battered that he’ll wonder if “six more years” in Washington was worth it.

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