McConnell Wins Ky. Primary, Senate Conservatives Fund Immediately Endorses

National Review ^ | 5-20-2014 | Patrick Brennan

[smoothsailing]

MAY 20, 2014 7:36 PM

McConnell Wins Ky. Primary, Senate Conservatives Fund Immediately Endorses

By Patrick Brennan

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell had been pulling away from primary challenger Matt Bevin for the last couple months of the Kentucky GOP Senate primary, and he triumphed easily tonight, with news organizations calling the win for him soon after polls closed. He’s leading 60 percent to 35 with 27 percent of precincts reporting.

The Senate Conservatives Fund, a Jim DeMint–linked outside group that’s backed a number of tea-party candidates, had made Bevin one of their key candidates this year, hoping to unseat the minority leader. (SCF-endorsed Ben Sasse triumphed in the Nebraska Republican Senate primary two weeks ago.) But after McConnell triumphed tonight, SCF was quick to endorse his general-election effort, releasing the following statement from executive director Matt Hoskins:

We congratulate Senator McConnell on his victory and urge Republicans in Kentucky to come together to defeat Alison Lundergan Grimes. We thank Matt Bevin for standing up for conservative principles and giving voters a choice in this race. Now it’s time for Republicans to unite for victory in November.

Bevin, a successful businessman, never saw his fundraising take off, and didn’t put as much of his personal money into the race as some had expected him to.

McConnell will face Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky’s secretary of state. The most recent polling has them more or less tied, both below 50 percent, though most expect McConnell will strengthen when he can direct his attention undivided toward the general election.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Does it really matter if they vote for the Dip#@%# or the Pub-E in the fall?

[Jim from C-Town]

Look at the fact that this turd couldn’t win more than 60% of the Republican vote AND HE IS THE LEADER IN THE SENATE>

This does not bode well for his reelection. Lots of angry Republicans may not vote for this punch bowl turd.

[Breto]

Conservatives in this country have no representation in Government thay are no ones constituents and everybody’s enemy. The GOP does not deserve conservative support anymore than the DNC..

[napscoordinator]

I want him to win the election in November. However, why does he have to be Senate Majority Leader? He was already and did a terrible job. Why can’t somebody else be the Leader? The reason i want him is because I want the Senate. I don’t want it 50-50. I want it 58-42....so if we have a few RINOs we still have the committees and room for the RINOs to not vote correctly. 2016 we may lose the Senate again so why not win for two years.

[smoothsailing]

Yes, it really matters.

[Norm Lenhart]

There is a word that describes people/groups that spend months/years and millions of dollars telling us all who unconservative/unfit for the job someone is, only to throw their full conservative support behind that unconservative/unfit for the job person.

The word is “FRAUD”. That word also describes those who back and support them.

[Norm Lenhart]

“Why can’t somebody else be the Leader?”

Because people “Want him to win in November” and will keep electing their problems.

[Viking2002]

How much more self-abuse are you willing to inflict upon yourselves, Appalachia? NICE F*****G GOING, KENTUCKY.

I hope your coal tastes good for dinner.

[House Atreides]

The Senate Conservatives Fund is showing some “class” here. They’re trying to help McConnell recover from his and his campaign’s self-inflicted wounds by their warring on the Tea Party.

I suspect it will NOT be enough to enable McConnell to prevail in November—his viciousness toward the Tea Party will still be felt in the November election (less than six months from now).

[ifinnegan]

I believe fraud refers to people who hold your pro-Dem rule views while claiming to be for conservatism, or, more so, claiming to care about anything when nihilism is actually all you are pushing.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Once in leadership, it’s almost impossible to blast them out. They never go voluntarily. The only way to take McConnell out of leadership is to elect his rodent opponent.

[Norm Lenhart]

Don’t bitch when Mitch gives you amnesty. Just don’t. Sit in your basement and complain to yourself all you like. But don’t come online complaining to the world what your philosophy causes.

[Impy]

I wonder if Grimes would win a poll of freepers, she’d at least be competitive, which is sickening. A recent poll alleged that a clueless 25% of Bevin supporters would back her in November.

To anyone upset that Bevin lost, that’s like being upset you didn’t win the lottery, he had no chance, weak challengers like him don’t win.

[Jim from C-Town]

I want him to win as well. The point is that he couldn’t muster more than 60% of the Republicans to vote for him.

[Foundahardheadedwoman]

Don’t blame Kentuckians. I don’t even know anyone who wanted him back. Must a been a lot of bring home the bacon types out voting using the democommie technique of vote early and vote often. Even the dems had Ditch Mitch on their bumpers.
Coal does not taste good and has a very gritty texture. When your lights go out and you are freezing to death in the dark, don’t think badly of Kentuckians, we warned folks what was coming over 30 years ago. Maybe now as those electric bills climb and the black and brown outs start people will realize what we meant when we told them, if they can do it to us, they can do it to you. Invest in firewood and longjohns.

[Finatic]

Looks like Mitch has won the battle but he has certainly lost the war. The overall headcount of voters voting Grimes is more than what Mitch can pull in. I doubt he will pull off any more than 60% of the Bevin voters and its just not going to be enough.

Mitch is toast. If by somehow he wins in November than the jig is up on cheating in both parties.

I have a video business and a big part of my services are tape to DVD transfer and so I see lots of old commercials from peoples tapes. I was doing a dub the other day and damn if there wasnt a McConnell TV ad from the early 90s.

Term limits are the only thing that can save the country. Eff the elites. Heck, I am in Ohio and have Portman to deal with. Will he get my vote next election? No. Screw Vets once, just once, and you lose my vote. Forever.

[BillyBoy]

>> To anyone upset that Bevin lost, that’s like being upset you didn’t win the lottery, he had no chance, weak challengers like him don’t win. <<

Good point. I don't know why so many are treating the results in KY tonight as a shocking blow to the Tea Party. McConnell winning easily isn't news. If I lived there, I would have cast a protest vote for Bevin, but he was a long shot from the start, and completely DOA after he gave that speech to the "cockfighting" group. It's like getting upset that Nancy Pelosi was re-elected in San Francisco.

Another one where the outcome is a foregone conclusion is that "Obama's conservative cousin" will lose in Kansas. But in that case, I'm looking forward to the primary because there's nothing wrong with the incumbent and we need that race to go away so we can focus on defeating actual RINOs instead of eating our own.

[BillyBoy]

BTW, has anyone heard from the “Rand Paul is our heroic tea party savior and should be the GOP nominee for President in 2016” crowd tonight? ;-)

[ecinkc]

Well said.

I stumbled upon a commenter on the McConnell victory article at Breitbart tonight who was claiming that the Tea Party conservatives are making a big deal out of nothing. He said, "I am 65+ years old and am just as free now as the day I was born." and he added, "I just don't see your gripe."

After he was unpersuaded by my initial brief attempt at expressing why this matters, I decided to throw together a more thorough response. I think we need to be ready to explain that we keep hurting ourselves so long as we coddle these frauds who will not hold their ground in the times of our republic's most desperate challenges. Here is the long response offered in tho hope that it can kindle some ideas for how to express these ideas in conversations with people who seem to have no concept of what's at stake.

---

To the guy who doesn't really care much about whom we send to Washington

You are comfortable enough to be lulled into a complacency about real changes that are happening all around you.

Just because you're not as impacted as many business owners, you can't see any downside in the hundreds and thousands of new regulations dictated year after year.

Just because you like to pay for abortions, you don't mind that I have to.

Just because you think the concept of marriage is nothing but an antiquated irrational idea, you feel fine about some federal judge wiping out with a stroke of her pen a state's constitutional amendment passed by their electorate to maintain a status quo that has held strong for hundreds if not thousands of years in most western cultures.

You blithely look on from your cozy recliner as our national debt racks up at an astronomical rate, and why should you care? The next generation will have to bear that burden.

If you have grandkids who are in public schools your mind wanders off to some happy diversion to muffle their voices when they start talking about the climate they face in school wherein administrators go to considerable lengths to reduce their exposure to and expression of ideas that don't fit today's box. If those grandkids are looking forward to getting their first jobs, you couldn't care less about the fact their hireability is constantly eroding given that illegal immigrants are warmly welcomed by McConnell and his ilk. Furthermore, why should you be bothered when the government insists on telling unskilled laborers and employers how much they are worth to each other, imposing circumstances in which over a million jobs have to be eliminated?

You're happy to see my earnings commandeered for the sake of welfare services and education costs and incarceration costs for thousands of criminals who pour over our borders every month. Was a close relative of yours robbed or raped or murdered by one them? Of course not so why would that matter to you?

You don't invest your money in any of the many firearms manufacturers who are facing financial institutions that are bullied by Eric Holder's hush-hush program into severing ties with that un-favored industry.

Since you like your health insurance, why would you care that America has now begun deteriorating into a rationed care system that punishes those who, left to their own devices could have done much better. I know, there's nothing exceptional about individual responsibility and salf reliance.

You're already signed up for your health plan so why should you care that the government spent over $500 million of *someone's* money to buy a website that really still doesn't work from the First Lady's High School crush, and then wouldn't even be so accountable as to hand over the real numbers detailing its actual performance. You're not a doctor so why should you worry about what treatments a bureaucrat decides are and are not warranted for your patients?

You're not a teacher so why should you care about curriculum based on Washington's official party line about what is true, what is important and what is the best methodology to impose those views?

You're not tasked with law enforcement in a southwestern border state, so it's of no consequence that the federal government has decided that ICE agents no longer need to work with state police, sheriffs and municipalities to keep illegal immigrants in check. Obviously you weren't one of the American agents killed while staring down the barrel of a Fast and Furious distributed rifle, so how could you find it irritating when Obama suddenly claimed executive privilege to keep that program's documents under lockdown even though he insisted he had never seen them?

You not the parent of a soldier who lost his life when he courageously decided to enter the battle fray in Benghazi, so I realize you chuckle at those parents who are engaged in a struggle for answers about what happened that day. So what if Obama's state department suppressed thousands of pages and hid dozens of relevant witnesses all to help strengthen the president's relection political campaign by maintaining the illusion that terrorism had been nipped in the bud all over the world by that Chicago Kid of ours?

You, yourself, are the kind of feller who could never be mistaken for one who's plotting anything against the government, so it's no trouble to you that the government reads all your emails and tracks all your phone conversations. They can be trusted to be good stewards of that information and never use it in a way that would be untoward, right?

You're not earning a living by sweating it out in a conventional power plant every week day, so you can feel warm and fuzzy on the inside knowing that Solyndra was awarded many millions of dollars in grant money despite its doomed business model, merely because the company was well connected with democrat donors.

You have no interest in sentimental gestures toward the the men who were ready and willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to keep America free during WWII, so you're surely a bit tickled by the irony that the National Parks Service was ordered to INCREASE its non-essential man-hour and maintenance costs to make sure those veterans and their fellow citizens would "feel the pain" of barricades when my representatives in congress shutdown the government, attempting on behalf of citizens like me to rein in one of the most costly and ill conceived power grabs ever launched by our government.

Yep everything's going fine. Nothing much has changed. Who cares who gets sent to Washington to run the show?