Free Republic

Sen. Mitch McConnell 'looks and fights like a TURTLE' says Texas U.S. Senate candidate, blasting his opponent for working with the minority leader Dwayne Stovall wants Texans to know that U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell 'looks and fights like a turtle,' and he hopes that image will bleed over to Republican Sen. John Cornyn – the man whose job he wants. 'We Texans don't need a Beltway turtle telling us how to fight,' Stovall says in his newest video ad. The slight is related to what Stovall sees as a lack of action from Cornyn, the state's senior senator...

The United Kentucky Tea Party on Monday said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell should drop out of the Republican primary in their state so conservatives can rally around Matt Bevin, the GOP candidate who is challenging Mr. McConnell from the political right. The tea party group cited Mr. McConnell’s dramatic vote last week to extend the nation’s debt limit and polling that suggests he could lose to the eventual Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, in the general election. “Senator McConnell’s recent vote with [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid to hand President Obama a blank check for the next year has...

WASHINGTON -- Long-shot Republican Senatorial candidate Rob Maness says he would not vote to re-elect Mitch McConnell as Senate Republican leader if he wins and McConnell survives a tough re-election challenge. "Sen. McConnell is a failed leader and it's time for a new perspective and for new leadership," Maness said Monday. "The time has come to stop routinely returning senators to leadership positions. We need a leader in the Senate who will stand up to President (Barack) Obama and Sen. (Mary) Landrieu and their harmful policies." If Democrats continue as the majority party in the Senate after the 2014 elections,...

LEBURN[Ky.] — Agriculture Commissioner James Comer on Monday announced the first five pilot programs to grow hemp in Kentucky as part of the foundation of his economic development plan for Eastern Kentucky. “Hemp will go into the ground for the first time in Kentucky since World War II,” Comer told several hundred people at the Knott County Sportsplex along Highway 80. That includes a project to research cannabinoids for medicinal purposes at an Eastern Kentucky site overseen by the University of Kentucky. Comer made the announcement with both Republican U.S. senators, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, as well as Democratic...

Andy Beshear, the first Democratic candidate to announce for attorney general in 2015, will raise money in Louisville on Feb. 25 — hours after Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes’ event with former President Bill Clinton. Grimes and Clinton will be appearing at the Louisville’s Galt House for a fundraiser at 11 a.m. The campaign manager for Beshear, a Louisville lawyer and the son of [Ky.]Gov. Steve Beshear, said in response to questions from Pure Politics that the Beshear fundraiser was “scheduled several months ago” and will start five hours after the Grimes event ends. Jared Smith, Beshear’s campaign...

In 2010, one out of every two registered Republicans in the heart of southern Kentucky’s “Old 5th” congressional district came out to vote. A contiguous bloc of 14 counties in southern Kentucky boasted the most fertile and efficient ground for gathering Republican votes in that year’s primary. Those counties (see chart below) had slightly fewer registered Republicans than the 157,000 in Jefferson County, the state’s largest county. The 14-county region has less than half the population of Jefferson County. Yet, it turned out 78,200 Republicans in that spring’s primary compared to 50,449 in Jefferson County. A big reason: scores of...

Senators Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn say they put the country first. The debt ceiling needed to be raised. Ted Cruz opposed raising it. So McConnell and Cornyn voted to shut down Ted Cruz. They voted to cut off debate on raising the debt ceiling so that it could be raised. McConnell and Cornyn have both been very clear about this. John Cornyn told the Austin American-Statesman “I think it would have been bad for the economy, bad for the American people, and I don’t think it would have been good politics either.” Mitch McConnell declared it his job to...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he voted to advance a clean debt-ceiling bill this week because his job is “to protect the country” when he can. The Republican leader said at a Friday campaign event in Louisville, Ky., that he has long preferred making structural changes to fiscal policy as a condition to raising the debt ceiling. But given that the House could pass only a clean debt ceiling — every policy rider Speaker John Boehner tried to attach failed to garner sufficient support — McConnell said he was left with one option: Avoid economic catastrophe. McConnell and most...

Fox News host Greta Van Susteren on Friday blasted a bizarre television spot by longshot Texas Senate candidate Dwayne Stovall that likens Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to a Looney Tunes turtle. "This ad is lousy," Van Susteren said on her Fox website. "It is gratuitously insulting. "I have no idea whether Stovall is a great candidate or not — but his ad makes me think he is a jerk," she added. "You can be clever and funny in ads … or you can be gratuitously insulting." In the ad, Stovell, one of seven candidates vying to unseat Sen. John Cornyn...

Some within the Tea Party are furious over the decision by Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to help shepherd the passage of the debt ceiling increase earlier this week. Both McConnell and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tx.) have come under fire -- with national conservative groups slamming McConnell and one of Cornyn's primary challengers, Rep. Steve Stockman, sending a colorful tweet criticizing the incumbent Thursday night. But, just when you thought you had seen it all comes this ad via Dwayne Stovall, who is also challenging Cornyn in the Texas primary.

Dwayne Stovall, a Republican Senate candidate from Texas mounting a (longshot) bid to oust Texas Sen. John Cornyn is out with a new ad comparing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to a turtle.

Similar to last week’s lackluster result from Survey USA. Unless Bevin catches fire, looks like the best-case scenario for the GOP is an exhausting dogfight to the bitter end between McConnell and Grimes that sucks in untold millions of establishment dollars aimed at protecting the Senate minority leader. Again — that’s the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario, that that dogfight ends in decisive defeat, comes from Sean Davis: To put Wenzel's data in perspective, it had Thompson in WI (lost by 5), Mandel in OH, (lost by 5), Romney in OH (lost by 2).— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) February 14, 2014...

Senate Republicans requested that the Senate clerk not call out how Republicans were voting on Wednesday’s key debt limit vote to make it easier for GOP leaders to convince their colleagues to change their votes, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday. “After the vote began, it was quickly clear that Republican leaders were struggling to deliver enough votes to clear the 60-vote hurdle upon which they had insisted instead of a simple majority, and a potentially catastrophic default suddenly seemed possible,” Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson told CQ Roll Call in a statement. “At Senate Republicans’ request,...

When the Senate held a drama-filled procedural vote on raising the debt limit this week, there was one element missing from what should have been a typical roll call vote — the calling of the ayes and nays. In nearly every roll call vote held on the Senate floor, the clerk reads who voted in the negative and in the affirmative before the final vote is called. But on Wednesday, with the Senate engaged in arm twisting, senators switching votes, and the full faith and credit of the United States on the line, the Senate floor broke from normal procedure...

LOUISVILLE, KY, February 12, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A judicial ruling that Kentucky must recognize same-sex "marriages" conducted in other nations or U.S. states may spell more trouble for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II offered a strongly worded rebuke to tradition and religion on Wednesday, saying the state amendment -- which was approved by three-quarters of state voters -- "demeans" homosexuals. The Madison Project, a national grassroots organization that favors traditional marriage, noted that President George H.W. Bush appointed Heyburn to the bench in the early 1990s following a recommendation “from Senator Mitch McConnell...

The tea party is teeing off on Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. Matt Bevin, who is challenging McConnell in the GOP primary in Kentucky, seized on the senator’s vote Wednesday to move ahead on legislation to increase the nation’s debt limit, describing it as a blank check for President Barack Obama. The tea party-backed businessman and conservative groups signaled they won’t let Senate Republican incumbents forget the vote this election year. “Kentucky and America can literally no longer afford such financially reckless behavior from the likes of Mitch McConnell,” Bevin said in a statement. …

Sen. Ted Cruz and the GOP rank and file ultimately backed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip John Cornyn into a corner on the debt ceiling increase. The leaders had wanted to allow the toxic measure to pass with just 51 votes so all 45 Republicans could vote against it. But Cruz, the Texas tea party freshman, demanded approval by a 60-vote threshold. So McConnell and Cornyn tried to persuade more than five Republicans in safe seats to support the plan, but they were met with stiff resistance. No Republican wanted to be vote No. 60 on a...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz sat with eyes glued to his mobile device as the chaos he provoked ensnared his Republican leaders on the Senate floor. Legislation to raise the nation's borrowing authority with no strings attached was short of the 60 votes it needed to advance — a threshold Cruz demanded — and without a few conversions, Republicans would be blamed for its failure. The stock market was watching. After what seemed like an eternity, a grim-faced Sen. Mitch McConnell, the party leader who faces a tea party challenge back home, finally voted yes. An equally grim-faced Sen. John Cornyn,...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Whip John Cornyn fell on their swords for Republicans Wednesday, casting the votes necessary to advance legislation to raise the debt limit without any conditions, votes that could put them in precarious positions politically in their re-election campaigns. The House voted Tuesday to raise the debt ceiling without any strings attached, over the objections of a majority of Republicans. Just 28 Republicans voted for the bill, and it got a poor reception with conservative groups, a number of whom called for Speaker of the House John Boehner to resign. Cornyn’s fellow Texas Sen....

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, released the following statement regarding today’s debt ceiling vote: "Today's vote is yet another example that establishment politicians from both parties are simply not listening to the American people. Outside the beltway, Americans of all political stripes understand that we cannot keep spending money we don't have. "Some members of Congress care so much about being praised by the Washington media that they're willing to mortgage our children's future. They pretend we don't have a problem and can just kick the can down the road. "Let's be clear about the motive behind...