Republican ‘Young Guns’ Solicited Democrats To Support Anti-Gun Lugar

Mourdock Defeats Lugar!
Mourdock and Lugar

USA –-(Ammoland.com)- “Senate’s Most Anti-gun Republican in Trouble in Indiana,” a May 5 Gun Owners of America email alert advised.

“The most anti-gun Republican in the U.S. Senate, Dick Lugar, recently fell ten points behind in the polls to 100% gun rights supporter Richard Mourdock,” GOA reported in anticipation of tomorrow’s primary.

While encouraging news, it’s by no means a shoo-in for the challenger. Gun Rights Examiner warned against apathy and inaction allowing Lugar to retain his seat in a March column, citing the need for grassroots Indiana gun owner activism to ensure ousting the incumbent and replacing him with a friend.  Responses to that were mixed, with some expressing irate indignation at the suggestion.  Others have informed this correspondent they volunteered to help with the Mourdock campaign, although some did share the difficulty in getting fellow gun owners to step up to the plate with even such simple requests as displaying a yard sign.

A Saturday Freedomworks Mourdock rally at Veterans Memorial Plaza in Indianapolis, which included an appearance by political commentator and author Michelle Malkin, drew an estimated 800 to 1,000 people, campaign volunteer Brian Wegner tells Gun Rights Examiner.

“Unfortunately not as many as I had hoped,” Wegner wrote in an email.  “However, you have to realize that a good percentage of the people who would normally be there volunteered to go door-to-door and work on Saturday.”

They’ll have needed those people and more with “ideological diversity” sites like Chicago-based RealClearPolitics portraying anti-gun zealot Lugar as a “moderate … Republican stalwart,” and especially in light of  a late-April effort reported in Politico about “the Young Guns Network, a group led by two former top aides to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor… spending $100,000 in the primary between  Sen. Richard Lugar and state treasurer Richard Mourdock in a bid to protect the Indiana incumbent.”

The strategy is insidious: “[I]t is targeted to non-Republicans, as it reminds voters that Indiana’s GOP primary is an open one in which Democrats and independents can vote.”

There is no principle the so-called “moderates” will not forego, and no constituency they will not abandon in their single-minded party über alles focus. Thus scare tactics are being employed, often, and by those who know-how, with fear-generating headlines like “[Democrat Joe] Donnelly has a better chance of beating Mourdock than Lugar in the general election.”

As far as pure gun owner interests go, so what? He’s a damn sight better than Lugar.

And if those gun owners who identify themselves as Republicans don’t want that, there’s a very powerful option available to them.  The drawback is, it involves digging into their pockets and volunteering their time…


About David Codrea

David Codrea is a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He is a field editor for GUNS Magazine, and a blogger at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance. Read more at www.DavidCodrea.com.

David Codrea

1 Comment
Most Voted
Newest Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
kris

It's time for Eric Cantor to go. The guy is not a conservative…and literally is only in the House to represent Israel's interests. The neocon movement is on it's last legs folks…it is unsustainable financially and morally.