Tully: "In (Todd) Young, Republicans have a particularly strong candidate."

In 2012, I had the pleasure of hosting our U.S. Representative Todd Young for a brewery tour and lunch at Bank Street Brewhouse. It was a genuinely enjoyable chat with Rep. Young and his local organizer, Deb Johannes, who I've known since elementary school in Georgetown.

Rep. Young is knowledgeable about beer, and he actually drank a beer with me. We exchanged travel stories. He has a sense of humor (see his note above). It was a good time, and I thought about it when reading Tully's article, below.

Does this mean I'm voting for Todd Young for U.S. Senate? I don't know. Evan Bayh is an impressively empty suit. Does he stand for anything? I disagree with Young on many issues, and yet he's actually taken positions.

As for me, I'm a traditionalist in such matters. All politics is local, and breaking bread or enjoying an adult libation both mean something to me.

At the very least, Tully's piece isn't what you'd expect, given his evisceration of Mike Pence.

Tully: Evan Bayh is back, but Todd Young isn’t blinking, by Matthew Tully (Indy Star)

Two weeks ago, Republican U.S. Rep. Todd Young was on what appeared to be an easy glide path to election as Indiana’s junior senator. His Democratic opponent, the hardworking former Rep. Baron Hill, was trapped in a campaign that had failed to catch on, with either fundraisers or voters, in a state that leans Republican.

Then Evan Bayh happened.

The former senator and governor replaced Hill as the Democratic candidate and the Senate race suddenly was transformed. Young, a former Marine and father of four from Bloomington, is now facing arguably the most popular and enduring politician in modern Indiana history, one who also happens to enjoy a massive fund-raising and name ID advantage.

That easy glide path? It’s been replaced by an extremely turbulent flight ...

 ... “My hope is that the election comes down to issues and to who can bring people together to actually solve problems,” he said. “But I also think character matters. I think presence matters. And to the extent that we talk about things that make Evan Bayh uncomfortable — well, I guess that is unfortunate.”

Two weeks ago, Indiana’s Senate race didn’t seem worth watching. A lot has changed since then. Now, Todd Young is trying to do something nobody has ever done: beat Evan Bayh in an election. It’s a daunting task but, in Young, Republicans have a particularly strong candidate.

Mourdock's corn-fed theocratic fascism should not distract from genuine issues of reproductive choice.

The current GOP position on God, rape and pregnancy shows a tremendous debt to Greek mythology.
--Andy Borowitz



Welcome to L'America, where pervasive religious hooey renders political bedroom peekers like Richard Mourdock into drooling, patriarchal, small-time ayatollahs, reposing permanently on their knees (whether in supplication to the imaginary or expressing thankfulness for the endless pipeline of cash from the Koch Brothers). They follow by crediting religion for making them what they are. That's true enough, as long as they don't forget to count the money.

But it gets worse. As Bluegill noted on Twitter, Joe Donnelly rushed to provide testimony that his own "god" and that of other Hoosiers wouldn't approve of such extremism, providing Mourdock's backers with the perfect opportunity to cite Donnelly's presumed chumminess with Barack Obama as evidence that his "god" is a Muslim one, anyway, and as we wait to see if any candidate in the nation cares to discuss important matters like climate change, we're back to wondering what our Senate hopefuls feel about the deity's role in the Holocaust and child molestation (thanks, Rodney).

Unfortunately, as revolting as Mourdock's worldview remains, and equallty lamentable Donnelly's failure to eschew the fanatics, the rape/abortion equation continues to distract: Reproductive choice and women's rights are synonymous, and should be the rule, not the exception ... and leave your specific "god" out of it, okay?

Richard Mourdock On Abortion: Pregnancy From Rape Is 'Something God Intended', by Michael McAuliff (Huffington Post)

... All three said they were anti-abortion. But Mourdock went the further, putting himself in territory near Missouri GOP Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin, the anti-abortion congressman who infamously asserted that women don't get pregnant from "legitimate rape."

"The only exception I have to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother," said Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed state treasurer. "I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."