Posted on 03/20/2014 5:27:14 AM PDT by cotton1706
Let's get this out of the way now: As far as big deals coming out of Washington, this year is already junked. With the midterm elections in view for jittery lawmakers, chances for a breakthrough on an immigration overhaul, a rewrite of the tax code, or a major jobs package have all but vanished. (Take a bow, partisans.) But we could wake up Nov. 5 with a very different political order. President Obama, at that point, would still have two years in the Oval Office to seal his legacy.
Certainly the President himself will help shape that future. Beyond that, however, Obama's record is likely to depend on Republicans even more than on members of his own party. And that means that what the federal government regulates, taxes, and spends over the next several years could in large part hinge on the actions of just one 72-year-old Southerner: Mitch McConnell. Assuming he's still in office.
Which brings us squarely to the right now.
Tantalizingly close to achieving his career ambition of seizing control of the Senate, the Kentucky Republican is also as close as he's been during five terms in the chamber to being sent packing. The Senate minority leader faces battles on both flanks: on the right, with a primary challenge from multimillionaire investor Matt Bevin; on the left, with a general-election cage match that's already neck and jowl. (As of presstime, Democratic frontrunner Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky's 35-year-old secretary of state, was slightly ahead in the polls.) Handicappers expect that the candidates and outside groups will spend more than $100 million on the race, much of it coming from outside the state.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
Oh, cut the crap with that “purity” nonsense. Purity is quite the popular word bubbling around lately. Yet I notice that it’s only a one way street.
There was nobody berating Dede Scozzafava when she endorsed the DEMOCRAT over the conservative when it became clear that she wouldn’t win her race for congress. There was no berating of Richard Lugar when he failed to endorse Richard Mourdock when or when Arlen Specter failed to endorse Rick Santorum or when Richard Lugar THIS YEAR endorsed the DEMOCRAT in Georgia or when John Warner THIS YEAR endorsed the DEMOCRAT in Virginia.
Oh, but when conservatives advocate the removal of an insidious, backstabbing, piss-poor leader, by any means necessary, we are given the purity speech. Please!
I don’t think Bevin should endorse McConnell if he loses the primary. And as for Paul, I know what he’s doing politically. He needs McConnell’s help to get that law changed in Kentucky so he can run for the presidency and for the senate. Unfortunately, he needs to play the game here and there to get ahead. He’s very shrewd.
The only Democrat in the race is Grimes. She has no primary opponent.
False choice. Cotton prefers Bevin to both.
I’m not crazy about mitch and have and will continue to donate to Matt Bevin {have you?} but since I’m in PA and can’t vote for either, if mitch wins I’m pulling for him over dirty harry.
You and the other 50-75 fanatics here at FR continue to cut off your noses to spite MY FACE.
Grow up and face reality, you don’t always get what you want, and you are too old to keep holding your breath and stomping your feet until I turn blue.
Here come the righteous purist flamers but I’ve been shot, stabbed, knocked out, beat to hell and back, jailed and I’m still here so whatever vitriol gets thrown around, it’s just words.
Boy, the purity-shillers are all out today. Mitch McConnell is the republican leader. That’s why I support his removal. He needs to go but he won’t retire. If he succeeds in his primary, I advocate his defeat so that the republicans in the senate will have new leadership.
Newsflash!! McConnell has been ASSISTING Harry Reid for the past seven years! He has ceded all kinds of power in his numerous “handshake agreements” to the position of majority leader (because he thought he’s have all that power by now), to the detriment of the country. No bills are debated on the senate floor anymore. No amendments are allowed. Yet McConnell gets all upset when unanimous consents are denied. “oh don’t force us to actually vote and be held accountable, you’re forcing us to actually vote as we believe and we’ll ruin our carefully-crafted conservative record that we use to fool the people.”
I have been watching what McConnell’s been doing for a long time. And I’m not fooled by the “r” next to his name. He’s an insidious oligarch. And I advocate his removal from power because he is dangerous.
“The only Democrat in the race is Grimes. She has no primary opponent.”
Thanks. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t referring to McConnell.
You’re welcome.
Here’s all the polling according to RCP.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2014/senate/ky/kentucky_senate_republican_primary-3489.html
Bevin/Grimes poll avg. has Bevin up 0.6
McConnell/Grimes poll avg. has Grimes up 0.5
McConnell/Bevin poll avg. has McConnell up 31.7
The R/D matchups are a wash given the MOE’s
Bevin has 60 days to turn the primary around in his favor
So do I and I donate to Matt, but if he loses the primary, it is NOT a false choice.
Faced with turtle mitch or the demonRAT bitch, Cotton advocates that conservatives sit it out, and I say that is nutz because it leads to dirty harry as the majority leader.
It's the reason {one of the reasons} that obummer won in 2012.
If any one equates Mitt Romney with obummer they too are nutz.
“False choice. Cotton prefers Bevin to both.”
Thanks for the defense! I get so tired of this argument.
It really is an equation that conservatives should remember.
“Business” does not exclusively mean “American businesses of, by and for patriotic Americans.” To a great extent, “business”, when used by these people, are multinational or international corporations, with no loyalty or patriotism to America *at all*.
They are strictly in it for their profit, and don’t care if the US goes up in a sheet of flame. This means that they want big government to “control the masses”, with standardized everything, so they, business, don’t have to do as much.
As far as they are concerned, Americans can live in barracks, be fed in mess halls, work all day for low wages, get government health care, and watch television unless they are sleeping. That is all. Nothing else will increase their bottom line, so they don’t want others to have it.
To Hell with them. And those politicians that have sold out to them.
I’d like to reiterate and expand my comments from previous threads on the current weird polls.
They are being driven by the mechanics of the current campaign. Where Grimes is beating up on McConnell, Bevins is beating up on McConnell and McConnell is beating up on Bevins and Grimes (in that order of priority and severity)
As a snapshot they make sense. But they are in no way indicative of what the polls will look like when this campaign (GOP primary) ends and the next one (general election) begins.
So any polling based argument in support of a candidate needs to show more than just what they are; it needs to show an analysis of why they’ll persist (or change) once the race solidifies to the GOP nominee vs Grimes.
I maintain that Bevins looks good in the polling vs Grimes now, because of the mechanics described above. But that he has substantial and possibly insurmountable weaknesses in a go it alone campaign against Grimes and the KY state Dem machine.
Glad you did. Your assessment makes sense.
The advantage I see to using the RCP averages is that it irons out much of the "weirdness" of the polls by averaging them all together. It results in what is a larger sample size, which should convey a more accurate result.
True. I think the polls, as a snapshot, are accurate and the circular “weirdness” of Bevins doing better against Grimes who is doing better against McConnell who is doing better than Bevins pretty explainable in that context.
Addressing an earlier comment by someone else about guys like Lugar and Warner turning traitor and endorsing Democrats, I’m appalled and repulsed by it. We duke it out in the primaries but then rally to the eventual nominee, knowing that there are still more Conservatives than GOPe/RINOs out there and a rising GOP tide will lift the boats of many good Conservatives like Cruz as well.
If there were some way to sanction vindictive little pr*cks like Lugar and Warner I’d be all for it.
You’re welcome. I too tire of the argument, such as it is, that standing for conservative principles somehow means you support liberals.
I also tire of conservatives justifying their GOP-E vote as somehow voting “against” someone else. If these people feel they can define my vote, I’m certainly going to define theirs. A GOP-E vote is a vote to sustain everything that is wrong with today’s Republican Party.
Ted Cruz has it right: if you vote for something or someone, that means you support what you vote for. That kind of clear thinking tends to anger Republicans whose conservatism stops at the edge of their ballot.
Be well.
How about Rand Paul, another RINO for endorsing Mitch?
_____________________________________________________________
Bingo! Rand Paul’s nephew is McConnell’s campaign manager. They are hoping Mitch will help Rand in his 2016 bid for the Presidency. Rand Paul has become a Washington, inside-the-Beltway, political whore. But, thank God, we still have a “TRUE” Conservative choice in Ted Cruz. As far as getting the backing of Conservatives in 2016, it’s like my daddy used to say: Rand Paul has pissed into the wind.
That’s not true. A Rino as an incumbent locks the seat up for many years — particularly Senators. They also (due to the nature of incumbancy) dissuade another Republican from running against them.
Look at Arlen Spectre’s career as an example.
“Arlen Specter (February 12, 1930 – October 14, 2012) was a United States Senator from Pennsylvania. Specter was a Democrat from 1951 to 1965, then a Republican from 1965 until 2009, when he switched back to the Democratic Party. First elected in 1980, he represented his state for 30 years in the Senate. Specter was a moderate who usually stayed in the political center.”
You want more of those or you want to give an honest conservative a shot at the seat?
Always support the most rightward viable conservative in every race. That's the Buckley Rule. In the Bevin/McConnell primary, Bevin is the choice.
In the General Election, Bevin is the choice in a Bevin/Grimes matchup.
In the General Election, McConnell is the choice in a McConnell/Grimes matchup.
In each of those three scenarios, the most rightward viable conservative wins.
Never vote for the Democrat, and never stay home and pout on Election Day because you don't like the Republican.
“Cotton advocates that conservatives sit it out, and I say that is nutz because it leads to dirty harry as the majority leader.”
Have you read much history of the republican party since the depression? For decades, the attitude of the republicans has been “all we have to do is get our guys the nomination. We can’t win without the conservatives so we’ll just spoon-feed them some stuff and they’ll vote for whoever has the “r” next to their name.”
Another dynamic has been the “lesser of two evils” argument. You used it yourself, “the democrat’s worse, so vote for the republican,” or “vote for the republican so we get control of the senate!”
This argument is always used with conservatives, that is, between a moderate or establishment republican and a democrat, the moderate or establishment candidate is the “lesser of two evils.”
But notice the point of view of the moderate or establishment types. To them, between a conservative and a democrat, the democrat is “the lesser of two evils.”
Again, I point to Dede Scozzafava, who endorsed the democrat over the conservative; Richard Lugar, who has endorsed the democrat in Georgia, who is apparently preferable to any of the conservatives running; John Warner, who would not endorse Oliver North in 1994 and who this year, endorsed the incumbent democrat over an ESTABLISHMENT REPUBLICAN; Lisa Murkowski, who instead of endorsing the republican victor after the primary, ran an independent campaign with the help of democrats, who knew she would be better than Miller, a conservative; Arlen Specter, who with the help of Bush and Rove, convinced Rick Santorum to endorse him in 2004, and then in 2006 when Santorum was running, Specter refused to endorse Santorum. And on, and on.
I think McConnell knows he’s going to lose in November, and he sees his mission now is to prevent another conservative from getting into the senate (especially one to replace him). So it’s destroy, destroy, destroy!
I am done with rewarding with a vote who pretend to be conservative around election time. I left my ballot blank for US Senate in 2012 and thousands like me did the same and Scott Brown is not trying to get power in another state because he couldn’t be elected dog catcher here.
McConnell has openly and behind the scenes undermined and lambasted conservatives, but then he wants their vote every six years. He thinks they won’t remember his treachery. And he may be right. We’ll see. But I hope he’s removed from power this year one way or the other. Because either way, either in the minority or in the majority, republicans in the senate will have new leadership. And frankly, I think we will take the senate even if McConnell loses.
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