Kentucky Gubernatorial Candidate Matt Bevin Pledges to De-Fund Planned Parenthood

In Kentucky, gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin has announced that he intends to defund Planned Parenthood if he wins the election. Bevin is the GOP’s nominee for governor and will be facing pro-abortion Jack Conway in the general election. Currently, Conway is the attorney general for Kentucky and the Democratic nominee.

In a press release, Bevin said, “As Governor, I will direct my Secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services not to distribute federal taxpayer dollars from that department to Planned Parenthood clinics. Federal taxpayer dollars appropriated to Planned Parenthood flow through the Governor’s administration. As Governor, I will prevent those dollars from being distributed, and order them returned to the federal government.”

In 2014, Bevin ran for U.S Senate but was defeated by pro-life challenger Mitch McConnell. However, during his campaign he was not shy about his pro-life views. His official Senate campaign website said, “Matt is pro-life and believes we have a duty to protect unborn human life. In the U.S. Senate, Matt will vote against any bill that contains federal funding or other material support for abortions.”

The website also highlighted Bevin’s desire to advance adoption efforts in Kentucky. It said, “[Matt] also believes we must encourage a culture of life that makes adoption easier. Matt is the proud father of nine children, four of whom he and his wife adopted from Ethiopia. He has also been a long-time, significant supporter of orphanages around the world, investing both his dollars and his time.”

As LifeNews previously reported, in a letter to current Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear and Attorney General Jack Conway, 44 legislators requested that they open an investigation into Planned Parenthood’s abortion and organ harvesting practices.

So far, 12 states have responded to the Planned Parenthood videos and launched investigations into their abortion and organ harvesting business including South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Kansas, Missouri, Arizona, Indiana, Ohio, Georgia, Texas and Louisiana. And three states have revoked taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood’s abortion business, including Alabama, New Hampshire and Louisiana.

The state investigations are a response to horrifying footage of Planned Parenthood executives negotiating the sale of aborted babies, admitting to using altered abortion procedures to obtain salable body parts and casually discussing “less crunchy” methods for procuring fetal “tissue.”

On August 2nd, the Center for Medical released a fifth video showing the Director of Research for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, Melissa Farrell, bragging about the Texas Planned Parenthood branch’s long history with fetal tissue sales, including its ability to deliver fully intact aborted babies.

Last month, the Kentucky Cabinet for Health & Family Services said they gave over $330,000 in taxpayer funding through local health departments to “Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky.” Unfortunately, it is unlikely that Gov. Beshear and Attorney General Conway will grant the legislators request because they are both pro-abortion.

http://www.politico.com/

How Matt Bevin learned to love Mitch McConnell

It may have something to do with becoming the GOP’s nominee in the Kentucky governor’s race.

Battered by a bitter loss in a Senate primary last year, Matt Bevin steadfastly — and repeatedly — refused to endorse the victor: Mitch McConnell.

“You can’t punch people in the face, punch people in the face, punch people in the face, and ask them to have tea and crumpets with you and think it’s all good,” Bevin said after he lost by 25 points to the powerful Republican leader. “Life doesn’t work that way.”

Now, Bevin wants life to work that way.

Since the 48-year-old Republican businessman narrowly became the GOP’s nominee in the Kentucky governor’s race last month, Bevin has publicly and privately wooed McConnell, trying to reset his relationship with a man who controls the state’s political machine. Immediately after he was declared the victor by 83 votes, Bevin called McConnell at his home in Louisville to solicit the GOP leader’s advice. He made a humorous video and showed it to the state Republican Party to make light of their acrimonious past. (He made sure to give McConnell’s team a heads-up before releasing it publicly, even offering veto rights.)

Bevin has scrubbed his Twitter account of all tweets prior to February — which included a parade of anti-McConnell posts. He and his team have been making overtures to key figures in McConnell’s world, including some who once launched fierce assaults on Bevin’s record. And he has sought to tap into McConnell’s vast fundraising network ahead of what will likely be a bruising campaign against Democrat Jack Conway, the state’s attorney general.

McConnell publicly endorsed Bevin after his victory but hasn’t said much beyond a terse statement. Exactly how much the GOP leader will help Bevin is still undetermined. First, Bevin will have to prove he’s a formidable candidate and finish healing old wounds before the GOP leader considers putting the strength of his machine behind him, several GOP sources said

It takes a little while,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who said he would help Bevin raise money. “I don’t think unity is immediate or automatic. But I think we’re well on our way.”

Bevin’s intensified outreach to McConnell underscores the limits of tea party insurgency, particularly in a general election when candidates need to appeal to a more diverse electorate. For Bevin, the benefits of having McConnell behind him are obvious. Beyond his ability to raise cash from big donors, McConnell is a wily tactician who has survived hard-fought campaigns, so he could provide crucial strategic advice — not to mention access to a vast database on 1.2 million voters across the state.

“Sen. McConnell is just a pivotal figure in the Republican Party in Kentucky,” said Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), noting how McConnell has spent his three-decade career building a once-diminished party into a powerful force in a state where a majority of voters are registered Democrats.

McConnell, too, could use an ally in Frankfort — especially to aid his years-long drive to flip the Democrat-held state House for Republicans. Yet virtually nobody thought that person could be Bevin, a political neophyte who was unable to respond to the systematic attacks McConnell’s campaign waged from the moment he even considered running against the GOP leader in 2014.

In the days since the gubernatorial primary, the Kentucky political world has watched an awkward dance by the two men. McConnell, who stayed out of the four-way primary, issued only a terse, one-sentence endorsement of Bevin. Bevin responded by showing Republicans gathered for a Lincoln Day Dinner in Lexington a satirical video poking fun at his dysfunctional relationship with McConnell, an attempt to make light of the tension between the two and move past it.

The parody video, set to the classic Turtles song “Happy Together,” features Bevin as a McConnell groupie, sporting multiple “Team Mitch” shirts, pretending to warn McConnell about a looming filibuster by Paul and sitting in a tattoo artist’s chair to get some pro-McConnell ink. The audience erupted in laughter, attendees said — and McConnell told Paul too that he thought it was “pretty funny.”

“It’s pretty much exactly what he needed to do and still needs to — which is come to hat in hand to Sen. McConnell and say, ‘Look, we are in the same party. I know we were shooting at each other in that Senate primary. But I’m going to be your governor,’” said Rep. Thomas Massie, the northern Kentucky conservative Republican.

McConnell skipped the Lincoln Day Dinner because of his schedule in Washington, though his state director, Terry Carmack, read aloud a letter from the GOP leader announcing his support for Bevin and his running mate, Jenean Hampton, as well as other Republicans on the ticket. The letter didn’t go beyond that.

Bevin, who refused to be interviewed, is “honored” to have McConnell’s support and endorsement, according to his spokesman.

“We understand that as Senate majority leader, he will be very busy with the Senate, but him and Matt have spoken and we look forward [to] the senator campaigning with Matt and helping us fundraise as we move ahead into the general election,” said the spokesman, Ben Hartman.

But the statement may be a bit presumptuous. McConnell has yet to promise any fundraising help or campaign appearances to Bevin, sources said. And a McConnell spokesman declined to comment.

Speaking on Louisville talk radio Monday, McConnell credited Bevin for running a “smart” campaign in the contentious primary. But McConnell demurred when asked whether he would put the muscle of his fundraising apparatus behind Bevin.

“I’m certainly going to support him for governor,” McConnell said. “We need to go in a different direction in this state.”

It’s no secret that McConnell preferred a different GOP nominee, several of his allies said. But chastened by his decision in 2010 to publicly back Paul’s primary opponent, McConnell stayed neutral in the 2015 gubernatorial primary. And unlike this race, McConnell quickly took Paul under his wing in the 2010 race and was instrumental in helping guide the candidate to a resounding victory in the general election.

While McConnell’s assistance would be a boon to Bevin, the extent to which he needs the GOP leader is a matter of debate. He largely self-funded his primary victory against state Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, Louisville businessman Hal Heiner and former state Supreme Court justice Will Scott. But Democrats are salivating at the prospect of taking on Bevin. Conway, who lost to Paul in the 2010 Senate race, had only token opposition in his primary and has been methodically preparing for this fight.

“In the last several weeks since the primary, I’ve talked to numerous Republicans across this state who say the Republican Party committed suicide for this governor’s race when they elected Matt Bevin,” Gov. Steve Beshear, the term-limited Democrat, said in a phone interview. “There’s no question that the Republican primary produced a candidate for them for the fall that many Republicans can’t support.”

Attempts by McConnell and Bevin to move past their enmity will require them to reckon with the harsh rhetoric they’ve used in the past. In the 2014 campaign, Bevin’s campaign lashed McConnell as a “bully” who would “say anything” to get elected — a “career politician” who “voted for amnesty” and now covers it up with “fakery.” He has decried McConnell’s “Machiavellian death grip” on Kentucky politics and compared him repeatedly to President Barack Obama, who’s detested in much of the Bluegrass State.

Things got increasingly personal throughout the race, hitting a peak when Bevin enlisted his young daughter Olivia to bash the GOP leader.

“Mitch McConnell is telling a bunch of lies about my dad,” his daughter said in an ad. “Don’t be fooled.”

The words from McConnell campaign officials weren’t much nicer. They referred to him as “bailout Bevin,” an “East Coast con man” with “delusions of grandeur.” They lampooned him relentlessly for appearing at a rally for cockfighting supporters. And they cast him as a political shape-shifter and part of a tea party “fringe.”

Democrats are relishing the infighting. They have created a website highlighting past comments from McConnell and campaign operatives who criticized Bevin. Included on the site are some sharp barbs from Josh Holmes, McConnell’s chief campaign aide last year. “If somehow Matt Bevin got into the governor’s mansion his only agenda would be the commissioning of his portrait,” Holmes told the Louisville Courier-Journal in early May.

But in a sign of how eager Bevin is to move past the 2014 primary fight, his team has reached out to Holmes — as well as other senior figures in McConnell’s orbit — to try to make peace, sources said.

McConnell, a consummate political animal, is not angry at the attacks leveled against him, allies say. What irritates McConnell was Bevin’s refusal to endorse the senator, something the GOP leader believes is important to uniting a fractured party. Asked repeatedly last year whether he’d back McConnell, Bevin demurred, though he was eager to endorse and campaign for other candidates last fall.

What bothers McConnell’s allies more has been Bevin’s recent denials that he stiff-armed the Senate majority leader. In the last days of his gubernatorial primary, Bevin insisted that the entire narrative of his refusal to endorse McConnell was a media-concocted fiction. He claimed that after losing to the senator, he was a visible presence at McConnell rallies, urging supporters to vote Republican, even if he never explicitly endorsed McConnell.

“I did it more than anybody did,” Bevin said at a campaign stop last month. Reminded that he never mentioned McConnell’s name at all of these events, he added, “Fill in the blanks.” And to underscore his point, he urged reporters to contact Larry Cox, a longtime McConnell ally, who sat next to Bevin at one pro-McConnell dinner in LaRue County last year.

But Cox recalls it differently.

“That is outlandish,” he said in a phone interview. “At that dinner, he never invoked McConnell’s name. He never invoked it at any time. When I read that quotation from him, I thought, ‘Why would he do something that’s so easily disproved?’ I’m an open guy and a well-known commodity [in Republican circles]. I would never vouch for something like that.”

While Bevin appears to have changed his tune since the primary, many are wondering what this means for the two men ahead of November.

“I’m sure he will help some, but to what degree, I don’t know,” Massie said of McConnell. “He’s certainly not obligated to enthusiastically help.”

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