Posted on 08/20/2014 7:52:04 PM PDT by Republican Wildcat
LOUISVILLE— In the first exchange of ideas between the two candidates in the Kentucky U.S. Senate race, Kentucky U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes stuck to campaign messages during a discussion on agriculture issues.
At the 2014 Farm Bureau “Measure the Candidates” forum, McConnell and Grimes were asked about issues ranging from agriculture policy to the Affordable Care Act Wednesday in Louisville.
At the same time, the candidates each managed to stay on their messages of their campaigns while trading jabs over recent stories about the campaigns.
To begin the forum, each candidate was able to give their opening statements which Grimes used to immediately bring up a recent report about McConnell missing meetings of the Senate Agriculture Committee for other events. Grimes said the state is ready for a Senator that shows up.
“When it comes to the Agriculture Committee, did Mitch McConnell bother to show up? No. When it comes to the farm bill did he bother to speak up for our Kentucky farmers? No,” Grimes said in her open remarks.
After she brought the story up many times during her remarks, McConnell responded in one of his answers by saying that leaders of the parties usually have this type of record due to their many obligations. He continued by saying Grimes’ “mentor Harry Reid must not have taught her anything” about this topic since the Senate Majority Leader has resigned from his positions on all committees due to his leadership position.
A main topic of discussion in the forum was the farm bill, as the moderator asked whether or not the candidates believed the most recent version of the farm bill was a good solution.
McConnell used the bill to joke about the controversy over the price the Grimes campaign is paying for her campaign bus.
“Probably not as good a deal as $400 a day tour bus, but is a good deal,” McConnell said continuing to say that while the bill took longer to draft and pass than most would have liked, it is a better bill because of that delay.
Grimes focused most of her remarks on the farm bill on the delay which she said was caused by McConnell and the gridlock in Washington. Grimes said she takes issue with McConnell’s remark that the delay did not hurt anyone as she said it hurt all Kentucky farmers.
One of the biggest issues in the race which many have waited to hear from both candidates on in depth is the Affordable Care Act.
Grimes started by talking about the success of kynect and applauded Governor Steve Beshear’s decision to create a health exchange through the law and expand Medicaid because it has provided insurance for many Kentuckians that were without insurance.
“If he had his way, Mitch McConnell would take us back to the days where being a woman was a pre-existing condition and you could kick kids off your insurance,” Grimes said.
While Grimes touted the success of kynect, she also said the country needs to work to streamline the ACA to make sure there are no over burdensome regulations on business especially small businesses. Grimes said she believes the delay of business mandate good thing and that Congress should also be working to extend clause that extended the “if like doctor can keep them” fix passed after some were losing their current plans.
In contrast, McConnell again said the Affordable Care Act is the single worst piece of legislation and should be repealed “root and branch”.
As an alternative, McConnell said the changes that need to be made to the health care system include: “tear down walls between every state in America and have truly national competition, a medical mal-practice standard and allow small businesses to form groups to allow more purchasing power on the open market.
One member of the Kentucky Farm Bureau asked the candidates about comprehensive immigration reform as it relates to the need Kentucky farmers have for immigrant labor.
McConnell said that he is in favor of immigration reform, again bringing up his wife’s story of immigration, but said it needs to be done in a smarter way.
“We shouldn’t do comprehensive immigration reform, we don’t always do comprehensive well,” McConnell joked. “What is holding immigration back is the American people’s legitimate concerns that the federal government won’t secure the border.”
Grimes again said McConnell is the problem when it comes to the legislation because he is playing the blame game while she blamed him for holding it up by wanting to pass the legislation piece by piece.
But perhaps one of the most spirited exchanges between the two came when the candidates were asked about trade and McConnell accused Grimes of avoiding the question, saying she can’t give a straight answer because she will never vote in favor of trade legislation as she is beholden to groups like the AFL-CIO.
In response, Grimes said McConnell was putting words in her mouth and said she speaks for herself.
“Women aren’t supposed to just be seen, we will be heard,” Grimes said.
In their closing remarks, McConnell and Grimes stayed on their messages of influence vs out of touch.
Grimes said the race is about the past and the future, a Washington insider and a fighter for Kentucky.
“He wants a self-promotion, I want to be Kentucky’s agriculture senator,” Grimes told the group.
McConnell again said that the state is facing a huge loss of influence if he is not in the Senate and again addressed the repeated remarks about his attendance at the Senate Agriculture Committee by saying the group knows better than his opponent about what he has done for the industry.
“The issue is not how many times you show up for committee meetings, but have you made a difference?” McConnell said adding that he has won two golden plows from American Farm Bureau for the work he has done.
McConnell and Grimes will again share a stage when the debate on KET in October.
I’m sick of this BS “War on Women” from these lying, good-for-nothing Democrats. As much as I can’t stand McConnell, I hope he cleans the floor with her and this stupid crap.
But he sure gave Harry Reid the cloture votes Harry needed to get Obamacare funded.
McConnell is a liar.
/johnny
Yes indeed - the fact that if McConnell had been the leader vs. Reid Obamacare would have never been passed to begin with isn’t a dimes worth of difference. That cloture vote you refer to was to vote on the bill to defund Obamacare.
It will be a major calculation of Tea Party conservatives that if Republicans are going to have a several seat majority in the senate, to just *not vote* for McConnell.
They don’t have to vote for the Democrat, but just leave that one election unmarked. The statistics would tell the tale:
1) Normal voter turnout.
2) McConnell losing not because Grimes won, but because he lost the support of his base. In the midst of conservative Republicans winning elsewhere with normal support.
The trade off is a bitter, angry, but powerful establishment Republican, who effectively stands in the way of conservatism, and openly schemes to marginalize conservatives and destroy the Tea Party. He is a dangerous and sworn enemy.
Grimes, on the other hand, will just be a powerless freshman in the minority. She will have only one term in office, and then she will be replaced by a Republican, hopefully a conservative.
With a McConnell loss, the RINOs and GOP-e will be rattled, as he is one of the last of the powerful and obnoxious Republican liberals.
But if McConnell wins, conservatives will likely be shut out of the Republican convention again, ruled out of order, and given a choice of Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush as candidates, but no one else, and certainly no conservative. And either of them will lose to Hillary.
So it is worth it to make him lose his seat. It will change the terrible course of America today, and perhaps steer us away from “the cliff”.
Your analysis overall is completely nonsensical, but this one really takes the cake. You know nothing of the politics of this Commonwealth to make such a statement. We will never be rid of her, and she will give rise to many more like her...for decades to come.
People like you will not rest until we have full-fledged communism, will you? All in the name of "principle." We've never like the leader as long as I can remember - you don't just toss away a Senate seat to another ultra-leftist who will be around for decades. Who do you prefer as the leader? Susan Collins? John McCain? Lindsey Graham?
25 years ago my son had to be on oxygen after he was born; in a neonatal ICU. It was $25 every 15 minutes.
I can’t imagine now.
That was quite expensive, Adult ICU you better mortgage your home now a days..(those costs seem outrages to me) that had to be quite a hardship on your families budget..
Begich and Hagan are facing opponents more liberal than Mitch. Begich and Hagan will probably win.
did the fact that there are 109 million Americans on welfare get brought up during the talk about immigration??
Somehow I doubt it
It’s all the left has these days, throwing out emotional, non-sequitor one-liners ungrounded in reality
I had surgery about 2.5 years ago that used a “robot” and the total cost for that, billed as is, was over $50,000. I was in surgery for about 3 hours, and recover for about 3 hours, 2 overnight stays. $50k.
I despise McConnell for his endlessly duplicitous leadership record. But if not for that, I’d despise him for his grotesquely smarmy commercials of which, I’m subjected to, many times a day.
That’s a pretty stupid and hateful accusation. Opposing McConnell is not “endorsing communism”.
It is pointing out that the Republican leadership is so short of RINOs anymore that they have become desperate to keep their seats and destroy the Tea Party, to stop conservatives from getting them.
Each and every liberal Republican the Tea Party can boot out means that conservatives are that much closer to taking over the Republican party. With this election conservatives might even gain enough power to that the RINOs cannot shut them out at the convention, *again*.
You’re worried about Grimes holding that *one seat* for decades. I’m not, because it is just *one seat*. What I am worried about is that McConnell may be just enough for the RINOs to prevent a conservative presidential candidate again.
We have had to endure H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney being forced down out throats again and again because of people like Mitch McConnell.
*There’s* your decades of liberalism being forced on us, not some theoretical threat by *one seat* in the senate.
In the upcoming presidential race, the GOP-e has made it clear that it will only *permit* either Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush to be the candidate. NO conservative. And either one of them will lose to Hillary. Is that what you want?
The RINO Republican leadership must be pulled down and replaced. Can America survive 4 or 8 years of Hillary?
To HELL with this one seat, if we can get rid of McConnell.
Don’t be Penny wise and Pound foolish.
You are afraid of communism, and rightly so. But the socialism of people like McConnell brings about communism, because they are co-dependents of the radicals who would give it to us.
Hard to tell. But it will be a close race, and even a small number of conservatives not voting for McConnell might be all that is needed to send him packing.
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