Richard Lugar has become the leader of the rampaging RINOs.  Ever since the November electoral repudiation of liberalism, Lugar has voted for the FDA farm takeover, Amnesty for illegals, and co-sponsored the child nutrition law.  Lugar also opposed the moratorium on earmarks.  He has also been the chief architect of the near confirmation of the START, unilateral disarmament treaty in the Senate.  In fact, he is so incorrigible in his quest to carry water for America’s enemies that he even voted against the McCain amendment to the treaty.

The McCain amendment would have clarified the language of the treaty to exclude missile defense from the reduction of offensive arms.  The language of the treaty clearly interconnects the two.  For any Senator, much less a Republican, to vote against this amendment, is stupefying.  Richard Lugar is so focused on undermining this country’s security and screwing fellow Republicans that he is willing to oppose a common sense amendment that would still allow the treaty to be ratified.  Lugar, Bennett, and Voinovich joined every Democrat (except Joe Lieberman) to defeat McCain’s amendment.

It is important to note that on the likelihood that Republicans capture the Senate in 2012, Lugar would become chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.  Throughout his tenure on the committee, Lugar has given cover for Kerry and the radical left in their support for all of America’s enemies, including Russia, China, North Korea, Syria, Chavez, and the Palestinians.  There is a reason why the Latin American thugs recently named several House Republicans on the foreign relations panel whom they view as threats, but mentioned nothing of Dick Lugar.  They know that he is in their court.  Lugar despises the notion of American exceptionalism, and embraces every precept of moral relativism and globalism.  He has nothing in common with Middle America and his Indiana constituents.  Dick Lugar is a Kerry Republican who must be defeated in 2012.

Unfortunately, Lugar is not our only red state RINO.  4 other Republicans voted along with Lugar and every Democrat to defeat the Risch amendment to the START.  They were Alexander, Bennett, Corker, and Gregg.

This amendment was a mere attempt “to amend the preamble to the treaty to acknowledge the interrelationship between no strategic and strategic offensive arms”.  Yet, for Lugar and his band of RINOs, this clarification was too much of an affront to Obama and Putin.

Notice that some red state Republicans opposed these commonsense revisions even while the blue state RINOs (Snowe, Collins, Brown) voted with conservatives.  Also, not a single Democrat crossed party lines to strengthen this flawed treaty.

There has clearly been an imbalance of power between the two parties in the Senate for many years.  Even Democrats who represent solid red states tend to support the left on almost every issue.  It’s frankly astounding how even after suffering a shellacking in November; the Democrats have been able to shove through a far left agenda in the lame duck session that affects every aspect of policy; foreign, social, and fiscal.  For most of the radical agenda, including START and DADT, the Democrats have been able to retain almost every red state DEM vote, despite their vulnerability in 2012.

Contrast that to the dismal showing from Republicans, in which they not only face dissent from blue state RINOs (Snowe, Collins, Brown), but even from those who represent friendly constituencies.  We have Bennett, Corker, Alexander, Murkowski, and Lugar, who represent solid red states, yet have dissented on almost every major issue in the lame duck session. Even when they joined with conservatives to filibuster the omnibus bill, they vacillated until they couldn’t find 9 Republicans to break the opposition. Another striking aspect of the omnibus battle was that McCain said it was “the first time since I’ve been here, we stood up and said ‘enough.’” I’m not sure if that was a Freudian slip, but he was sure on to something there.
People often focus too exclusively on the blue state RINOs, and ignore the plethora of red state ones.  We have had fifth columnists from Utah, for goodness sakes!  Imagine if the Democrats would tolerate the election of a social conservative from Vermont!

The 112th congress will undoubtedly improve slightly as we will be rid of Bennett, Voinovich, Gregg, Lemieux, and Bond.  All of these Senators have undermined our position in recent months and we will be happy to see them go.  However, the imbalance will still be quite pronounced.  While the Democrats can count on red state, vulnerable Dems like Manchin and Webb to do their bidding time and again, we will have plenty of red state, safe Republicans who vote against conservatives.  We will still have to contend with Murkowski, Lugar, Alexander, Corker, Hutchinson, Grassley, McCain, Graham, Cochran, and many more red state R’s who have a tendency to stab us in the back.  If we add to that list those who supported the FDA takeover and the DADT repeal, we would be down to single digits.

The reality is that although grassroots conservatives did a great job in challenging some coronated RINOs this past cycle, we still have a monumental job left.  Results from last cycle have shown that had we gotten involved in some primaries at an earlier date, we would have been more successful.  We need to challenge every one of the following Senators:

Kyl
Lugar
Snowe
Wicker
Ensign
Corker
Hutchinson
Hatch

Some observers on our side would recoil at this list and at the notion that these Senators should be challenged.  But, they would be missing the point.  Incumbents don’t own Senate seats until they die or commit a crime.  Their term of office expires after six years.  Once they are up for reelection, they should have no more of an entitlement to that seat than anyone else.  They must stand before conservative primary voters and articulate why the past six years shows that they have served as a proper counterweight against the liberal assault on this country.  There are only a few brave souls like Jim DeMint whom we can affirmatively say yes.  Most others are lackluster at best and downright contemptible at worst.  Unfortunately, we will be forced to suffer through six more years of backstabbing from Lisa Murkowski.  Let’s get to work now, so we won’t be saying the same thing two years from now concerning Lugar and his gang.

Cross-posted to Red Meat Conservative