> SOUTHERN INDIANA — INDIANAPOLIS — The civil war bubbling up within the Indiana Republican Party pits the upstart Tea Party movement against one of the most dynamic political operations in Hoosier history — the political campaign of Richard Green Lugar.

Last Saturday, 180 Hoosier Tea Party members representing 70 tribes gathered at a church near Sharpsville to forge an anti-Lugar confederation. They sent a letter — one of 899 Sen. Lugar received Monday — asking him to step aside. Monica Boyer, a Kosciusko County “Silent No More” Tea Party activist saw strength in her movement.

“We’re excited today,” Boyer said, adding, that in order to defeat Lugar, “All we need is 700,000 votes.”

Greg Fettig of Noblesville, said the Tea Party movement has 35,000 people, and “Each of them have 10 people in their sphere of influence. That’s 350,000 people. They will vote as we will vote. If we don’t unify, we might as well go home.”

Saturday the blueprint to challenge Lugar was forged and by June, they will invite Lugar and potential challengers — State Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, former State Rep. Jackie Walorski — to make their pitch, then unify behind one challenger.

On Friday night, 420 Lugar supporters gathered in Carmel where they donated nearly $400,000 to the Lugar campaign. It followed a Lugar mailing to 500,000 registered Republican voters, appealing for their financial support and the ballot petition drive, which brought in 8,867 signatures by Wednesday.

“I am determined to see that everyone face this reality and that none leave here tonight complacent,” said Mark Lubbers, who managed Lugar’s 1996 presidential campaign. “Our hearts must be in this.”

In the Lugar world view, the Tea Party movement is the result of a bad economy and what Lubbers called the “giant, absurd overreach of Obamacare” that jolted citizens into a Howard Beale “Network” (“I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore”) reflex.

“It feels good to get to the end of your rope, to throw off the silence and literally be empowered to fight back,” Lubbers said. “We welcomed these fellow citizens into the fray. It seemed that what they believed was the essence of what we believe as Republicans.

“And, here in Indiana, a handful of people are intent on organizing that anger and frustration into a campaign. To do what? To take Dick Lugar out.”

The Tea Party — which originally stood for “Taxed Enough Already” — has diverged into a right wing list of complaints. They are against the Dream Act, the START treaty, and Supreme Court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, who radio talk show host Greg Garrison described as a “communist.”

“With the votes we follow, we believe it shows [Lugar] is not a conservative,” Fettig said. “It is the Dream Act, START, the last two justices.”

The Dream Act, which failed to pass the lame duck session in December, is instructive. It would give a path to citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants who had no choice but to follow their parents. They could attain citizenship through military service or attaining a college degree.

To the Tea Party, this is “amnesty.”

“Since when is it amnesty to bestow citizenship in return for joining the Marines and getting shot at in Kandahar defending the American flag?” Lubbers asked.

Lubbers asked Republicans to “show me a way for our presidential nominee in 2012 to get 270 Electoral College votes without winning a lot of Hispanic votes? It cannot be done. You want four more years of Barack Obama? Be against the Dream Act.”

In 2000 and 2004, it was the Latino vote that helped George W. Bush win two very close elections. It is the fastest-growing voting block in America.

In 2006, Republicans like U.S. Reps. John Hostettler, Mike Sodrel and Chris Chocola of Indiana advocated strict immigration laws. All three lost that year.

In 2008, President Obama won 67 percent of the Latino vote, a 36 percent increase over their support for John Kerry in 2004. Obama won 77 percent of the Indiana Latino vote as this voting block went from 3 to 4 percent of the Indiana electorate between 2004 and 2008. It will be even bigger in 2012.

Obama increased his support among Catholics from 16 to 32 percent. Four in 10 Catholics are Latino.

Said Notre Dame Associate Professor David Campbell, “Latinos are the face of the Catholic population going forward. Latinos swung to Obama.”

Mark Halperin of Time Magazine told the Bulen Symposium in November 2008 that Republicans “have to be spooked” about their Latino losses.

Thus, there lies the vulnerability of the Tea Party movement. The nominations of Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware essentially snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and kept the U.S. Senate Democratic majority.

They lost independent voters. Angle actually raised $14 million last October, but lost to the wildly unpopular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Now the Tea Party takes aim at Lugar, the most successful Republican vote getter in Hoosier history.

— This columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com