Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: The end-game approaches for Dick Lugar

Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here. Leading Off:

' IN-Sen: Even if Wenzel Strategies is a dodgy pollster (they also poll for the batshit WorldNetDaily) and you aren't sure whether to trust their toplines, their trendlines aren't good for Dick Lugar at all. The Republican senator now trails his GOP primary opponent, Treasurer Richard Mourdock, 39 to 44, whereas in mid-March, he clung to a 45-39 lead in Wenzel's last poll (on behalf of Citizens United). That's a swing of eleven points, and the primary is just twelve days away.

And here's the dog that didn't bark: In his new pre-primary FEC report (PDF), Lugar shows a payment of $10K to Republican pollster National Research on April 9 for "polling research." That's on top of almost $74K he spent last quarter on the same expense. But of course, we haven't seen any recent internals from the Lugar camp. If their numbers offered any cause for optimism, don't you think we'd have seen at least a glimpse by now?

In any event, as the end-game approaches, the Club for Growth is hoping to deliver a knockout blow to the incumbent. They're spending $421K on a final ad asking "What's happened to Dick Lugar?" (Answer: He became a dirty libruhl.)

Meanwhile, the GOP establishment (via the American Action Network) is running another anti-Mourdock spot, though I personally find the onslaught of information it contains to be cacophonous and confusing:
Lugar's also gotten an assist from some unlikely quarters: The Young Guns Network, which you can more-or-less view as a stand-in for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. It's not clear to me why Cantor (okay, his former aides who run the organization) care about saving Lugar's ass since he serves, you know, in the Senate. But maybe the $100K they're spending on mailers is some kind of penance for Cantor's notorious interference in the IL-16 primary, where he helped veteran GOP Rep. Don Manzullo out the door (and earned the wrath of many fellow Republicans for doing so).