Campaign imagery alert: Sarah Palin for Mourdock, Pat Boone for Lugar

Campaign imagery alert: Sarah Palin for Mourdock, Pat Boone for Lugar

A series of events in the past few days give every indication that Dick Lugar is losing the primary race, and his campaign devolves into almost bizarre and frantic accusations against Mourdock.

Two recent polls show Mourdock with 1 point and 5 point leads, respectively.

While Lugar’s campaign had denigrated the polling because the pollsters were hired by the Mourdock campaign or supporters, the Lugar campaign curiously has not released its own internal polling:

And here’s the dog that didn’t bark: In his new pre-primary FEC report (PDF), Lugar shows a payment of $10K to Republican pollster National Research on April 9 for “polling research.” That’s on top of almost $74K he spent last quarter on the same expense. But of course, we haven’t seen any recent internals from the Lugar camp. If their numbers offered any cause for optimism, don’t you think we’d have seen at least a glimpse by now?

Lugar also is getting desperate with two mass mailers personally attacking Mourdock.  The first mailer tries to link Mourdock to Obama with a photoshopped image of the two together.

This is particularly ironic for Lugar, who MSNBC dubbed Obama’s Favorite Republican in light of Lugar’s help given to Obama in the weeks leading up to the 2008 election.  The Mourdock campaign has made much of the title MSNBC gave Lugar, and it must be working for Lugar to send out this mailer:

Lugar also has sent out a mailer calling Mourdock untrustworthy:

The mailer contains a blatently misleading statement that Mourdock does not show up for his “state funded job.”  That is false.  Mourdock’s job is state Treasurer; he also serves by virtue of his job (ex officio) on various state boards for which he normally sends a representative.  At best Lugar is being misleading, at worst lying, with this accusation:

The momentum also is slipping away, with the American Conservative Union backing Mourdock, and last this afternoon, Sarah Palin announced her suppport for Mourdock:

I join commonsense conservatives in endorsing Richard Mourdock to be the next Senator from Indiana. Conservatives of all stripes are uniting behind Richard Mourdock. It’s not just Indiana that benefits from sending the right Senator to serve for the right reasons; the nation as a whole benefits, and that is one reason why the eyes of so many around the nation are focused on the Indiana race.

Indiana deserves a conservative in the Senate who will fight for the Hoosier State, uphold our Constitution, and not just go along to get along with the vested interests of the permanent political class in D.C.

Richard Mourdock is the conservative choice for Indiana. Senator Lugar’s 36 years of service as a Senator are appreciated, but it’s time for the torch to pass to conservative leadership in Washington that promises to rein in government spending now.

Lugar, for sure, is not out of it.  He’s getting tepid help from Mitch Daniels, but many of the big names in Indiana are sitting it out, not endorsing either candidate.

To show how out of touch Lugar is, he has rolled out a radio campaign featuring Pat Boone:

Conservative crooner Pat Boone lent his voice and support to Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana via a radio ad on Friday in hopes of helping the six-term incumbent beat back a challenge from the right.

I have nothing against Pat Boone, but the campaign imagery is not helpful to Lugar:  The Mourdock campaign represents a dynamic future, the Lugar campaign represents a distant past.

Lugar hasn’t lost yet.  But he’s losing it.  And he knows it.

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