Rubio as VP for Romney… NOT so Fast

 For freshman Sen. Marco Rubio, a rising GOP figure seen as a possible Mitt Romney running mate, there are questions about whether potential vulnerabilities in his personal and political background might hold him back.

The 40-year-old Florida lawmaker has close ties to a colleague accused of questionable financial dealings. He once was enmeshed in a controversy over the use of the state party’s credit card for his personal expenses. Since emerging on the national political scene, he has faced increased personal scrutiny. There are conflicting details about his parents’ immigration from Cuba and his recently disclosed ties to the Mormon faith.

The effect of those issues on his political fortunes is the subject of debate in Republican circles in Washington, Florida and elsewhere as the Cuban-American senator with solid conservative credentials works to raise his profile beyond home state and possibly position himself for a national role.

“Marco Rubio is a huge star in the Republican Party in much the same way that Barack Obama was in the Democratic Party between his convention speech in 2004 and his candidacy for the president,” said Steve Schmidt, a top adviser to GOP Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “There are a lot of pluses when you look at Marco Rubio as a potential vice presidential candidate, but there are also unknowns.”

Rubio frequently is mentioned by Republican insiders as an attractive candidate to be Romney’s vice presidential pick, partly because the GOP needs to attract Hispanic voters in pivotal states such as Nevada and Florida.

Rubio denies any interest in the No. 2 spot this year, but he’s working hard to stay in the national spotlight. He recently gave a major foreign policy address in Washington. He’s talking about writing a bill to allow some young illegal immigrants to remain and work in the country without citizenship. Next month, he’ll release a memoir.

The country is only just starting to get to know Rubio and his political vulnerabilities, though Florida residents know both well.

Both Rubio’s ties with U.S. Rep. David Rivera, a fellow GOP freshman who now is facing a federal probe into tax evasion, and the state party credit card matter surfaced during Rubio’s 2010 Senate campaign. While they didn’t have much effect, that doesn’t mean they would get a pass on the national stage.

“Floridians may be numb to these hits because of the rough-and-tumble nature of politics in the state, when it’s looked at by a national audience it may not be as palatable,” said Abe Dyk, a political strategist who managed the 2010 Senate campaign of Rubio’s Democratic challenger.

Rubio and Rivera met in 1992, during the campaign of former Republican Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a fellow South Florida Cuban-American. The two rose through the ranks in the Statehouse with Rivera oftentimes playing bad cop to the more congenial Rubio.

During the legislative session, they shared a Tallahassee town house, which a bank began foreclosure proceedings on in 2010. Rubio and Rivera made only partial payments on that mortgage for five months in 2010; at that time, he held jobs as a consultant and professor. Rubio has said the missed payments were due to a dispute over the terms of the mortgage.

State officials closed a criminal probe into Rivera’s personal financial dealings without filing charges but didn’t clear him entirely. They cited Florida’s brief statute of limitations and its lax campaign finance laws for not charging him with living off of his campaign funds and failing to disclose his income.

In the last year, Rubio has publicly kept some distance from Rivera and has said that his friend has some issues he must address on the campaign trail. Still, Rubio threw a small Washington fundraiser for Rivera last week. So far, Rubio hasn’t faced blowback from his friendship with Rivera.

“It’s tough to say how that will play out,” says Emilio Gonzalez, a consultant who served in the Bush administration and sees Rubio as a potentially formidable presidential candidate in 2016.

If Rubio were to end up on the GOP presidential ticket or mount his own national campaign in the coming years, he all but certainly would face questions about the scandal over the use of state GOP funds when he was the speaker of the Florida House.

The head of the party, Jim Greer, was forced to resign following revelations he and his second-in-command charged $1.5 million on party credit cards, much of it on luxurious hotels, fancy restaurants, chauffeured sedans and lavish entertaining. Greer’s trial is set to start July 30, just ahead of the Republican convention, and many Republican observers anticipate he will detail unethical use of party money by other high-ranking GOP officials.

Rubio spent more than $100,000 on the party card between 2006 and 2008, paying off about $16,000 in personal expenses and claiming the rest as official party business. His records from 2005, when he was lobbying to become Florida House speaker, never were released. When asked about using the party card for personal expenses, Rubio has said he sometimes just pulled the wrong card out of his wallet and he has called it a “lesson learned.”

He also has had to answer criticism for how he spent money donated to two political committees he formed – including payments to relatives. He has acknowledged the bookkeeping for at least one of the accounts was sloppy.

Then there’s his family’s background.

Rubio long claimed his parents fled Fidel Castro’s rule. But it was recently disclosed that they arrived several years before Castro took power, although they quickly embraced the Cuban exile community as Castro turned toward communism. Rubio has said the dates he gave were based on his parents’ recollections.

There’s another part of Rubio’s upbringing that long had gone undisclosed, and the revelation is one that could turn off evangelicals who make up the base of the GOP.

Rubio was baptized as Mormon when his family lived for a few years in Las Vegas, thanks to the influence of cousins who belonged to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Rubio returned to the Catholic Church as a young teen, and as an adult he has also frequently attended Baptist services.

When it comes to the vice presidency, Rubio’s greatest liability may be one only time can resolve.

“I suspect that the Romney campaign is going to pick someone who is viewed as unquestionably qualified for the office,” said Schmidt, who was intimately involved in McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin. “To the extent that (Rubio’s) in his first term, he’s in the first two years of his term and he’s 40 years old probably doesn’t help him.”

Georgia College loses 88 % of It’s Faculty Because of New Anti- Gay Standards

Shorter University’s ‘Personal Lifestyle Statement’ Which Bans Gay Employees Leads To Faculty Exodus

A Georgia college’s controversial “personal lifestyle statement” which includes rejecting homosexuality has led to an exodus of faculty members.

Inside Higher Ed cites an anonymous survey which found that a mere 12 percent of the faculty said they planned to stay at Shorter University, a 139-year-old Baptist school located in Rome, Ga. In addition, more than two dozen staff members had already resigned before their new contracts — which included the “pledge,” condemning homosexuality, premarital sex and public drinking — were even distributed. 

The Religion News Service notes that the school usually has about 100 full-time faculty members.

An online campaign called “Save Our Shorter” seems to blame the departure of many employees on the pledge, even though the university’s president told the Religion News Service that some of those who resigned did not state their reason for leaving.

“I feel that Shorter, the GBC, the Board of Trustees, and/or whoever can do what they want to the school,” one student writes on the site. “It’s their school, but I cannot personally attend a school so full of hate. The personal lifestyle statement is picking and choosing which sins are worse than others, but a sin is a sin. Why were homosexuality, premarital sex, and adultery singled out? What about child molesters?”

One of the school’s tenured professor felt similarly. “Lest anyone think I am ‘promoting’ homosexuality, please know that I am not,” professor Sherri Weiler, who resigned last week, wrote in the Rome News-Tribune, according to the “Save Our Shorter” site. “I am simply not going to judge anyone who expresses his/ her sexuality in this way.”

She continued, “All I know is that I cannot sign a document that “reject[s] as acceptable” any one of God’s creatures, be they adulterers, sexual ‘sinners’ of any stripe, or drinkers of alcohol in public. All I know is that I cannot ‘reject as acceptable’ people who have sinned in any way, because I’ve sinned, too, and no doubt will again.”

Still, Nelson Price, who was chairman of the Board of Trustees when the lifestyle statement was approved, denounced the survey cited by Inside Higher Ed,describing it as “skewed” to the Rome News-Tribune . “The senders sent it to a group they selected and left out persons known to be in support of the direction the school is going,” Price noted. “It was not an objective blind survey…the questions were highly biased.”

Donald Dowless, Shorter’s president,released a statement to Inside Higher Ed saying he could not comment on any other individual faculty members’ employment situations. “I can tell you that I and the board of Shorter University understand that some members of our faculty and staff disagree with the university’s personal lifestyle statement and therefore have chosen to resign,” he said. “While we hate to lose members of our community, we wish them well.”

Dowless previously told WSBTV that the goal of the “lifestyle statement” is “not to offend people,” but to “declare who we are.“

TAGS: 
Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Georgia, Shorter University, Shorter University Gay, Shorter University Gay Employees, Shorter University Lifestyle Pledge, Gay Voices News

Pro Euro But Anti Austerity Plans for Greece Puts Europe on Edge

At 37, and looking not a bit his years, Alexis Tsipras is clearly enjoying his moment. He vaulted to prominence less than two weeks ago, when his previously obscure left-wing party placed second in national elections with the promise of repudiating the loan agreement Greece’s previous leaders signed in February.

Since then, he has engaged in a high-stakes game of chicken with Europe’s leaders. While they have scrambled to put together contingency plans in case Greece exits the euro zone, Mr. Tsipras has calmly stated his case and let the rest of Europe sweat about the possibly disastrous ramifications if it does.

“It’s true,” he said Friday, with a smile and a glint in his eye, during an interview in his small office in the Greek Parliament. “I like to play poker.”

While Mr. Tsipras clearly has much of Europe on the run, he hardly seems to be breaking a sweat. “Our goal isn’t to blackmail or to terrorize, our goal is to shake them,” Mr. Tsipras said coolly of the foreign lenders whose austerity-for-loans deal he wants upended.

“We want to convince them,” he said. “They need to change the policies in Greece and change the policies in Europe, otherwise Europe will be at very large risk.”

In Mr. Tsipras’s view — which neatly dovetails with the rising anti-austerity tide across Europe — Greece’s problem is a European problem that needs a European solution. He insisted that he wants Greece to stay in the euro, just not under the terms of its current bailout. “The euro zone is a chain with 17 links,” he said, referring to its members. “Greece is one of these links. If one of these links breaks, the link is destroyed, but the chain falls apart, too.”

Poker references aside, Mr. Tsipras insisted that it was really the financial markets driving much of the crisis, not him or Greece.

“They don’t have any moral scruples, and if they push Greece out, they’ll just move on to the next country,” he said. The next countries in the firing line, he added, happen to be Italy and Spain — both too big to fail.

While other political parties in Greece are now also calling to renegotiate the loan deal, it is Mr. Tsipras, an untested leftist who could well become Greece’s next prime minister in elections on June 17, who has positioned himself in a showdown with Greece’s lenders.

In the interview, he said he would not veer from pledges to repudiate terms of Greece’s bailout that forced wrenching hardship on average Greeks, a stance that may lead Greece’s lenders to withhold further aid and set off a default.

But as far as he is concerned, negotiations over Greece’s debt deal “have already begun,” he said, largely because European leaders are already showing signs of being more lenient on austerity. “The red lines from before no longer apply,” he said.

But while Mr. Tsipras has sometimes been portrayed in the European news media as a wild-eyed radical — he even seems at times to delight in that caricature — he is a cool strategist playing a game of brinkmanship with the rest of Europe, and particularly Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. In the past, German and other European leaders have made last-minute maneuvers to keep Greece in the euro, precisely because of fears that an exit would carry too high a cost, from bank collapses across Europe to destabilization of the global financial system.

Mr. Tsipras seems to be betting that they will blink again, but whether they will is far from clear.

Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Center for European Reform in London, said, “The Europeans may blink, but this time they might not blink enough.” He said that European leaders might propose a “mini-Marshall Plan” to stoke growth in Greece, but that what was needed were political changes to promote closer bonds among euro zone countries. “People are fed up,” Mr. Tilford added. “They would prefer that Greece stay within the euro zone, but they won’t take the political steps to make Greek membership sustainable.”

Indeed, on Friday, Ms. Merkel may have upped the ante even further, suggesting to the Greek president, Karolos Papoulias, that Greece ponder holding a referendum, in parallel with general elections in June, so Greek voters are clear what is at stake, the Greek government spokesman said. (Though a Merkel spokesman denied the remark, Mr. Tsipras released a statement later Friday accusing Ms. Merkel of treating Greece like a “protectorate.”)

In some ways, Mr. Tsipras’s arguments are not so different from those of some of the leaders gathered at the Group of 8 summit at Camp David on Friday. As growth has slowed, an anti-austerity backlash has swept Europe, forcing Ms. Merkel to soften her stance. Leaders, especially President François Hollande of France, were expected to press Ms. Merkel at the meeting to give Europe more breathing room for growth.

Mr. Tsipras agreed. “The message we’re giving to the G-8 is that we have to press Mrs. Merkel to follow the example of America, where the debt crisis wasn’t tackled with austerity measures but with an expansionist approach,” he said.

He added that Europe needed a more federal system, like the United States. He likened Greece to debt-ridden California, only that the United States would never allow California to exit, and has the federal structures to keep the union together.

Mr. Tsipras’s strategy of calling Europe’s bluff has been a winner at home as well. Some polls place his Syriza party first and others second in the campaigning for a second round of elections, which were called after he and other political leaders failed to form a government after May 6 elections.

An engineer by training, Mr. Tsipras said he had also studied economics and learned in the trenches with his “comrades” on the economic committee of Synaspismos, a proto-Communist strain within Syriza in which he came of age.

Lean, affable, yet somewhat inscrutable, Mr. Tsipras says he does not like wearing ties because they remind him of his days in the navy, where he did his mandatory military service. In recent speeches, he has said that the “terrorists” in suits and ties who are deciding Greece’s fate are worse than the anarchists in hoods. Some compare him to Andreas Papandreou, the founder of the Socialist Party and a gifted populist.

Mr. Tsipras may be riding the tide of anti-austerity, but it remains to be seen if he has what it takes to steer the ship. Pressed to present an alternative to the current loan agreement — or his plans for restoring Greece to growth while keeping it in the euro zone — he offered few, if any, specifics.

His party seeks a three-year suspension of loan payments until the Greek economy can recover, a reversal of the terms of the loan agreement that call for slashing wages, scaling back public employees and undoing collective bargaining agreements. It has also called for nationalizing banks in order to control their lending policies as part of a recapitalization now under way as part of the debt deal.

Critics say that under the guise of change, Syriza may offer little more than the status quo — or more state control in a country with a dysfunctional state. Indeed, business owners are particularly worried that Syriza’s plans for more state control would stifle growth further, transforming Greece into a kind of Bulgaria.

Mr. Tsipras said: “The healthy businesses here have nothing to fear from a government that’s going to try to stop this poison. Healthy businesses understand that austerity curbs consumption.”

Although he conceded that the Greek state had “significant dysfunctionalities and a need for deep structural changes,” he did not offer specifics beyond faulting the Socialists and center-right New Democracy for building up a jobs-for-votes system that helped Greece’s public debt balloon.

Instead, he kept repeating the mantra that he hoped would help him consolidate power in just over a month, in the form of a stark warning to Greece’s European partners: Pushing Greece out would be “cutting the branch that we’re all sitting on.”

HUMM.. MAYBE my Republican Party Should take notes.. Austerity in Europe is NOT working!!! We should work for ALL America  and not  doing everything to defeat Obama at the expense of America !!

To My Fellow Americans: Be Afraid… BE VERY AFRAID

Dear Fellow Americans:

It is great regret that I have to make this post…. but I am afraid… I am VERY afraid the way our individual rights have been stripped away one at a time bringing the threat of Orwell’s’ Big Brother into our lives. 

I am a Republican… I have been my entire life… and yet I have seen a change in my party that brings tears to my eyes and fear in my heart. We have become a monster party of Fear, Hate, Liars, Distorter’s of the Truth and while we clamor for less government.. we actually make more laws for the government to take away our individually right under the guise of keeping us safe and free from harm. We are a knee jerk society… we champion the  cause of the day.. we are insensitive to the needs of our neighbors and others we call  Americans…. we are bigoted, racist and sexist and secretly embrace every ism there is… all in the name of being good and show ourselves to be hypocritical in our actions. 

One by one we surrender ourselves by not standing up for our rights and the abuses that government has imposed upon us… and we are therefore sheep  being lead to slaughter as we will no longer be free…. If you cannot relate to the poem below.. than you are grossly misled n the America we live in today.. and worse I fear my own party more than the Democrats as my party has been hijacked by ultra right-wing extremists who are more dangerous to America than any threat from Iran, North Korea or Islamic extremists combined…  READ the  below and KNOW … You are the one they are coming for next…..

“First they came for my neighbor, and I said nothing. Then they came for me and there was no one left to stand with me.” 

The “neighbor” quote is loosely based on the many variations of the famous poem attributed to Martin Niemöller:

When the Nazis came for the communists, 
I remained silent; 
I was not a communist.. 

When they locked up the social democrats, 
I remained silent; 
I was not a social democrat. 

When they came for the trade unionists, 
I did not speak out; 
I was not a trade unionist. 

When they came for the Jews, 
I didn’t speak up, 
because I wasn’t a Jew. 

When they came for me, 
there was no-one left 
to speak out.

[When the Nazis Came for Me
by Pastor Martin Niemöller]

Other variations include:

“They came for the Communists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Communist; 
They came for the Socialists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a labor leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Jew;
Then they came for me – And there was no one left to object.”
[Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Pastor, 1892-1984]

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – 
Because I was not a Socialist. 
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – 
Because I was not a Trade Unionist. 
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – 
Because I was not a Jew. 
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.” 
[The quotation stems from Niemöller's lectures during the early postwar period.]

I want smaller government and less regulations.. the problem is business today cannot be trusted anymore to  do the right thing and so we have more regulations.. just as when we see someone commit a horrific crime and we want more laws, so it is that business have proven themselves to be untrustworthy… 

There is class warfare.. but it is the extremely wealthy with few exceptions that are oblivious to the suffering that the average person is experiencing.

My party misstates the truth in that  a government is NOT a business.. .. when things are bad it has been historical in all governments to step up and help the country  through governmental spending as well as programs for the destitute… but we seem to  have lost our humanity in pursuit  of the dollar… A sad testimony to a America that has historically been generous to the world.  To deviate from that today is a mistake of monumental proportions and assures a country will stay in recession and decline for many years to come… and makes me happy I will not live to see my party destroy my country because of the tyrannical actions of a small base of hate mongers.  If I was not sick before.. my party would have driven me to this spot for my stomach turns every time I watch news with the ignorance that is portrayed by so many “PUBLIC Officials” but especially my own party.

If you believe Austerity is what this country needs.. then look at what has been happening in Europe…. the people are refusing to pay for what mess former .. (yes FORMER like Bush)  and now MY republican party  is taking us down the bad road again….. WHAT was the stated Goal of the Republican Party the last 4 year.. Not to make the country better.. but to make Obama a ONE TERM PRESIDENT… WTF.. we should be focused on what is good for the country NOT getting revenge because he won… we missed to point and hence an opportunity to make our party better.. and instead became bitter.

SO AMERICA… BE AFRAID.. BE VERY AFRAID FOR THE FUTURE OF THIS COUNTRY IN THE HANDS OF MY REPUBLICAN PARTY IS MORE  FRIGHTENING THAN ANY NUCLEAR WEAPON!!

Mitt Romney ‘Not Going To Disagree’ With Florida Governor Rick Scott On Drug Testing

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he does not disapprove of Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s efforts to drug-test state workers. The former Massachusetts governor declined to say, however, that he is a big fan of the idea.

A reporter for the local Fox affiliate in Tampa asked Romney in an interview Wednesday if states should have the right to test public sector workers for drugs, and if the federal government should do the same.

“The states have rights under their constitution to do what they think is best,” Romney said. “The governor here is trying an idea, and I’m not going to disagree with Governor Scott. The idea of people being tested is something, which, we’ll see what the results are.”

So far, the results have been one constitutional smackdown after another from courts.

Last year, Scott issued an executive order requiring suspicionless drug testing for some 80,000 state workers in Florida. The order drew an immediate court challenge from labor and civil liberties groups arguing that indiscriminately forcing state workers to pee in cups violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable search and seizure.

Scott suspended his order while the judiciary considered the challenge. In April, a federal judge deemed the testing unconstitutional. “The [executive order] does not identify a concrete danger that must be addressed by suspicionless drug-testing of state employees, and the governor shows no evidence of a drug use problem at the covered agencies,” the judge wrote.

It was the second time federal courts have found Scott’s drug testing ambitions unconstitutional. Last fall, a different federal judge issued an injunction against a 2011 law that required welfare applicants to pass drug tests in order to receive benefits. Scott’s administration is appealing the first injunction and has vowed to appeal the April decision as well.

Romney was much less enthusiastic about drug testing on Tuesday than he was during the Republican primary in February, when he called drug-testing welfare recipients “an excellent idea.”

Republicans in several states have sought to copy Florida’s welfare drug testing law, despite its questionable constitutionality, and scant evidence that welfare recipients are on drugs or that the policy saves money.

Personally I have serious problems with anyone employee of any state, company or organization being forced to take drug tests…. not that there may  not be a concur as there in fact might be.. but it infringes on the individual liberties and civil rights of individuals  to be able to do as they chose when not in the work place.  I have been witnessing over the last 10 – 20 yeas a constant assault on individual freedoms and rights in this country and I am fearful that this continued curtailing of these constitutional freedoms will destroy this country. I can make a reasonable argument for taking away rights for anything.. but that does not mean it is right … this has to stop somewhere…. I don’t want to make too much of an association  with Nazi Germany but it did start in a similar way… the poem  goes to show how political apathy can kill a society and it is done one step at a time.. if you are not afraid for our counrty after reading this…. then you are blissfully ignorant of the consequences for the continued assaut of our constitutional rights :

 

“First they came for my neighbor, and I said nothing. Then they came for me and there was no one left to stand with me.” 

The “neighbor” quote is loosely based on the many variations of the famous poem attributed to Martin Niemöller:

When the Nazis came for the communists, 
I remained silent; 
I was not a communist.. 

When they locked up the social democrats, 
I remained silent; 
I was not a social democrat. 

When they came for the trade unionists, 
I did not speak out; 
I was not a trade unionist. 

When they came for the Jews, 
I didn’t speak up, 
because I wasn’t a Jew. 

When they came for me, 
there was no-one left 
to speak out.

[When the Nazis Came for Me
by Pastor Martin Niemöller]

 

 

 

 

 

 

goes something like this:

GOP Senate 2012 Hopes Rest On “Insurgents”

For Senate Republicans, 2012 is starting a lot like 2010, and that may be bad for Democrats. 

They have a shot at taking control away from Democrats as long as insurgent conservatives who are defeating the party’s more establishment candidates in primaries don’t frighten too many independent voters like they did two years ago.

Deb Fischer, a little-known state senator, became the latest unexpected Senate GOP nominee Tuesday, rallying late to upset the favored – and better funded – choices of both the party’s mainstream and tea party establishments: Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning and state Treasurer Don Stenberg.

Her victory occurred just a week after tea party and other conservative groups embraced Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who scored an arguably bigger upset – knocking off six-term Sen. Richard Lugar, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican.

The message for the GOP: Insurgents are back.

What’s yet to become clear is whether they exemplify 2010′s class of conservative upstarts – Florida’s Marco Rubio, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, Utah’s Mike Lee and Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson. All were early underdogs in the primary season and are now U.S. senators.

Or will the 2012 class turn out to be more like Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Ken Buck in Colorado? They, too, emerged from relative obscurity to defeat more established Republicans early in the election season, only to stumble later and cost the GOP three seats many thought it should win.

Once again the GOP will rely on lesser-known candidates in key races. The seats in Indiana, currently held by the GOP, and Nebraska, a pickup opportunity, represent must-wins if Republicans are to have any chance at capturing the Senate majority. They need a net gain for four seats to take control – three if a Republican also wins the White House.

While the GOP establishment has the presidential candidate it wanted in former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the jolts to its strategy for winning the Senate may not be over.

In Missouri, three Republicans are vying to take on vulnerable Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. Among them is John Brunner, a businessman who has never run for office before. In Wisconsin, former Gov. Tommy Thompson is the big-name Republican running for a seat the GOP is trying to flip, but he faces a number of lesser-known, more conservative challengers. In Arizona, six-term Rep. Jeff Flake is the favorite to get the GOP Senate nomination, but he is being challenged by wealthy businessman Wil Cardon, who casts himself as the tea party candidate and accuses Flake of being a Washington insider.

For now, Republicans say they’re optimistic 2012 won’t mirror 2010 in the end. Where O’Donnell, Angle and Buck all stumbled, Republicans say a more polished group of insurgents is emerging this year.

“What the victory of someone like Mourdock shows is that the tea party still has the energy and that’s a valuable strength for Republicans,” said Jeff Berkowitz, a GOP consultant. “But it also shows the movement has matured. He has great credentials, he has a track record and he is a statewide official.”

Berkowitz said the same applies to Fischer, whose credentials – she’s a two-term state senator and a rancher – make her a plausible nominee.

Democrats say the GOP is simply spinning primary results that will actually make it harder for them to win in November. Party officials have been quick to label both Fischer and Mourdock as novices and too conservative, arguments that worked well against O’Donnell, Angle and Buck in 2010.

Within minutes of Fischer’s victory in Nebraska, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee sent out an email calling her the “accidental candidate.”

“These results set up a promising general election match-up between Bob Kerrey, a proven independent leader, and Deb Fischer, an untested hypocritical politician whose record and positions have never been scrutinized,” said Matt Canter, a spokesman for Senate Democratic campaign arm.

Kerrey, a former governor and two-term senator, is the Democratic nominee in Nebraska, returning to the state after 10 years as a university president in New York City. In Indiana, Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly is the party’s Senate nominee after two terms representing a swing district in the House.

Fischer and Mourdock, however, are different candidates from O’Donnell, Angle and Buck.

Mourdock is a former geologist who ran for office several times before being elected state treasurer in 2006. He’s now won two terms in statewide races and endeared himself to the state’s most conservative voters after challenging Chrysler’s bankruptcy bailout in a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. He also survived an onslaught by Lugar, who spent millions on ads attacking him. Democrats contend that his stance on the Chrysler bailout will hurt him in a state with a large force of auto industry workers.

Fischer used her background to her advantage, playing up a “ranch girl” persona.” But she scoffs at the idea that she’s a political novice.

“Some folks seem to think I came out of nowhere in this race,” she said. “I have been a state senator for eight years. But more importantly than that, I’ve been involved in a number of organizations in the state for 30 years. I’m not an unknown.”

Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, one of the state’s most popular Republicans, calls Fischer “one of the most effective lawmakers we’ve ever had.”

Local Democrats say the party would be foolish to dismiss her, even if she is deeply conservative.

“So many times, I’ve called her the Michele Bachmann of Nebraska, but she won’t say stupid things like Bachmann has,” said Democratic Party donor Bud Pettigrew, referring to the former presidential candidate and Minnesota congresswoman.

Pettigrew, who also is a neighbor of Fischer’s, adds: “I don’t like her ideas, but I’m not going to underestimate her. She’s extremely intelligent.”

However Fischer and Mourdock fare in November, Republicans say it’s a bad season for longtime officeholders.

“If you’re an establishment figure, whether it’s (former French President Nicolas) Sarkozy or an establishment Republican in Nebraska, you’re in trouble,” said Alex Castellanos, a Republican consultant.