Category: Mitch McConnell

Michelle Nunn Pulls a Grimes?

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Trouble for Democrats in Georgia:

Another Democratic Senate candidate has refused to say whether she voted for President Obama: This time it was Michelle Nunn in Georgia.
The same question has tripped up other red-state Democrats on the campaign trail. On two occasions over the past week, Kentucky’s Alison Lundergan Grimes has been panned for her refusal to answer the question, twice citing the “sanctity of the ballot box” as her reason for keeping mum.
Nunn was approached by a tracker who asked her if she voted for the president in 2008 or 2012. Nunn did not respond and kept walking towards the venue she was headed to. In the video captured, a member of her entourage faces the tracker and asks, “Would you leave her alone?”?

This could sabotage all hope for Democrats to maintain control of the Senate in next month’s election. After Grimes got “tripped up” over whether she voted for Obama, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee pulled its TV ads off the air in Kentucky. Although the Grimes campaign says they’ve still got plenty of money ($4 million), the DSCC move was a clear signal that Grimes’ blunder is viewed as a fatal error. There was only one TV debate between Grimes and Mitch McConnell, she blew it, and Democrats know she blew it. If we can now therefore say Mitch has got Kentucky in the bag, that changes the map in the Senate mid-term campaign.

As of today, 10 Senate races are rated toss-ups by Real Clear Politics, where the ratings are based on poll averages. Of those 10 seats, seven are held by Democrats and three by Republicans, while each party holds 46 seats rated either “likely” or “leaning.” If we rule out any unexpected meltdowns in one of those “likely/leaning” races, we see that the odds of a Republican takeover are roughly 2-to-1: The GOP must get to 51 seats to control a Senate majority; 46 seats are more or less locked up for them; and of the 10 “toss-ups,” 70% are held by Democrats, who are more that twice as vulnerable of losing half of those 10.

The seven toss-up states where the Senate seat is currently held by Democrats are: Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and North Carolina.  The three toss-up states where the Senate seat is currently held by Republicans are: Georgia, Kansas and Kentucky. But as we have seen, Kentucky just started looking like a loser for Democrats; if so, that would effectively put Republicans at 47 seats; and what if Nunn’s blunder takes Georgia off the map?

Polls had shown Nunn, daughter of Georgia’s legendary Democrat Sen. Sam Nunn, gaining ground against Republican businessman David Perdue. The difficulty facing the GOP in Georgia is that Michelle Nunn doesn’t have a prior legislative record, so she can play the “moderate” card and thereby avoid debating any issue where Democrat policies are controversial. However, now the question is asked, “Did you vote for Obama?” She can’t run away from it, you see, and if she tries to run away from it, she looks like a phony.

It’s too early to tell whether Nunn can recover in Georgia, but if she can’t, a Perdue win there and a McConnell win in Kentucky — assuming all the “likely/leaning” states break as predicted — puts the GOP at 48 seats, meaning they only need to win three of the remaining eight toss-up races to take control of the Senate. Now, let’s suppose that troubled Republican incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts can’t hang on in Kansas. That would be bad for the GOP, but it’s likely to be offset by Democrat Sen. Mark Begich’s defeat in Alaska.

Understand we’re counting hypotheticals now, but if the GOP wins both Kentucky and Georgia, if Roberts loses in Kansas and if Begich loses in Alaska, you would then have six remaining toss-ups and Republicans would need to win just two of those to get to 51 seats.

It’s hard to see Democrat Sen. Mark Pryor holding off the challenge from Tom Cotton in Arkansas, and Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu’s hope is obviously fading in Louisiana. Analyzing the battle for the Senate on a race-by-race basis, then, you see that Michelle Nunn’s problems in Georgia could be the crucial linchpin; if Nunn unravels in the final 19 days of the campaign, Harry Reid loses the gavel.

Overall, despite the many hypotheticals and contingencies, the trend is now running strongly against Democrats, in part because of factors beyond control of the rival parties. That is to say, the ISIS threat in Iraq and the Ebola threat here — both of which have made President Obama look incompetent — are undermining support for Democrats, no matter what happens in the day-to-day battles between GOP and Democrat candidates in each of the key states.

The latest poll in Iowa, for example, shows Republican Joni Ernst widening her lead over Democrat Bruce Braley. Is that a result of Ernst’s campaign strategy and a reflection of her good qualities as a candidate? Yes and yes. However, Ernst is also a beneficiary of the general trend nationwide, which is anti-Obama and anti-Democrat.

It’s by no means safe to predict a Republican victory on Nov. 4, but Democrats have just two chances of holding the Senate majority — and Slim keeps checking his watch and looking toward the door.

 

Kentucky Democrat Race-Baits McConnell’s Wife; Deletes ‘Asian’ Tweets

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Kathy Groob is a Democrat Party stategist in Kentucky, where Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell is fighting for re-election against Democrat Alison Grimes. Saturday, in a complete non sequitur, Groob sent out a series of Twitter messages saying that McConnell’s wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, “isn’t from KY, she is Asian.”

Groob’s tweets quickly disappeared — indeed, she deleted her entire Twitter account — but not before Phillip Bailey, political editor for Louisville public radio station WFPL screen-capped the “Asian” messages. Democrats rushed to condemn the messages, but this certainly isn’t the first time Chao’s ethnicity has made her the target of Democrat race-card tricks in this campaign. They were doing this stuff last year, back when it was still rumored that movie star Ashley Judd was going to seek the Democrat nomination against McConnell.

Question: How is this different from “birther” attacks on Obama?

How is it that Democrats get a free pass for doing this kind of stuff to Republicans, yet object vehemently to anyone who dares mention that the president’s father was a Kenyan socialist? If “the personal is political” — as feminists have been insisting for more than four decades — why is it these kind of identity-politics arguments are only acceptable if they help elect Democrats and advance a left-wing agenda? Far be it from me to argue that one’s personal experience, including perceptions about ethnicity, are always irrelevant to politics. Dinesh D’Souza (who, last time I checked, wasn’t from Kentucky, either) was roundly vilified for arguing that Obama’s worldview was profoundly influenced by his father’s anti-British/anti-colonialist/anti-capitalist attitudes.

D’Souza’s argument was less “racist” than the arguments of liberals who routinely claim that anyone who opposes Obama is a racist. And certainly, D’Souza’s own worldview has been shaped by his personal experience. In order to be a conservative Indian-American, after all, one must reject the kind of anti-Western attitudes — the residual resentments of colonialism — which D’Souza saw in the attitudes of Obama and Obama’s father. And I would argue that, whatever one’s ethnicity, for any “outsider” or underdog to succeed in America, it is necessary to resist the temptation to resent successful people. If you don’t want to be a loser, you must learn to emulate winners, not envy them.

Whatever your disadvantages in life, or whatever unfair privileges others may enjoy, determination, hard work and an honest character can overcome any obstacle anyone puts in your way. Resolve yourself to work hard despite every discouragement and to learn the lessons of every failure. Study the examples of others who have triumphed over adversity. Make a vow that, whether you ultimately win or lose, no one will ever be able to say that you failed because you didn’t work hard enough. Develop the kind of mental toughness that enables you to survive amid crisis and confusion. Constantly improve your skills, learning whatever you need to know to become better at whatever it is you do. Be flexible and quick to adapt to new circumstances. Learn to recognize opportunity. Become resourceful, so that no problem you encounter leaves you helpless. Most of all, remember that your struggle has a purpose that transcends your narrow selfish desires.

If God has chosen you to do great things, your success will be to His glory. God’s chastisement of your weakness and lack of faith — for this is what your failures really are — should be welcomed with gratitude, for by such chastisement is your faith tested, so that you become more humble, recognizing your debt to God’s grace, even as you grow stronger with each failure. God has some reason for all your toils and setbacks. God is testing you and teaching you, so that you will be ready to fulfill whatever purpose He has for your life. Therefore, thank God for your struggle, and determine to work harder every day to be prepared for whatever He may choose for your task.

This is my belief, and as D’Souza is a Christian, I presume that it is his belief also. Faith in God and a belief in the value of hard work were both crucial to the founding of this nation. We fight to defend our liberty and to defend our faith, and if it should be necessary, we will fight to defend America against any enemy, because we know that America truly represents the last hope for humanity. As Ronald Reagan once said, people come to America in search of freedom, but where will we go if we lose freedom here?

Elaine Chao is not exactly my favorite Republican. She’s not the kind of ferocious, two-fisted, red-meat, right-wing populist who gets me fired up. She’s a Chamber of Commerce type who speaks generally for the interests of big business. Nor is her husband a politician I admire; to be honest, I’m not even sure I would vote for McConnell if I lived in Kentucky. Nevertheless, insofar as Elaine Chao’s ethnicity is of any relevance to this election in Kentucky, it is as an example of how the American Dream is still very much alive. She arrived in America in 1961 as an 8-year-old who didn’t speak English, yet through hard work she got a Harvard MBA, became the Secretary of Labor and married a man who has become the most powerful Republican in Washington.

It is this kind of success story that should make every parent scream at their children: “Turn off that TV! Put down that videogame console! Pick up a book and start studying, you lazy brats! This is America! If Elaine Chao can make it, you’ve got no excuse!”

Such is the true lesson of Elaine Chao’s life, but Democrats . . . well, they’re Democrats, and if appeals to racism or sexism will help elect Democrats, this is what we expect from them. Last summer, when Alison Grimes announced her Democrat candidacy, Kathy Groob gushed all gooey what a wonderful thing it was for women:

Kathy Groob, a Covington-based political consultant and author of the book Pink Politics which focuses on female candidates and the way they can win, is supportive of a Grimes candidacy.
“Alison’s announcement (Monday) is an important step for women in politics in Kentucky and across the country,” said Groob, who attended the press conference in Frankfort. “When a 34-year-old accomplished woman is ready to take on one of the most powerful political men in the country, it’s a great day for women.”

Yeah, “a great day for women.” The feminist message in Kentucky:

“Vote Democrat, because you have a vagina!
And that Republican guy is married to a Chink.”

You stay classy, Kentucky Democrats.

 

Can Mitch McConnell Survive?

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Sam Youngman of the Daily Beast has a feature-style article about the annual Fancy Farm barbecue in Kentucky that is the traditional kickoff of the campaign season there, focusing on the Senate race between Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan Grimes:

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rolled up his sleeves and walked to the podium on stage at the brand new pavilion at Kentucky’s annual Fancy Farm picnic.
As McConnell geared up to rail against President Barack Obama and his “Kentucky candidate” Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes, he began by noting that, “Fancy Farm is fun, but there are serious problems facing our country.”
“YOU!” someone in the crowd shouted for all to hear.

The real political analysis is way down in the story:

Grimes has struggled since Kentucky’s May 20 primary, and while the race is a dead-heat, McConnell has edged into a slight lead, claiming momentum but still falling short of 50 percent in almost every poll. . . .
[O]ne reason McConnell is ahead and still favored to win this race is that both he and the outside groups supporting him have run a relentless campaign to tie coal and President Barack Obama’s unpopularity (the Bluegrass Poll released last week showed the president at 28 percent favorable) to Grimes.
In Eastern and Western Kentucky, where coal fields are pitching in to supply 43 percent of the nation’s electricity and both Democrats and Republicans believe that Obama is trying to murder their industry, livelihood and culture, Grimes’ numbers are down as McConnell appears at this stage in the game to have found the right vehicle for his anti-Obama message.

You can read the rest, but this is the baseline in Kentucky: McConnell is consistently polling below 50 percent, an indicator of trouble for any incumbent. His Democrat challenger, however, has been unable to take advantage of McConnell’s weakness because Democrat Party policies are so far to the left — not just culturally out of touch with Kentucky voters’ values, but directly opposed to their economic interests.

So a weird sort of stalemate grips the campaign, and we await the turning point that will decide the election. The lamentable part of this situation, from the GOP perspective, is that McConnell and the National Republican Senatorial Committee have spent the past 18 months crushing the enthusiasm of grassroots conservatives, waging a campaign to exterminate the Tea Party. The arguably criminal — certainly dishonest and unethical — conduct of the Mississippi primary campaign to re-elect Thad Cochran was witnessed by every Tea Party activist in the country, Kentucky included. Every deceitful smear against Chris McDaniel in Mississippi was a deliberate “f–k you” to grassroots conservatives, courtesy of the D.C.-based Republican political establishment of which Mitch McConnell is the official leader. If it weren’t for this factor — the transparent selfishness and corruption of McConnell and his GOP Senate cronies — the Senate race in Kentucky would not even be close. The major obstacle to McConnell’s re-election is not the usual problem of wooing undecided “swing” voters; his problem is that many thousands of Kentucky conservatives have little motive to vote for him in November.

As a conservative who profoundly despises Mitch McConnell and everything that unprincipled swine stands for, I feel guilty offering his campaign good advice, but the crisis facing our nation requires me to transcend my personal animosity to the man.

Therefore, I advise this: Get evil.

It’s time for McConnell, the NRSC and the Kentucky Republican Party to unleash against Alison Lundergan Grimes the kind of sneaky underhanded Nixonian dirty tricks that the GOP establishment used against Chris McDaniel in Mississippi:

  1. Racism — You can play this both ways. First and most obviously, circulate anonymous e-mails to rural white voters insinuating that Grimes is not only politically involved in promoting miscegenation in Kentucky schools, but is secretly engaged in an interracial affair herself. Meanwhile, you target black Democrats with anonymous e-mails that accuse Grimes of betraying civil rights and secretly harboring white supremacist tendencies. If the Grimes campaign finds out and blames Republicans for the e-mails, you say this proves that Grimes is a paranoid extremist.
  2. Anti-Semitism — Again, your dirty tricks squad will want to play the hate card both ways. Jewish voters will be targeted with messages claiming that the Grimes campaign is funded by wealthy Arabs and staffed by Muslim Brotherhood members who are working to elect Grimes, a fanatical Hamas supporter, to the Senate. Meanwhile, you assign a few operatives to troll neo-Nazi and 9/11 “Truther” Internet forums, claiming that Grimes is not merely a neocon warmonger, but is actually a Jew. “What kind of name is ‘Lundergan,’ huh? She made that up. Her real name is Lunderberg.”
  3. Homophobia — Here’s where you really pull out all the stops. You cover your bases by sending out anonymous messages to LGBT voters that Grimes is a hateful homophobe, but your main effort is to convince religious voters that Grimes is a radical lesbian, and you need to micro-target this message for maximum effect. For evangelicals, you tell them Grimes is having a gay affair with a black woman. You tell orthodox Jews that Grimes’ secret lesbian lover is a Palestinian Arab (one of her Muslim Brotherhood staffers). On neo-Nazi and 9/11 Truther forums, of course, your trolls claim Alison Lunderberg’s secret lesbian girlfriend is a Jew.

A dishonest smear campaign like this would be unethical and perhaps even illegal, but considering what the GOP establishment did to Chris McDaniel in Mississippi, why not do it to a Democrat?

 

Ditch Mitch?

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Who was ultimately responsible for the evil Mississippi primary campaign that smeared supporters of Chris McDaniel as racists?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, that’s who.

The GOP Establishment Incumbent Protection Machine and the big-money donors who fund it have been determined to eradicate the Tea Party movement in the 2014 campaign cycle.

This is McConnell’s formula for Republican success: Destroy all primary challengers, whatever the cost, and ensure that only Establishment-approved candidates win primaries in open-seat races or against vulnerable Democrat incumbents. It’s a cautious, risk-averse strategy, and if Republicans capture the Senate majority in November, McConnell will be congratulated on his success.

On the other hand . . .

What if it all goes sideways? What if this political equivalent of the NFL “prevent defense” turns out to be a formula for GOP failure?

What if all the big money and all the shrewd consultants turn out to be less valuable to Republicans than the grassroots conservative supporters who have been alienated by McConnell’s strategy?

What if Mitch McConnell loses his own Senate seat?

Manu Raju and John Bresnahan of Politico examine that scenario at some length today, and it’s not as far-fetched as it may seem.

Look at the polls: McConnell leads Democrat challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes by 5 points in the Real Clear Politics average, but the race has only been polled four times in the past two months, so we don’t know how solid that lead really is. Most importantly, McConnell is consistently polling below 50% — as low as 42% in a May poll — and that’s always a troubling sign for an incumbent.

As the Politico article says, if McConnell can’t defeat Grimes, the prospects for a GOP Senate majority are pretty remote. And if Republicans can’t take over the Senate this year — when they have every possible advantage, by ordinary calculations — it’s possible to argue that Republicans can never win a Senate majority, that the GOP is doomed to permanent minority status.

This scenario, the de facto triumph of Democrats as uncontested rulers of America as a one-party centralized state, would be a complete reversal of the “permanent Republican majority” Karl Rove promised in the wake of George W. Bush’s re-election.

After all the evil deeds perpetrated by the Republican establishment in the Mississippi primary, some of my conservative friends respond to this possibility with calm: “Let it burn,” they say.

It’s becoming harder to argue that these friends of mine are wrong.

 

Joblessness at Record Levels; So Why Does @BDayspring Still Have a Job?

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People Not In Labor Force Soar
To Record 91.8 Million; Participation
Rate Plunges To 1978 Levels
— Zero Hedge

U.S. job growth weakest in three years
— Reuters

With such grim economic news in the headlines, you might think that Brad Dayspring, communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, would try to avoid doing things as monumentally stupid as lying about Mark Levin:

Brad Dayspring, the communications director Levin described as an “idiot” and NRSC “hit man,” had earlier tweeted, “Fishy: Senate Conservatives Fund spent hundreds of thousands of donor dollars to make Mark Levin’s book a bestseller.” Dayspring’s assertion was completely false because he was referring to a paperback version of a book, published five years ago, that the Senate Conservatives Fund was merely offering to the group’s donors.
As Levin noted in a Facebook post in response to Dayspring’s smears, Liberty and Tyranny “is nearly 5 years old, sold nearly 1.3 million copies, and was on the New York Times best-seller list for half a year during 2009,” and “the Senate Conservative Fund (SCF) has been using the paperback version of the book in recent months to encourage donations in support of conservative candidates.” . . .
“Mitch McConnell’s National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) hit man, some idiot named Brad Dayspring, does not intimidate me and will not silence me with his sleazy inside-the-beltway tactics,” Levin wrote. “In fact, I am more fired up than ever.” . . .
“My opposition to McConnell’s re-election is underscored by pathetic behavior like this,” he continued. “Conservatives should not give a dime to the NRSC, money which is used to pay the salaries of these hit men and empower McConnell, et al.”

This circular firing squad behavior is profoundly discouraging, and is entirely the fault of the Senate GOP leadership.

My position on such matters has always been quite clear: The national party committees — NRSC, NRCC, RNC — should stay the hell out of contested primaries, period. If an incumbent Republican has a primary challenger, that’s his problem, and of no concern to the national committee, whose funds (and personnel) should be focused completely on defeating Democrats.

Deviation from that rule is tantamount to the national leadership controlling the party from the top down, which has the effect of discouraging grassroots involvement. And there is no good reason to believe that Senate GOP leaders know what they hell they’re doing when it comes to picking winners and losers in primaries. This problem with the NRSCC goes back at least to May 2009:

We were standing outside the Continental Lounge in Rosslyn, Va., while the young Republican operative explained it to me.
“All they care about is getting their chairmanships back, and they don’t care how they get there,” said the operative. “They don’t want to spend any money, so they were looking for a self-funder.”
“They” are Republican senators, and what my friend was explaining was the otherwise inexplicable decision of the National Republican Senatorial Committee to endorse Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate race — 15 months before the primary!

The NRSC’s meddling in the Florida GOP primary was a typical Establishment move, and resulted in the typical failure. I’ve tried to ignore the NRSC’s clueless blundering in recent months, but it’s 2014 now, the primaries are rapidly approaching, and if GOP geniuses like Brad Dayspring think they’re going to help their cause by picking a fight with Mark Levin, they’d better think again.

You Can Click Here and Donate to the
SENATE CONSERVATIVE FUND

You Can Click Here and Donate to
MATT BEVIN FOR U.S. SENATE

 And when you’re finished doing that, you could post a link to this item on your Facebook page or send it out via Twitter or e-mail.

If you haven’t been raising hell, now would be a good time to start.

 


Vichy GOP Irritates Dan Riehl. Unwise.

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by Smitty

Over at Breitbart, “Did the NRSC’s Josh Holmes Just Cost Mitch McConnell His Primary?”

Sorry, Mitch. I honestly had considered using my little platform here to try and encourage friends and fans to give you a pass, while shifting more time and money over to taking out Landrieu in LA. Thanks to your hand-picked would-be henchman at the NRSC, Holmes, that’s now an impossible position for me to take and defend. If the many phone calls I’ve had both to and from other activists in the last two days are any indication, all Holmes did was energize and incentivize the very movement against you, which you so shortsightedly dispatched him to the NRSC to try and quash.

Sending Josh Holmes to the NYT to pronounce a fatwah against associates of the Senate Conservatives Fund helps to pull the Tea Party/GOP struggle into focus.

I myself had been a part of the Silent Majority for years, and only got dragged into blogging after seeing the Google Reader touted on Slashdot, picking up Instapundit as subscription, who linked a certain Revanchist, Seditious Madman, who apparently liked my gags enough to rope me in. That was a couple of centuries back, in internet years. Continue reading Vichy GOP Irritates Dan Riehl. Unwise. →

Primary Politics: Can the Grassroots Defeat the GOP Establishment in 2014?

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Interesting developments: Matt Bevin is challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Kentucky GOP primary.

Checking his biography, I’m glad to see that Bevin is a graduate of Washington & Lee University, a U.S. Army veteran, and a small business owner — exactly the kind of outsider “not a politician” profile anyone would want in a Tea Party candidate. If grassroots conservatives in Kentucky rally behind Bevin, I think we can start chilling the champagne for Mitch McConnell’s retirement party. However, defeating the party’s Senate leader in a primary would be completely unprecedented.

If this is Star Wars, Luke Skywalker and the rebel alliance can’t expect Darth Vader to surrender the Empire without a fight. Or can we?

FLASHBACK MAY 2009:

We were standing outside the Continental Lounge in Rosslyn, Va., while the young Republican operative explained it to me.
“All they care about is getting their chairmanships back, and they don’t care how they get there,” said the operative. “They don’t want to spend any money, so they were looking for a self-funder.”
“They” are Republican senators, and what my friend was explaining was the otherwise inexplicable decision of the National Republican Senatorial Committee to endorse Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate race — 15 months before the primary!

Ah, those heady days of 2009, when the Tea Party uprising was a new and untested force in American political life, when Marco Rubio was 35 points behind Charlie Crist in the polls and supporters of that unknown underdog Marco Rubio were told he had no chance!

Rubio’s role in the “Gang of Eight” has rather tarnished his reputation among conservatives, but thank God he beat Charlie Crist, eh?

Nothing could be more corrupt than the shabby deal whereby John Cornyn, the NRSC and Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer — I pause to spit on the ground — lined up behind Crist in May 2009.

The “Not One Red Cent” rebellion was the first shot of a guerrilla struggle, with the Tea Party grassroots as the ragtag insurgents in a long war for control of the Republican Party that has not ended yet, and won’t end — cannot end — until the rebels have utterly vanquished the Beltway GOP Establishment and their go-along-to-get-along philosophy of bipartisan compromise. There is nothing that the present-day Democrat Party believes in that any patriotic American can endorse, and all talk of “bipartisanship” is anathema.

You cannot defeat Democrats by promising to cooperate with Democrats, and the GOP’s corrupt compromisers must be replaced by a new generation of conservatives who understand a very old idea: Give voters a choice, not an echo, as Phyllis Schalfly said in 1964.

To hell with anyone who says the politics of principle is unrealistic, who argues that it is a “smart” and pragmatic thing for Republicans to position themselves as the “Me, Too” party, promising voters a more efficient Welfare State — Democrat Lite, as it were.

The Democrat are wrong, their liberal policy agenda is bad, and Republicans need not apologize for being the party of Right and Good.

Mid-term elections are always more about the grassroots than are the pursuit of independent “swing” voters that is typical of those gaudy national spectacles of a presidential campaign. Turnout is always lower in the mid-terms. So-called low-information voters — who are usually counted in opinion polls as undecided, “don’t know/don’t care” — can be spurred to vote in a presidential election by emotional appeals to do their patriotic duty as citizens. But it is very difficult to explain to these disaffected and ill-informed people why electing congressmen and senators and state legislators is ultimately important to the future of the country. And it is only in closely contested “swing” states that the parties make any real effort to mobilize voters even in a presidential campaign.

Understanding this factor is crucial to evaluating the stakes in 2014. In a deeply “red” state like Kentucky in a mid-term election, there is comparatively little chance that a bruising primary fight for the GOP Senate nomination will damage Republican prospects in November 2014. If Matt Bevin can somehow mobilize the kind of grassroots support necessary to defeat Mitch McConnell in the primary, Bevin will stomp Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in the general election the way Godzilla stomped Tokyo.

Conservatives therefore need not listen to any scaredy-cat talk that support for Matt Bevin will endanger Republican hopes for capturing control of the Senate in 2014. The GOP Establishment will encourage such fears, and the liberal media will cheerfully publicize such talk, in exactly the same way the same people claimed that the Tea Party uprising of 2009-2010 was bad for Republicans. Yet the result in November 2010 was a historic landslide victory for Republicans, and if John Boehner doesn’t understand that he owes his control of the House Speaker’s gavel to the conservative grassroots, how better to remind Boehner of this fact than to send his Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell into early retirement?

Simple message for you, Mister Speaker: You could be next.

All of these thoughts were inspired by Erick Erickson’s commentary on his encounter with an NRSC representative at this past weekend’s Red State Gathering  in New Orleans.

What Erick relates is unfortunate on all sides. The NRSC operative was, we may suppose, just following orders, and Erick and I have had more than a few disputes in the past couple of years. But my own position in the fundamental question that Erick addresses hasn’t changed since 2009, when he and I were in 100% agreement: The NRSC should stay the hell out of contested Republican primaries, period.

Set aside any question of ideology, friendship or personal interest, and what it comes down to is this: Either the Republican Party represents an active and organic popular movement — a principled and patriotic opposition to the corrupt agenda of the Democrats — or else the GOP is simply a vehicle of careerist political ambition.

A top-down party controlled by insiders motivated by their narrow private interests cannot expect the kind of committed loyalty that a genuinely principled grassroots movement inspires. For the NRSC to go meddling in a primary — even on behalf of the Senate Minority Leader — is anathema to the kind of grassroots party the GOP must be, if it is ever to defeat the Democrats and become a governing majority again.

If Mitch McConnell wants to be re-nominated as the Republican candidate for Senate in Kentucky, let him spend his own campaign funds and mobilize his own resources for that purpose, and not dishonestly use national party resources against Matt Bevin.

And frankly, I think the spectacle of a contested primary can and should be averted altogether: Mitch McConnell should retire.

No hard feelings, Senator. Cash in your chips and walk away from the table, take up a gig at a think tank or lobby shop, collect your pension and appear on TV as an “elder statesman.” I’m sure Fox News would pay you a nice six-figure salary as a commentator.

There is a quite recent precedent, after all.

Last November, when the Retire #Taxby Chambliss movement began, nobody imagined it might actually happen, but it did, didn’t it?

Is this crazy? Of course it is. But everybody told us we were crazy to imagine that Marco Rubio could defeat Charlie Crist.

Until this morning, I’d never even heard the name Matt Bevin. All I know about him is what I’ve quickly skimmed from his Web site biography, and frankly I don’t give a damn about whatever his political “negatives” might be. This isn’t really about Matt Bevin. It’s not about Mitch McConnell. It’s not about Erick Erickson. This is about America’s future, and we are not a nation built by timid and fearful souls.

Here’s the way I see it: We’re playing Texas Hold ‘Em. It’s been one of those long nights — win a little, lose a little, up and down, never a chance to rake a big pot. The chips are dwindling. No guts, no glory, so if we get any kind of a decent hand, we might as well go all-in.

Folks, as crazy as this may seem, I think that if we will all rally behind Matt Bevin — and rally now — Mitch McConnell will announce by Christmas that he won’t seek re-election to the Senate.

No contested primary, no wasted resources, no hard feelings, just a changing of the guard, and a passing of the torch.

This development will shock the daylights out of the GOP Beltway Establishment, which has “tamed” Marco Rubio and thought they had domesticated the Tea Party movement.

Do we want bipartisan compromise?

Do we want Democrat Lite? Go along to get along?

Not just “no” — hell, no. All in!

 

MATT BEVIN for U.S. SENATE

 


Why Won’t Democrats Answer Questions About Kentucky Eavesdropping Scandal?

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The minute I mentioned the scandal involving Progress Kentucky’s secret recording of Mitch McConnell, the lady on the phone at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said, “I’ll put you through to his voicemail” — meaning DSCC spokesman Justin Barasky, who didn’t return my call. Gee, I wonder why?

The question of connections between Progress Kentucky and Democrat officials is not merely a matter of public relations, but also a matter of federal campaign law, which regulates “coordination” between political campaigns and outside groups. . . .
A Kentucky Democrat said Thursday that the Progress Kentucky activists bragged to him about their secret recording of McConnell. Did anyone at DSCC have knowledge of Progress Kentucky’s recording prior to its publication by David Corn at Mother Jones? McConnell has asked the FBI to investigate the recording, and it is not yet known whether potential violations of federal campaign law are part of that investigation.

You can read the whole thing at Viral Read. I’m not the only reporter getting the runaround from Democrats on this story. Dan Riehl asks: “What Did Brad Woodhouse Know and when did he know it?”

Yeah, as soon as their “progressive” pals get caught in shenanigans, Democrats do their Sergeant Schultz act: “I know nuzzink!”