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Oooh, I hear laughter in the rain...That song's been running through my head all day... Neil Sedaka Ooooh, how I love the rainy days and the happy way I feel inside...Bob Bennett is toast. The Utah delegates said so today, speaking on behalf of their fellow Utah citizens (would that be Utes?... ) He was in near tears at the shock, the SHOCK! of losing his "career". Ummm, bub, (Bob), that was never meant to be a "career". This is the problem. These SOBs have been in there so long it is their freaking career. And it has been, because...

Scott Brown in Massachusetts... Chris Christie in New Jersey... Bob McDonnell in Virginia -- they were the warm up acts... That's a Tea Party! Then Michigan's Bart Stupak hit the grill and the sound of sizzling scorched the air. That's a Tea Party! Today we have Utah's Bob Bennett's scalp... That's a Tea Party! Yep, the Tea Party Movement's on the move. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuLjAOgQqOA]

Video from ksl.com Salt Lake City + a video report from fox13now.com

Bennett Won't Appear On Senate Ballot May 8, 2010 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Share This By Reid Wilson Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) has lost the battle for a fourth term in office after delegates to the UT GOP convention refused to renominate him on Saturday, a highly-placed source with knowledge of the vote count tells Hotline OnCall. Instead, GOPers will choose between attorney Mike Lee (R) and business consultant Tim Bridgewater (R), who will advance to a third ballot. If neither candidate receives 60% of the vote, they will face off in a June 22 primary....

SALT LAKE CITY — Three-term Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett advanced to a second round of balloting at the Utah GOP state convention Saturday, but the embattled senator's political career remained in danger of ending later in the day. Bennett came in third out of eight candidates in the first round of balloting of the roughly 3,500 delegates, trailing attorney Mike Lee and businessman Tim Bridgewater. Bennett got 885 votes, behind Lee and Bridgewater, who had 982 votes and 917 votes respectively. A second round of balloting to narrow the field to two candidates began Saturday afternoon after each of...

A Republican senator from Utah is set to lose the party's nomination on Saturday and become a high-profile casualty of the Tea Party movement. After 18 years representing the western state, Bob Bennett, 76, faces the wrath of party activists who think he has drifted too far to the middle ground and become too identified with broken central government. He will be opposed at caucuses by eight opponents all to his Right politically who have all sought the endorsement of the state's active Tea Party groups. Under Utah's quirky rules, without 40 per cent of the vote at Saturday's party...

No one doubts the sincerity or power of the tea party movement anymore. We get it: free market principles, limited government and individual liberty. Those are the three fundaments of the tea party's "Contract from America," to which any serious Republican must subscribe, nay, sign in blood. Make it real red. Nowhere is this new power-to-the-people imperative in starker relief than in Utah – one of the nation's reddest states – where three-term conservative Sen. Bob Bennett seems likely to lose the Republican Party nomination this weekend. This, despite the fact that Bennett earns an 84 rating from the American...

Bob Bennett has a new ad out in Utah that is the epitome of just how out of touch the man has gotten, replacing the common touch with arrogance. The advertisement has several recipients of Bob Bennett earmarks saying Bob Bennett is the indispensable man and without Bob Bennett the water would go away, the animals and people would die, and Utah would return to the state of nature that existed before man walked the Earth — or at least before Bob Bennett went to the Senate to replace his dad. Seriously. Watch it for yourself and then I’ll point...

Unless Sen. Bob Bennett's political fortunes change dramatically in the next two weeks, he could become Utah's first incumbent U.S. senator to lose his party's nomination in seven decades. A new Salt Lake Tribune poll of Republican delegates shows Bennett running in third, behind GOP challengers Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater. Lee logged 37 percent support in the survey, while Bridgewater came in at 20 percent, and Bennett lagged at 16 percent. And in a Republican race where only two can survive, that would spell the end for the three-term senator. Bennett's biggest liability, Coker said, is that delegates have...

SALT LAKE CITY -- Republican Sen. Bob Bennett - darling of the National Rifle Association and grandson of a Mormon Church president - suddenly may not be conservative enough for ultraconservative Utah. Bennett could become the first 2010 election casualty among incumbent U.S. senators if he fails to win at least 40 percent of the 3,500 delegates at the state GOP's convention May 8. His struggle to win a fourth six-year term underscores two forces driving the GOP's fortunes in 2010 as the party out of power seeks more seats in Congress:

So, why is Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff so confident that Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) is on track to lose at the state GOP convention on May 8? I got an early look at a survey of state GOP delegates conducted by a Utah firm. It's not pretty. When more than 1,000 delegates were polled on their choices in the Senate race, only 15 percent chose Bennett. When asked for a second choice, only 5 percent picked Bennett. In the first test, he's barely in the top three, which raises the possibility of the three-term senator getting knocked out of...

UT-Sen: Could Robert Bennett Be the First Victim of Anti-Individual Mandate Anger? By: Jon Walker Wednesday March 24, 2010 6:25 pm Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) is in a serious fight for his political survival. His is currently getting challenged from the right by several Republican candidates who think he is too liberal to be the Republican nominee for Senate. The recent enactment of the health insurance reform law and the anti-individual mandate effort it stirred up could turn out to be a real liability for Bennett. Prominent conservatives, like Erick Erickson, have realized that Bennett was for the individual mandate...

Sen. Bob Bennett's re-election bid could be in serious trouble, based on reports of widespread opposition to the incumbent at Tuesday's Republican caucuses. While not definitive, interviews with a dozen caucus-goers around the state reflected a familiar theme: Support was not coalescing behind any Bennett challenger, but there was a strong "anybody-but-Bennett" sentiment. Jim Bennett, the senator's son and campaign spokesman, said the campaign is optimistic and believes that many Bennett supporters got elected as delegates, but may not have made as much noise as the anti-Bennett crowd. "We're waiting for the hard data to come in, but we are...

Bob Bennett must be really worried. In the past couple of weeks, a few people have come to RedState to defend Bob Bennett against our pointed criticisms of just how bad he is. And if this is a defense of Bennett, Bennett is not defendable. A Senate staffer (or Senator?) using the name ecfinder writes: Erickson, sometimes you make good points. But this one is not one of them. Why are you so against Bennett from Utah? Have you even ever been to Utah? Why do you have so much interest in a state you don’t even reside? I suggest...

If an anti-incumbent tide sweeps Sen. Bob Bennett out of Congress later this year, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a fellow Utah Republican, doesn't sound like he'll be too upset. "The people are restless, they want to see change, and Sen. Bennett, with all due respect, he is going to have to go out and defend his record and explain some things to voters," Chaffetz told CNN Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Bennett is seeking a fourth term, but is battling a tough anti-incumbent mood and multiple Republican challengers who are upset with his votes for the banking and auto...

Fueled by a deep mistrust of the federal government and Tea Party fervor, a House committee approved a bill Tuesday aimed at enabling Utah to opt out of national health-reform efforts. .... Mike Lee, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, said the legislation empowers the states to decide who should enact health reform, rather than letting the federal government "commandeer" the Legislature's authority. "The state is a sovereign. It's not the lapdog of the federal government," Lee said, an attorney, who said he believes such a law would withstand legal challenge.

The biggest problem with the Book of Mormon is that it exists, says Sen. Bob Bennett...The Republican senator from Utah is the author of "Leap of Faith," which was recently released by Deseret Book...Bennett didn't like the way the Book of Mormon was represented in media coverage leading up to the 2002 Winter Olympics... "The tenor of the articles that kind of started me on this was that no one of any intelligence could believe the incredibly outlandish story about angels and gold plates, that any person with the slightest bit of education would reject this out of hand," he...

On the state Capitol steps, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff today announced that he will run for the U.S. Senate to help salvage our "blessed but troubled nation" from the slide toward "socialism." "The winds of change, they are a-blowing," Shurtleff said in prepared remark. "Not the bigger government, corporate welfare, radical liberal nannyism type of change promised and now being implemented by [President Barack] Obama. But, starting today, we the people of Utah, we the people of the United States, are taking back America!" In a fiery speech filled with red-meat rhetoric used by talk-show hosts like Glenn Beck, whom...

The Interior Department's Web site links to a page highlighting key officials. It's blank. ... Part of the holdup stems from a clash with Utah's two senators [...]. ... "We have a lot of work to do and some of it is on hold simply because we don't have the personnel confirmed as of this point," Salazar said. ... Sen. Bob Bennett, for one, isn't sure he wants that team in place. Bennett has placed a hold on the nomination of David Hayes to be deputy secretary out of concern about Salazar's decision to pull back on 77 leases for...

Contact: Tara Hendershott, Washington, D.C., FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE      February 26, 2009      Bennett Statement Regarding the President's Budget WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) today issued the following statement regarding President Obama’s outline of his administration’s budget. “Within the first few weeks of his administration, the president has passed a spending bill of one trillion dollars and unveiled a budget plan of over four trillion, which is projected to create a deficit level that our country has not seen since World War II. While I appreciate the president’s good faith effort in presenting a transparent budget, I fear that...