By Susan Ferrechio
There have been no crowded rallies on the National Mall this year but the Tea Party hasnt faded away. I know that there are
a lot of people looking to see if the Tea Party is alive or is it dead but Tuesdays primary will demonstrate that 
reports of our death are greatly exaggerated said Richard Mourdock the state treasurer backed by Indianas Tea Party & FreedomWorks arguably the nations largest Tea Party-affiliated organization.
And by Tuesday night it will likely have Mourdock to prove the conservative movement is still a force to be reckoned with.
Mourdock is widely favored to beat Sen. Richard Lugar in Indianas Republican primary Tuesday after leading the longtime incumbent by as much as 10 percentage points.
Political strategists say that if Lugar loses his bid for a seventh term it will be because of a poor campaign that failed to take seriously a Tea Party challenge from the political right.
But Tea Party activists said they deserve credit too for helping to bring down Lugar who demonstrated a willingness to work with Democrats and in support of legislation the Tea Party abhors including the 2009 Wall Street bailout.
Mourdocks success activists said would show that the Tea Party evolved over the past three years from a high-profile if largely disorganized group of fiscal conservatives into a movement that can rally the grassroots support needed to take down a well-financed candidate like Lugar.
Its fewer rallies more things like bootcamp training said Brendan Steinhauser director of federal and state campaigns for FreedomWorks. All last year what we really focused on was training learning how to campaign how to go door to door how to do phone banking and yard signs. That more than
anything else will explain the success we have had this year.
Margaret Ferguson of Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis said the Tea Party still has a presence but it has taken a different turn citing $700000 FreedomWorks spent to help the underfunded Mourdock.
Yet while the Tea Party helped remake the landscape of the 2010 congressional elections it appears to be strong enough now only to take out the weakest incumbents at least at the Senate level. That was evident in April in Utah when Sen. Orrin Hatch beat back a Tea Party challenge at the states Republican convention.
Hatch who arrived in the Senate with Lugar in 1976 still faces a primary but he has already advanced further than his former Senate colleague from Utah Bob Bennett who was defeated by the Tea Party in 2010.
Hatch has just done a better job than Lugar in the past two years trying to make the argument that he is a conservative Steinhauser said. That has had a big impact.
Evidence of the Tea Partys limited strength is also apparent in Virginia where former Sen. George Allen is expected to easily defeat a Tea Party favorite in the Republican Senate primary and in Florida where the Tea Party helped elect Sen. Marco Rubio two years ago but couldnt field a challenger of its own this year against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson.
FreedomWorks meanwhile is focused instead on boosting Tea Party candidates running for open Senate seats in Texas Arizona and Nebraska.
sferrechio@washingtonexaminer.com
