Republican Party

With a month left before Indiana's Republican primary, incumbent senator Dick Lugar is facing more negative ads from two important conservative advocacy groups.

In an increasingly contentious Connecticut Senate primary, Republicans Linda McMahon and Chris Shays are arguing that each is a better fiscal conservative than the other. In a new blog post, the McMahon campaign says Shays, a former congressman, has a similar record on spending and debt as the likely Democratic nominee, three-term congressman Chris Murphy.

Last week, the Club for Growth purchased airtime in Indiana to run advertisements against Dick Lugar, the six-term Republican senator facing a tough primary election against Indiana state treasurer Richard Mourdock.

Politico reports that the Club for Growth has bought television airtime in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, and South Bend, Indiana to run ads against incumbent Republican senator Dick Lugar. The ad buy will be the first outside TV advertising for this race that'll help Lugar's Republican opponent, Richard Murdouck. The current buy is more than $273,000 over the next two weeks.

Mitt Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN this morning that Boston will "reset" its campaign for the general election. Via Greg Sargent:

Tom Cotton, a Republican candidate for Congress in Arkansas, has two new television ads running in the state's Fourth Congressional District. The ads highlight Cotton's service in Iraq as an Army Ranger and focus on his pledge to fight for a balanced budget and overturn Obamacare. Watch the ads below:

The Hill reports that Florida senator Marco Rubio will today be making his first Senate endorsement for Josh Mandel, a Republican challenging Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown:

Olympia Snowe’s announcement last week not to seek a fourth term to represent Maine in the U.S. Senate surprised many in her home state and in Washington. Democrats are now hoping to win the Maine seat, just last week considered an easy win for Republicans.

In his latest Weekend Interview, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal discusses social conservatism and its positive influence on American politics (and on the Republican party) with Jeffrey Bell, author of The Case for Polarized Politics: Why America Needs Social Conservatism.

The latest Mitt Romney hit on Rick Santorum is headlined, "RICK SANTORUM: BIG LABOR'S FAVORITE SENATOR," and cites Santorum's 1996 vote against a national "right to work" law as primary evidence for its claim. But while Santorum, who represented labor-heavy Pennsylvania, was to the left of some of his Republican colleagues in Congress on labor issues, but it doesn't quite seem right to say he was big labor's "favorite."

The first master’s thesis defense committee on which I served, more years ago than I care to count, evaluated an effort titled “Liberal Deviations of Robert A. Taft, 1945-1953.” As a young assistant professor still intoxicated by a heady academic liberal consensus, I was prone to dismiss the author’s assertion that Senator Taft was something more than an iron-hearted reactionary.

CNN's Dana Bash touted her interview with Texas congressman Ron Paul and his son, Kentucky senator Rand Paul, by noting on Twitter that the elder Paul "ruled out running outside" the Republican party if he fails to win the GOP nomination for president. But that's not exactly what Ron Paul said. Here's the quotation (emphasis mine):