The lunatics start taking over the rumpus room at the asylum:
Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock will launch his primary challenge to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) on Tuesday with the support of a majority of both the state's 92 Republican county chairmen and its state party executive committee, he told the Fix in a recent interview.
"I feel bad that he's going to be humiliated by this list," Mourdock said.
Mourdock added that he believes Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) and Rep. Mike Pence (R), the party's two leading figures in the Hoosier State, are going to stay neutral in the primary -- though Daniels, who was Lugar's campaign manager three different times, has already committed to voting for the senator.
Mourdock is going to great pains to say he's not actually a teabagger himself - and given his rise through the establishment, that's in some ways true. But it doesn't mean that Lugar isn't going to get teabagged. As I once wrote:
It's important to remember that to remain a member in good standing of the conservative movement, it isn't enough just to vote a certain way. You have to evidence a very particular tribal belonging - you need to hate the right people, be ignorant of the right facts, be fearful of the right bogeymen, and be arrogant about the whole enterprise. If you somehow fail this tribal litmus test, it doesn't matter how right-wing you are.
That's how dyed-in-the-wool conservatives like Lisa Murkowski and Bob Bennett could lose Republican primaries - and it's why Dick Lugar is at such risk, too. His working relationship with President Obama and some senate Democrats is a far worse sin than the occasional off-the-reservation vote.
What's particularly impressive here is how aligned Indiana Republican power players now are with this mode of thinking. Just last cycle, local bigs lined up behind senator-turned-lobbyist-turned-wannabe-senator Dan Coats - the very picture of a crusty establishment candidate - who only escaped the GOP primary with a plurality because the movement conservative vote was split between two candidates. This time, the entrenched forces want to be on board with the conservative standard-bearer right at the start, and ditch their zillion-term, work-within-the-system-and-get-stuff-done apostate.
This poses an odd problem for Mourdock, though - for one, he hasn't actually cleared the primary field yet (other potential candidates are waiting in the wings). But more importantly, if the establishment piles on to your bandwagon en masse, can you still be the insurgent? It may be that Mourdock's office and his impressive roster of backers will actually act as a turn-off to the truly outsider-minded. Perhaps another challenger will emerge as the true, true teabagger here. The more, the merrier.