Nebraska State Sen. Deb Fischer

Nebraska held their pri­maries Tues­day, and there was a major upset: a little-​​known rancher and State Sen­a­tor in Nebraska’s uni­cam­eral leg­is­la­ture won out over two estab­lish­ment Repub­li­can candidates.

State Sen­a­tor Deb Fis­cher (R-​​Valentine, NE) eas­ily won a three-​​way con­test, with 41 per­cent of the vote. For­mer front-​​runner Attor­ney Gen­eral Jon Brun­ing was sec­ond with 36 per­cent, and State Trea­surer Don Sten­berg was third with 19 percent.

Brun­ing staked out a posi­tion far to the right of the polit­i­cal spec­trum. For exam­ple, he pub­licly attacked the sup­posed “Uncon­sti­tu­tional Assault on Reli­gious Lib­erty” rep­re­sented by a 12-​​year-​​old rule based on a 33-​​year-​​old law sup­pos­edly “requir­ing” reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions to cover con­tra­cep­tion. I’ve writ­ten before (here and here) about the cor­rupt and cyn­i­cal posi­tion taken by major Repub­li­can law­mak­ers on this issue.

Appar­ently, Brun­ing was still too much of a social­ist run­ning dog for Sen­a­tor Jim DeMint (R-​​SC) and the Club for Growth, both of whom poured a huge amount of money into Stenberg’s cam­paign. Accord­ing to them, Sten­berg, who served as State Attor­ney Gen­eral for 12 years, is a “gen­uine, life­long con­ser­v­a­tive” who is con­cerned that we need to “Take Back Amer­ica” [sic] from social­ist run­ning dog Sen­a­tor Ben Nel­son (D-​​NE). Nel­son is appar­ently even more social­ist, a faster run­ner, and more canine than social­ist run­ning dogs like Brun­ing. (more…)