Posted on 11/18/2014 12:55:50 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Former Sen. Bob Bennett says even though Republicans are set to take over Congress come January, don't expect Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee to set the agenda.
Bennett, speaking at a conference in Washington, says Sen. Mitch McConnell, who will be majority leader in the next Congress, has done a masterful job of "isolating" Ted Cruz.
"There is no cannier politician in Washington than Mitch McConnell," said Bennett. "Yes, Ted Cruz is an unsettling factor within the Republican conference. My sense of things is Mitch has very carefully, very methodically, very much under the radar isolated Ted Cruz. He's kind of sealed him off like a body puts a sac around some foreign matter it would prefer to expel but, if it can't, it can at least cut it off."
Bennett says McConnell's work has diluted the power of the Tea Party Caucus in the Senate.
"When the Tea Party Caucus was formed it was going to be so powerful. We heard all about it in Utah when Mike Lee was elected," said Bennett, who was ousted by Lee in 2010. "Lee said 'I'm going to have all these buddies and we're going to take over.' By the time McConnell was finished, the Tea Party Caucus was Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and Jim DeMint, and DeMint left."
Bennett says at this point the power of the Tea Party in the next Congress will be more mythical than reality.
"Rand Paul didn't join and Marco Rubio didn't join. Cruz is going to look around and find that there are not going to be very many people with him."
Here's the video courtesy of C-SPAN.
Poor Bob, still has tear tracks on his cheeks from Mike Lee dumping him.
McConnell is an old man. This is his last hurrah.
Cruz and Lee will be setting agendas for decades to come.
And their new friends named Ernst, Lankford, Cotton...and more.
Sure glad we got that majority! See kids? Voting for R’s because they’re R’s really works!
Senator Bennett does not realize that Sen. Cruz has a bright future.
“Cruz is going to look around and find that there are not going to be very many people with him.”
Except the American people who apparently don’t matter to Bennett.
Asshat.
RINOs to the core..
“Rand Paul didn’t join and Marco Rubio didn’t join”
Closet democrats don’t usually caucus with Republicans.
Er... I meant “with Conservatives”
Oh yeah, McConnell is soooo smart. And he has a spine of steel. And nothing succeeds like triangulating and dissing your base.
Somehow I don’t think we have heard the last of Ted Cruz and the Tea Party. For anyone to summarily write the conservatives off, due to McConnell has “masterfully isolated them” - they are, themselves, trying to craft the agenda.
See what happens when conservatives vote for RINOs?
RINOs are the evilest bunch because they turn on their own grassroots.
Was this the Epic Losers Conference? The TEA Party has been buried more times than beef bones in a dog pound. Yet this loser cheers himself by declaring them dead once again.
It only takes a spark of freedom to start a prairie fire that will consume tha carefully constructed layers of oppressions weighing us down.
The GOPe is all about holding their powerbase intact. They know their rank and file are conservatives but they screw us at every turn. That’s OK. These fools can enjoy their last years in power. Tea Party people are going nowhere.
Rand Paul and Marco Rubio didn’t join because they had a separate agenda of their own that was in opposition to the conservative agenda.
Rand Paul isn’t even a RINO, he’s the anti-Republican, who only acts like a Republican when he thinks there is something to gain. Rand Paul stands for nothing but Rand Paul.
Rand Paul is in the Rand Paul caucus now. Rubio pretty got dis-invited from the caucus when he f’d up so badly siding with Shumer and Durbin against the conservatives.
I am not totally sour on Rubio, but make no mistake, he is hated by many a conservative now in Florida.
Step aside RINOs. All your GOP belong to us.
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