Primary challenger Mourdock rips Sen. Lugar for focusing on foreign affairs

Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a conservative Republican who is challenging incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) in the 2012 GOP primary, said Lugar is too focused on foreign policy and has lost touch with his constituents.
 
Mourdock, in an interview withThe Hill, attacked Lugar for not being conservative enough on economic issues.
 
{mosads}”People in Indiana want to see fiscal controls, they want to see someone who’s with them regularly back there, not just someone sitting in Washington, D.C. thinking about the lofty issues of foreign affairs,” Mourdock said. “People in Indiana care less about democracy in the Middle East than they care about Hoosier jobs moving to China.”
 
Lugar is known in Washington as a foreign affairs maven and sits as ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was first elected to the Senate in 1976 and won a sixth term in 2006 with 87 percent of the vote. The last time he received less than 60 percent of the vote was in 1982.

But Lugar has angered some conservatives by voting for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which has been characterized as a Wall Street bailout, and voting to confirm both of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominations.

Also, in 2010, Lugar backed the DREAM Act, a measure favored by the administration which would give some illegal immigrants brought here as children a path to citizenship.
 
These positions, as well as the perception of Lugar as a Washington insider, have made him vulnerable in a Republican primary, where conservative activists can more effectively throw their weight around. Mourdock hopes to capitalize, giving Lugar his first primary challenge and first serious competition in decades.
 
No independent polling results are yet available for the Indiana GOP Senate primary. Lugar has polled well with general election voters in Indiana. But Mourdock was quick to point out that primaries are a different animal.
 
“His poll numbers among the general public are one thing, his poll numbers among primary voters are totally different,” Mourdock said.
 
Mourdock repeatedly told The Hill of the great respect he holds for Lugar, describing the senator as a “person of great integrity.”  But Mourdock claimed that Lugar has fallen out of touch with Indianans.

The final straw, said Mourdock, was when Lugar voted against ending earmarks.

“I’m the first to admit the vote was largely symbolic,” said Mourdock. “But…he’s not understanding fear [Indianans] have in regards to what’s happening in the economy. That was a real defining moment for me.”

Lugar’s campaign responded by promising to focus on the economy and government spending during the campaign.
 
“Senator Lugar looks forward to a vigorous campaign where he gets to address the issues of jobs for Hoosiers and the continuing fiscal problems and deficit spending in Washington, “said David Willkie, political director for the Lugar campaign.

Mourdock said that his focus as senator would be on fiscal issues, and promised to introduce a bill to require every American who is working “to pay some level of income tax,” a position more in line with traditional conservative principles of flattening the tax structure, but anathema to some tea party conservatives who oppose tax increases of any kind.

“We need to start revising the tax code so that everyone is involved in some way,” said Mourdock, who pointed out that nearly half of Americans didn’t pay any federal income taxes last year.

“When you have that 47 percent not paying, they could care less whether the budget is balanced because it’s not costing them anything,” he said. “It’s more a policy statement than a revenue statement.

This conflicts with Mourdock’s earlier promise to oppose all new taxes, as well as his signing of the “No New Taxes” pledge put out by Americans for Tax Reform.
 
{mosads}“I am glad to be accounted [sic.] among the majority of Indiana’s elected officials in Washington, D.C, who have agreed to protect Hoosiers and their tax dollars from future increases and who are trying to move this country in the right direction,” Mourdock said in a statement when he signed the ATR pledge in May.

 When asked about reports that he had claimed more property tax breaks than is allowed by claiming a homestead exemption on two homes, Mourdock became defensive.

“I never filled out the form, I never claimed it. I never claimed that homestead property tax credit. Did I not notice it on the form that was given to me? Yes, but that’s because the first form said ‘you are eligible for a homestead tax credit,'” Mourdock said. “Did I make a mistake by not looking at every box of the tax form? Yes, to that I own up.”

Mourdock said once he realized he was receiving two exemptions he went into the tax assessor’s office to change his status.

Mourdock opposes any deal to raise the debt ceiling if it doesn’t include a balanced budget amendment, even if it is packaged with major spending cuts.
 
He also said he supported pending free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama even though Indiana’s manufacturing-dependent economy has been hard hit by outsourcing. He said the problem with free trade agreements was that the American tax code made its companies less competitive.
 
Although a conservative and fiscal hawk with support from tea party groups, Mourdock told The Hill he supported a continuation of funding for the manned space program. Mourdock called the launch day of the final space shuttle flight “kind of a sad day” because it symbolized the decline of American leadership.