MitchMcConnell’semptypromise:We’llforceObamato

Mitch McConnell’s empty promise: We’ll force Obama to rein in government or else risk a shutdown

posted at 3:21 pm on August 20, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Does anyone actually believe this?

I guess Kentucky Republicans who don’t pay attention to politics but who’ll end up deciding this year’s Senate race anyway do. God bless democracy.

“We’re going to pass spending bills, and they’re going to have a lot of restrictions on the activities of the bureaucracy,” McConnell said in an interview aboard his campaign bus traveling through Western Kentucky coal country. “That’s something he won’t like, but that will be done. I guarantee it.”…

McConnell risks overreaching if he follows through with his pledge to attach policy riders to spending bills. If Obama refuses to accept such measures, a government shutdown could ensue. Republicans bore much of the blame for last year’s government shutdown, which was prompted by conservative tactics McConnell opposed, and their fortunes rebounded only when the administration bungled the rollout of Obamacare.

But asked about the potential that his approach could spark another shutdown, McConnell said it would be up to the president to decide whether to veto spending bills that would keep the government open.

Obama “needs to be challenged, and the best way to do that is through the funding process,” McConnell said. “He would have to make a decision on a given bill, whether there’s more in it that he likes than dislikes.”

To repeat: Does anyone actually believe this? McConnell was one of the sharpest Republican critics of the “defund” strategy that produced a government shutdown last fall. Watch the clip below if you need your memory refreshed. He’s fond of saying about it, “There’s no education in the second kick of a mule,” i.e. the GOP paid a political price for the 1995 shutdown and then foolishly paid the same price again in 2013 (although the backlash was blunted by public outrage at the Healthcare.gov meltdown that was happening simultaneously). Quote: “I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is.” He hates shutdowns almost as much as the people in the GOP’s donor class who bankroll him do.

And yet here he is, soothing conservatives who are leery of reelecting him by vowing to take the fight to Obama this time and make him cause a shutdown if he refuses to agree to Republican demands. And he wants you to believe he’s going to do this while prominent Republicans, including his pal Rand Paul, are declaring their candidacies in 2016. It’s the purest nonsense. To believe it, you need to believe that somehow, if Obama vetoes the sort of bill McConnell’s describing here, that the GOP will win the ensuing media war over who “really” caused the shutdown. Which party, do you suppose, will the press hold responsible? Whom did they hold responsible in 1995, when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and went head to head with a Democratic president? The party that loves government, the bigger the better, or the one that doesn’t?

McConnell has a history of empty rhetoric about brinksmanship with Obama too. Remember this?

The Senate’s top Republican signaled Tuesday that he will seek to extract concessions from Democrats in exchange for lifting the nation’s debt limit in 2014, potentially foreshadowing a grueling fiscal fight during an election year.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said that he “can’t imagine” that the debt ceiling increase will be a “clean” one — meaning that it will have no conditions attached to it. McConnell, a key negotiator on deals ending the debt ceiling standoff in 2011 and this year during the government shutdown, noted that past significant legislative agreements have been attached to such increases. He was skeptical that the House or the Senate would have an appetite to hand President Barack Obama a clean debt limit hike.

Two months later he voted for cloture on — ta da — a clean debt-ceiling hike, even though Harry Reid had more than enough votes without him to break a filibuster by Ted Cruz. And so we already know what’ll happen next year: McConnell and Boehner will pass a spending bill with some riders attached, Obama will veto it, a shutdown deadline will loom, and eventually McConnell will agree to a clean bill while promising to fight another day. How many times do you need to see this movie to know the plot?

It will, perhaps, not surprise you to learn that Kentucky Democrats are having a field day with the excerpt above, claiming that McConnell’s already cooking up new shutdowns for America. They know which side is helped by shutdown politics. And so does Mitch the Knife, which, again, is why this is an empty threat.

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Video: McConnell’s wife punches back against ‘anti-women’ attacks in new ad

Video:McConnell’swifepunchesbackagainst‘anti-women’attacks

RandPaulbustsarhymeagainstGrimes

Rand Paul busts a rhyme against Grimes

posted at 12:31 pm on August 3, 2014 by Jazz Shaw

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Political figures leaving the well worn routine of policy stump speeches and venturing into the realm of verse doesn’t always work out all that well for them. (Rapper MC Rove, anyone?) But at this year’s edition of the Fancy Farm picnic in Kentucky, Paul Rand decided to try his hand at rhyming poetry, going on the attack against Alison Lundergan Grimes and in support of Mitch McConnell.

“There once was a woman from Kentucky,
who thought in politics she’d be lucky,
So she flew to L.A. for a Hollywood bash.
She came home in a flash with buckets of cash.
To liberals, she whispers: coal makes you sick.
In Kentucky, she claims coal makes us tick.
To the liberals, she sells her soul – the same ones who hate Kentucky coal.
One thing we know is true, one thing we know is guaranteed,
she’d cast her first vote for Harry Reid.
Grimes’ real pledge is to Obama; her first vote is to Reid;
as for Kentucky, if that happens, it’s too bad indeed.”

Not too shabby.

It remains to be seen if Paul’s support will rally any additional voters to Mitch’s cause. The Senate Minority Leader could apparently use all the help he can get, since the last round of numbers from the Bluegrass Poll shows McConnell with only a 2% lead over Grimes. Another poll from the same time period also shows that Kentucky voters are fed up with waiting for the candidates to face off in a debate.

Two-thirds of Kentucky voters say U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes have an obligation to the people of Kentucky to debate each other, according to the latest Bluegrass Poll.

The poll found that 66 percent of voters believe McConnell, a Republican, and Grimes, a Democrat, should debate, and large majorities of every demographic group polled said the two should face off.

At least 13 people and organizations have offered to host the debates, and while both McConnell and Grimes have accepted at least one offer, they can’t agree on which debate to attend together.

Generally when you see a race without debates it’s a case of a clear leader wanting to dodge the event to hang on to their edge and not give the underdog a chance to turn the momentum. That doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here, though. Given that both candidates are claiming to be ready to go, but disagreeing on the forum, it’s more likely that each wants to find a setting and moderator that won’t be quite so hostile to them. That could be a tricky feat to pull off, but hopefully some neutral ground will be located and the voters will get a chance to see the candidates put through their paces.

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FederaljudgestrikesdownKentucky’sbanongay

Federal judge strikes down Kentucky’s ban on gay marriage

posted at 8:01 pm on July 1, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Noteworthy for three reasons. One: The judge is a Bush 41 appointee, nominated to the federal bench by, er, Mitch McConnell. Two: This decision doesn’t matter much on the ground because the Sixth Circuit, the federal appellate court with jurisdiction in Kentucky, is set to hear arguments on gay marriage on August 6th. They’re going to end up superseding this decision one way or the other in the next few months anyway.

Three: Heyburn, the judge, went out of his way to make clear that he thinks this issue is a no-brainer. Usually when a court examines the constitutionality of SSM, they analyze it as both a due process matter and an equal protection matter. The due process analysis depends on whether the right to marry is “fundamental;” if it is, then the court applies “strict scrutiny” in considering the state’s ban. That mean the state needs to offer a “compelling” reason for why the ban should be upheld. Strict scrutiny is the most skeptical approach a court can take to a statute. Heyburn, though, sidesteps the due process issue altogether by noting that Justice Kennedy, in his hugely influential Windsor opinion, never squarely addresses that issue. If Kennedy hasn’t touched it, Heyburn’s not touching it either. Right off the bat, he’s disarmed himself of one of the judiciary’s favorite weapons in striking down gay-marriage bans.

That leaves the equal protection argument. Courts will apply some form of heightened scrutiny, i.e. extra skepticism, to a law that discriminates against certain historically persecuted groups. Do gays qualify as one of those groups? Sort of, says Heyburn — but it really doesn’t matter, because gay-marriage bans don’t make sense even if you’re analyzing them with no extra skepticism at all. In other words, even if you give the state legislature the maximum amount of deference due under equal protection law, an SSM ban is DOA in court. Here’s Heyburn on the state’s chief argument, that marriage is reserved for straights in the name of encouraging procreation and economic replenishment of the population:

These arguments are not those of serious people. Though it seems almost unnecessary to explain, here are the reasons why. Even assuming the state has a legitimate interest in promoting procreation, the Court fails to see, and Defendant never explains, how the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage has any effect whatsoever on procreation among heterosexual spouses. Excluding same-sex couples from marriage does not change the number of heterosexual couples who choose to get married, the number who choose to have children, or the number of children they have…

The state’s attempts to connect the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage to its interest in economic stability and in “ensuring humanity’s continued existence” are at best illogical and even bewildering.

He’s laughing them out of court. And then the big-picture coup de grace:

Those opposed by and large simply believe that the state has the right to adopt a particular religious or traditional view of marriage regardless of how it may affect gay and lesbian persons. But, as this Court has respectfully explained, in America even sincere and long-held religious views do not trump the constitutional rights of those who happen to have been out-voted…

Sometimes, by upholding equal rights for a few, courts necessarily must require others to forebear some prior conduct or restrain some personal instinct. Here, that would not seem to be the case. Assuring equal protection for same-sex couples does not diminish the freedom of others to any degree. Thus, same-sex couples’ right to marry
seems to be a uniquely “free” constitutional right. Hopefully, even those opposed to or uncertain about same-sex marriage will see it that way in the future.

We’ve gone from this issue being a fringe preoccupation of the left 20 years ago to the federal bench slam-dunking it today, thanks in large part to Kennedy and Windsor. As noted, next month the Sixth Circuit will decide the fate of gay marriage in Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, and Kentucky. All four states have lower-court rulings on legalized gay marriage currently pending. All four ruled in favor of legalized SSM.

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Grimesrenegesonpromisetostandupto

Grimes reneges on promise to stand up to Harry Reid for coal

posted at 2:01 pm on June 10, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Did Alison Lundergan Grimes have “strong words” for Harry Reid over the new EPA rules that will cripple Kentucky’s coal industry? After promising to stand up for Kentucky at a key fundraiser, Grimes instead completely ignored the coal issue at the splashy DC event, according to Politico’s Manu Raju and Burgess Everett. Instead, she promised to promote the Democratic Party agenda:

Alison Lundergan Grimes’ campaign insisted last week that she’d use a high-dollar fundraiser with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as a forum to promote Kentucky’s coal industry and demand action to protect the use of fossil fuel.

That didn’t happen, according to an audio recording of the 45-minute affair obtained by POLITICO through a source at the event.

Instead, when the Kentucky Democrat spoke at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill last Thursday, she stuck to a partisan script, railing against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s record on jobs, the minimum wage and women’s issues.

The one word she didn’t say during her 11-minute speech: “coal.”

“Make no mistake, the hill that we are climbing … it is steep, but I will continue to run circles in my heels around Mitch McConnell,” Grimes told the donors, who paid as much as $2,600 a plate to attend. “It is going to take a nation to help Kentucky rise up to do this, and Alison’s army. And as I look out today, amongst the quality that is here, Leader Reid, I know this is the army that will help to get it done.”

The hometown Herald-Leader took notice of the omission, too:

In an audio recording of the speech obtained by Politico, Grimes instead criticized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s record on jobs, the minimum wage and women’s issues, prompting McConnell’s campaign to accuse Grimes of misleading Kentucky voters.

“Alison Lundergan Grimes just did exactly what every Kentuckian knew she would — tell them one thing and do another with Harry Reid,” McConnell campaign spokeswoman Allison Moore said. “If there was any question about what she would do as a senator, this tape erased all doubt.”

Grimes later said she raised the objection to Reid in “a private conversation,” but Reid arrived late and left early. They later specified that the conversation took place by phone after the fundraiser was over. Even if that’s the case, what happened to Grimes’ pledge to publicly push back against the Obama administration’s attack on Kentucky’s coal industry?

CNN’s John King was less than impressed with Grimes’ backbone:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnvYRYufIss

Once again, this raises the problem of authenticity for Grimes, which came up in a more comical manner with her ad featuring a European model posed as a Kentucky coal miner. Needless to say, Barack Obama is not a popular figure in Kentucky, and Harry Reid is probably even less well liked. Voters in this midterm election aren’t looking for a rubber stamp for Obama and someone to wrap her arms around “Leader Reid”; they want someone who will stand up to both to protect Kentucky jobs rather than Beltway agendas. That would be a long shot for even the most talented Democratic politicians, to pull off a Joe Manchin-like campaign as a way to win under those circumstances. Clearly, Alison Lundergan Grimes does not possess Manchin-like talent.

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NewKYcampaignthemeis…CoalMiner’s

New KY campaign theme is … Coal Miner’s Model?

posted at 2:01 pm on June 6, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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If the news in politics and war has become too grim this week, let’s remember why we love politics in the first place … absurdity. In Kentucky, where one of its most famous daughters produced the anthem Coal Miner’s Daughter, the coal industry is key to both the economy and identity of the state. After the Obama administration went after the coal industry with new EPA regulations, Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes produced an ad promoting coal in order to distance herself from Obama and establish her bona fides as an authentic daughter of Kentucky.

There was only one problem with the ad:

President Barack Obama’s new EPA rules on carbon emissions are politically toxic in Kentucky, so it’s no surprise that the Democrat challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to distance herself. Her campaign blasted out an ad on Monday afternoon that says, “President Obama and Washington Don’t Get It … Alison Grimes Does.”

Accompanying that message is a large picture of a man in a hard hat with a sooty face holding out a piece of coal toward the camera. It was taken by Ukrainian photographerVictor Gladkov and is for sale on the photo website Shutterstock.

Also available there are pictures of the same model dressed as a doctor, engineer, soldier, student, carpenter and painter. He is also shown making an obscene gesture toward the camera in one image.

Republicans leaped all over the photo choice, of course. That prompted the Grimes campaign to point out three stock-photo mismatches on Mitch McConnell’s site, but that misses the point of Grimes’ strategy. McConnell has been around long enough to not have to worry about his own authenticity, especially in the context of the Obama administration and EPA restrictions on coal. Replacing an Obama opponent with an Obama supporter in the US Senate does nothing to protect Kentucky’s native industry, which is why Grimes has to paint herself as a Kentuckian first and a Democrat second. Using a European male model rather than an actual Kentucky coal miner for a website picture makes Grimes look much less like an authentic Kentuckian and more like a poseur.

How difficult would it have been to send a staffer to a coal mine for a snapshot? There has to be at least one actual coal miner supporting Grimes … right?

This is an absurd little teapot-in-a-tempest scandal, but it points out a much larger problem for Grimes and other Democrats like her in the midterms. Josh Kraushaar wonders if Obama even cares about Senate races any longer with his unilateral declaration of war on coal:

Does President Obama care about keeping the Senate?

The president reportedly has told his close allies that losing the Senate would be “unbearable,” but his administration is doing everything possible to make things difficult for his party’s most vulnerable senators. On energy issues alone, the administration’s decisions to impose new Environmental Protection Agency regulations on coal-fired plants and indefinitely delay a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline could help burnish his long-term environmental legacy, but at the expense of losing complete control of Congress. …

To understand the disconnect between the White House and Congress’s views of energy politics, just look at the disparate results from 2010 and 2012 in the energy-producing battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Obama won all three states in 2012, even though Mitt Romney attacked him over his administration’s environmentally minded policies throughout the campaign. But in the previous midterm election, when blue-collar workers made up a larger share of the electorate, Republicans picked up a whopping 13 (out of 28) Democratic-held House seats in those states, with Rob Portman and Pat Toomey scoring huge Senate victories. Most of the successful Republican challengers in those states campaigned against the Democratic cap-and-trade legislation, which didn’t become law, but nonetheless served as a rallying cry for the GOP. Obama won despite his liberal environmental policies, but when he wasn’t on the ballot, his party lost nearly half of its members in those crucial battleground states.

In other words, it’s a weird time to remind these voters of the damage that Democrats can do in their own back yards.

Republicans weren’t alone in laughing at Grimes. Mika Brzezinski noted that she had a problem with “optics,” and the panel on MSNBC’s Morning Joe found it quite amusing:

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Mitch McConnell’s Democratic opponent to disgruntled Matt Bevin fans: Join me

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Surprise:LunderganGrimescan’tsaywhethershewould

Surprise: Lundergan Grimes can’t say whether she would have voted for ObamaCare

posted at 9:41 pm on May 21, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

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Part of a series.

Another red-state Democrat in a competitive race can’t quite manage to decide if she’s for the law her party claims it was totally going to be running on in 2014:

Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes on Wednesday twice refused to say whether she would have voted for President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

Asked two times whether she’d have voted for the 2010 overhaul, the Kentucky Democrat who is challenging Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told The Associated Press: “I, when we are in the United States Senate, will work to fix the Affordable Care Act.”

Grimes added: “I believe the politically motivated response you continue to see from Mitch McConnell in terms of repeal, root and branch, is not in reality or keeping … with what the facts are here in Kentucky.”

Grimes is somewhat protected by the fact that Kentucky’s state exchange has been far less disastrous than in most other states, and the exchange has gained considerably more confidence from voters than Obamcare, as a result:

In Kentucky, a new Marist poll conducted for NBC News finds that 57 percent of registered voters have an unfavorable view of “Obamacare,” the shorthand commonly used to label the 2010 Affordable Care Act. That’s compared with only 33 percent who give it a thumbs up – hardly surprising in a state where the president’s approval rating hovers just above 30 percent.

By comparison, when Kentucky voters were asked to give their impression of “kynect,” the state exchange created as a result of the health care law, the picture was quite different.

A plurality – 29 percent – said they have a favorable impression of kynect, compared to 22 percent who said they view the system unfavorably. Twenty-seven percent said they hadn’t heard of kynect, and an additional 21 percent said they were unsure.

“Call it something else, and the negatives drop,” said Marist pollster Lee Miringoff.

The Kynect numbers, though better than Obamacare’s, aren’t knocking anyone’s socks off. And, I’d argue when Kentuckians give their state exchange better marks than the overarching federal Obamacare law, it’s not just an issue of a rose by any other name. Kynect has been demonstrably less of a calamity than the federal law, with fewer online travails, so why wouldn’t it get better marks from voters?

That being said, the exchange’s unhorrific performance does give Grimes more breathing room than other red-state Democrats. Democrats are left to wonder what would have happened electorally if they’d managed to muster enough competence to get other states’ and the federal exchange to limp along more convincingly than they have. I wish Americans had higher standards for government performance, but the fact is, they’re incredibly forgiving far too often. The barest bit of competence would have gone a long way. But they didn’t have it.

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CBSpollshowsTeaPartysupportwaning

CBS poll shows Tea Party support waning

posted at 10:41 am on May 21, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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The media narrative from last night’s primaries has been …. predictable. If 2010 could be described as Tea Party Wars: A New Hope, then last night was supposedly The Establishment Strikes Back. It’s not that simple, but it’s not entirely false either. One corroborating piece of evidence comes from a new CBS News poll showing the Tea Party losing support, even among Republicans:

The tea party was an important factor in the 2010 elections, but its support may be waning, according to a new CBS News poll. Today, just 15 percent of Americans say they are supporters of the tea party movement – the lowest since CBS News began asking about the tea party in February 2010. The tea party reached its highest level of support (31 percent) in November 2010, soon after the midterm elections.

The movement may be losing some of its core constituency — Republicans. 32 percent of self-identified Republicans now consider themselves supporters of the tea party – down 10 points from February and a decline of 23 points from July 2010, the summer before the Republican Party took control of the House of Representatives. The percentage of Republicans who identify as tea party supporters is now among the lowest in CBS News Polls.

That does tend to fit in with last night’s results. Established candidates, even those with not-so-strong ties to The Establishment, fared better than grassroots favorites, and not just in Kentucky — and not just among Republicans:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell defeated his GOP challenger in Kentucky by 25 percentage points, a high-profile but low-suspense race on a critical primary day when voters cast ballots in six states. In Georgia, a Senate Republican primary headed to a runoff with the two candidates favored by GOP establishment leaders. And in Oregon, pediatric neurosurgeon Monica Wehby fended off a more conservative challenger in her Republican primary.

Pennsylvania Democrats, meanwhile, picked businessman Tom Wolf, who poured $10 million of his own money into the race, as their nominee against Gov. Tom Corbett, one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the country. Also in the Keystone State, Chelsea Clinton’s mother-in-law, Marjorie Margolies, lost a bid to reclaim her old House seat, despite some assistance from Bill and Hillary Clinton.

After a year of threats from conservative outside groups, no GOP incumbents lost Tuesday. Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson beat back a tea partier supported by groups such as Club for Growth, with help from the business lobby and Mitt Romney. National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden, targeted in Oregon by a national campaign called Primary My Congressman, received triple the support of his opponent with more than half the votes in. And House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster prevailed over his challenger in Pennsylvania by 18 points.

Republican leaders have maneuvered to nominate candidates who they hope can avoid the kinds of foot-in-mouth mistakes that cost them winnable races last cycle in red states like Missouri and Indiana.

We will hear plenty from the media about the Tea Party losing ground, and that may have played into last night’s primaries, but it doesn’t tell the whole story either. Incumbents who won last night did so by embracing the Tea Party agenda, at least in part. The movement has impacted the so-called establishment by shifting it to the fiscal-conservative and smaller-government Right. Incumbents are no longer getting ambushed by treating re-election efforts as walkovers, mostly because they have spent the last couple of years listening to their constituencies rather than ignoring them.

That doesn’t mean that they won’t have problems. The two runoff candidates in Georgia for the open US Senate seat are both good candidates, but they may do more damage yet to each other before one emerges as the nominee. That candidate will start off behind Michelle Nunn in general-election campaigning, and they will need to work hard to get the grassroots engaged. Mitch McConnell scored a big victory over Matt Bevin, but it was the weakest performance by an incumbent Senator from Kentucky in 75 years.  Democrats outdrew Republicans to the polls in yesterday’s Kentucky primary by more than 48,000 voters, and Alison Lundergan Grimes got nearly 94,000 more votes than did McConnell.

In other words, even though the Tea Party didn’t “win” nominations in last night’s primaries, the grassroots will more critical than ever for the GOP in these key races. No one has lost anything yet — and no one’s won anything, either.

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Openthread:McConnellgeddon postedat6:23

Open thread: McConnellgeddon

posted at 6:23 pm on May 20, 2014 by Allahpundit

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To clarify, “McConnellgeddon” is when McConnell destroys a tea-party challenger with the force of an asteroid impact, not when he himself is destroyed.

Ed previewed the carnage this morning but you deserve a thread to mourn and guess the spread. (A savvy politico friend on Twitter predicts a relatively narrow Mitch win by 12-14 points.) Matt Bevin sounds bitter:

“There’s little that I did not anticipate to some degree,” Mr. Bevin said as he sat in a Louisville cafe. “I did my homework, I know who I’m running against, I know what his methodology is: Define the opponent before they define themselves. You malign. You slash and smear. You mock, you ridicule and you question, and then you come out and declare victory.”…

He added: “I have been disheartened by how generally apathetic people really, truly are about taking ownership in their role in the political process. It wasn’t a surprise, but I’ve just been disheartened by how true it really is.”…

He attributed [Rand] Paul’s endorsement of Mr. McConnell to Mr. Paul’s presidential ambitions, and rejected the notion, floated by advisers to both senators, that they became friends through their wives.

Politico has a pre-election postmortem on how McConnell beat back the tea party, although most of it will be familiar to you if you’ve been following the race even casually. How bad do things look for the challenger? Even Erick Erickson’s thrown in the towel:

If I can, you can. #majority pic.twitter.com/nVsGXnalue

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) May 20, 2014

Between McConnell’s easy ride to victory and Lindsey Graham’s trouble-free reelection campaign in South Carolina thus far, it’s worth asking just how vulnerable GOP incumbents are to tea-party primary challenges anymore. Philip Klein surveys the landscape and says, “Not very.” But that’s not altogether bad news:

The perception that Tea Partiers were routinely knocking off incumbent Senators in previous years is a myth. The reality is that it’s only happened a few times since the movement gained electoral influence. In 2010, incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett was ousted in the Utah state Republican convention, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, lost the Republican nomination but ended up retaining her Senate seat as a write-in candidate. In 2012, just one incumbent Republican, Sen. Richard Lugar, lost a primary — in Indiana, to Richard Mourdock, who ended up losing in the general election…

What’s more significant is the fact that the Tea Party message on the size and scope of government is something that continues to carry a lot of weight, which is something that can get lost in the rush to brand candidates as being part of the Tea Party or from the establishment.

Because the Tea Party has now been around for a half a decade, non-incumbent Senators seeking higher office know that to be competitive in Republican primaries, they have to build up a record that can pass muster, and they’ve had opportunities to do so. That’s how you end up with candidates such as North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis, whose victory in the Senate primary was branded as win for the establishment even though as speaker, he fought to block Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.

Yeah, the party’s shifted right overall, which is a nice consolation prize to keep in mind tonight. And there may still be successful tea-party challenges to incumbents in years to come. The lesson of the last two cycles, I think, isn’t “you can’t win” but more “it’ll take a lot.” Nothing against Bevin, who’s an impressive guy, but to contend against a heavyweight like McConnell, you needed a challenger of Ted Cruz’s intellect and charisma, someone who might plausibly catch fire nationally and turn his race into a conservative cause celebre. And even that might not have done it: Dislodging the would-be majority leader, who can deliver all sorts of goodies to Kentucky if he’s returned to the Senate, would be a high bar even for Cruz. The hard fact of the matter is that an incumbent who takes the prospect of a primary challenge seriously, prepares early, fundraises vigorously, and runs hard in the primary is incredibly difficult to beat, even without McConnell’s seniority. Just look at how easy Grahamnesty has it in a very red state. I want to believe a conservative in Arizona will mount a serious threat to McCain in 2016. But I don’t. Maverick won’t get caught napping like Bob Bennett and Dick Lugar.

Kentucky’s not the only game in town, though. The Georgia Senate primary is also happening, with David Perdue a lock to secure one of the two spots in the runoff. The suspense is over who gets the other — Jack Kingston or Karen Handel, who are within three points of each other in the last three polls. Oregon is also voting tonight, with Monica Wehby the favorite in a race that’s in flux since the nasty accusations about stalking and a messy divorce this week. She led her opponent in the only poll taken and a huge chunk of Oregonians vote early, so it may be the attacks came too late to affect the primary. You can follow results for all races at RCP or, if you’re interested only in the competitive ones, at Ace’s decision desk. The polls close at 7 p.m. ET in Georgia and Kentucky (although some returns are already in since half the state is in a different time zone) and at 11 p.m. in Oregon. While we wait, via the Right Scoop, here’s Mark Levin wondering whether the time has come to send a message to RINOs who use dirty tricks in the primary by sitting out a general election. He’s not condoning the idea, he says, but it’s crossed his mind. Matt Bevin said earlier today of McConnell “My job is to beat him. And if we don’t, I don’t know how he wins in November when he’s divided his own party as much as he has.” Hmmmm.

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DecisiondayForegoneconclusiondayinKentucky

Decision day Foregone conclusion day in Kentucky

posted at 10:01 am on May 20, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Voters in Kentucky go to the polls today to either put the final nail in the Matt Bevin political coffin or deliver the world’s biggest unpleasant surprise to incumbent Mitch McConnell in the US Senate primary. Despite some Tea Party grassroots support and a boatload of ill will from the grassroots groups directed at the Senate Minority Leader, Bevin’s candidacy never took off in Kentucky. His own shortcomings as a candidate, especially in his flip-flopping on TARP and his odd participation in a cockfighting-rights rally, undermined the Tea Party vs Establishment narrative long ago.

But don’t let that stop media outlets from pursuing that narrative regardless:

If Mitch McConnell wins the Kentucky Republican primary Tuesday – polls suggest he leads – some will wonder if the tea party is losing influence. What it’s really lost is the element of surprise.

In 2010 and 2012, a lot of Republican incumbents and favorites didn’t take on their tea party challenges early and they paid for it, but McConnell took no such chances this spring. He raised millions, mounted an aggressive campaign, and as a result goes into Tuesday night favored against tea party-backed businessman Matt Bevin.

When McConnell, the sitting Senate minority leader, drew this challenge, the political world circled May 20 on the calendar as a big test, not just for incumbent Republicans but as a measure of the animosity toward Congress that Americans have voiced this year. And in that sense, McConnell is hardly done fighting to keep his job even if he does manage to win Tuesday night.

The same anti-Washington sentiment that gave rise to this primary will also pervade the general election, and presumptive Democratic nominee, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, is hoping to use it against McConnell, too, come November. Polls have that potential matchup mostly neck and neck, even in this very red state and even in what figures to be a Republican-leaning year.

The discussion in the video is better than the analysis in the article itself. The Tea Party narrative really died when Rand Paul endorsed McConnell, which drew sharp criticism from Paul’s usual base of support at the time. Time has proven the wisdom of Paul’s decision, however, as Bevin has stumbled all along the path to the primary. McConnell has a lead in the Real Clear Politics polling average of 22 points now, and Bevin might not even break 40%.

What’s next? McConnell faces off against Alison Lundergan Grimes, and the RCP average looks much less favorable for the incumbent. It’s a virtual dead heat in the last four polls listed, but that takes place in the context of a primary fight for the incumbent and a walkover for the challenger. When the dust settles, McConnell will be able to focus more clearly on Grimes, and the GOP base has nearly six months to soothe its internecine tensions and get behind McConnell to keep Grimes from pulling off a surprise win.

Grimes offered some fodder to McConnell this week with her full support of late-term abortions:

Left unmentioned: abortion, the main wedge that Democrats nationwide have used to divide GOP opponents from the swingiest parts of the electorate. In a twist, it is McConnell broaching the topic, hoping to create a fissure between the national pro-abortion-rights supporters who are helping bankroll Grimes’s campaign and the conservative voters she needs to carry this Southern state. He held a press conference in Washington earlier this week pushing to ban abortions after 20 weeks.

“We should all agree that unborn children should be protected at least from the point that they’re capable of feeling pain,” McConnell pointedly said of the legislation.

Grimes supports abortion rights. “I come from a family of five women,” she says in the interview. “I would never pretend to tell one of my sisters what to do with their body and I don’t want the federal government doing that either.… When it comes to choice, I believe, should a woman have to make that decision, it’s between herself, her doctor, and her God.”

As for McConnell’s 20-week abortion ban, she says, “I think you always put the health, life, and safety of the mother first, should that decision have to be made. I’m not for moving backwards the principles the Supreme Court has set forward.”

John McCormack pointed out yesterday that this puts Grimes on the fringe in Kentucky:

By coming out against the 20-week aboriton limit, Grimes is at odds with at least two-thirds of Kentucky voters. According to a Marist poll released last week, “67% of Kentucky residents think abortion should be illegal.  This includes 21% who say it should be illegal without exceptions and 46% who say it should be illegal except in cases of rape, incest, and to save the mother’s life.  28%, however, report abortion should be legal.  Included here are 18% who say abortion should always be legal and 10% who think it should be legal most of the time.”

Grimes’s opposition to the 20-week abortion limit on the grounds that it doesn’t put the “health, life, and safety of the mother first” doesn’t make sense. The text of the bill explicitly contains an exceptionfor when “in reasonable medical judgment, the abortion is necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, but not including psychological or emotional conditions.” (Medical experts have testified before Congress that if a serious medical issue should arise late in pregnancy, delivering a child alive is actually much safer than aborting her: A live delivery of the baby can be performed in an hour, but a late-term abortion can take three days.)

Despite what some Democratic politicians have said, babies are viable–that is, they can survive long-term if born–20 weeks after conception. As Dr. Colleen Malloy of Northwestern University has noted, a Journal of the American Medical Association study found that “survival to one year of life of live born infants at 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24 weeks postfertilization age was 10%, 53%, 67%, 82%, and 85%, respectively.”

Kentucky voters will get to hear plenty on this, as well as on the economy and on ObamaCare, too. This will be a key race to watch in the midterms, but don’t be too surprised if it shifts over the summer in McConnell’s favor.

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Tags: Alison Lundergan Grimes, GOP primary, Kentucky, matt bevin, midterms, Mitch McConnell, US Senate

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Poll: Mitch McConnell leads Matt Bevin by 32 in Kentucky GOP primary

Poll:MitchMcConnellleadsMattBevinby32

WillKentuckySenateracehingeon…cockfighting?

Will Kentucky Senate race hinge on … cockfighting?

posted at 2:01 pm on April 25, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Regardless of whoever wins the Republican primary in Kentucky for the US Senate, it’s going to be remembered as one of the most colorful battles of the cycle. Last month, challenger Matt Bevin spoke at a cockfighting rally, but claimed to be unaware of the nature of the event. Now, however, a local reporter says he has video of Bevin endorsing the legalization of cockfighting in Kentucky:

wave3.com-Louisville News, Weather

The second speaker, American Gamefowl Defense Director Dave Devereaux, spent several minutes explaining why we were here.

“For the sole purpose of legalizing gamecock fighting at the state level,” said Devereaux.

The next speaker, in front of more than 700 people, was Republican US Senate Candidate Matt Bevin.

“There is not a cause, there is not an issue, nothing we believe in that we could not bring to fruition if we turn out to vote,” said Bevin.

When he was finished, he was asked a direct question.

“Will you vote to support the effort to legalize gamecock fighting in the state of Kentucky?” asked Devereaux.

“I support the people of Kentucky exercising their right, because it is our right to decide what it is that we want to do, and not the federal government’s. Criminalizing behavior, if it’s part of the heritage of this state, is in my opinion a bad idea. A bad idea. I will not support it,” said Bevin, which was met with rousing applause from the crowd.

ABC News suggests that Bevin has “lied repeatedly” about the event:

The Tea Party candidate challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to a primary challenge has been caught in an undercover video attending a cockfighting rally last month and there is evidence that he lied repeatedly about the event.

Matt Bevin, who is seeking to wrest Kentucky’s Republican Senate nomination from McConnell, and his campaign have said they thought it was a state’s rights rally he attended in Corbin, but in the undercover video from WAVE 3 News it’s clear what the event is about with signs supporting the legalizing of cockfighting. Bevin even speaks right after a cockfighting activist who explained clearly why they were: “For the sole purpose of legalizing gamecock fighting at the state level.” …

In recent weeks, Bevin insisted it was a rally for states’ rights, not cock fighting. He told WHAS TV,  “So, people at the first rally were there to discuss state’s rights, everything from probably cockfighting, I don’t know because I was gone, to helmet laws to growing of hemp etc.” And he told the Courier-Journal, “It was a states’ rights rally.” In an interview with the News Journal, Bevin said he did not realize the event had anything to do with cockfighting.

Needless to say, Mitch McConnell is delighted:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell accused his primary challenger Friday of lying about his participation at a cockfighting rally, citing a local news report that shows Bevin being asked directly about cockfighting.

Kentucky GOP Senate hopeful Matt Bevin has said that he didn’t know he was speaking at a cockfighting rally after video surfaced of his speech at a gathering in late March.

“Matt Bevin’s cockfighting episode will go down in history as one of the most disqualifying moments in Kentucky political history,” McConnell spokeswoman Allison Moore said in a statement. “Twenty years from now, we will all remember the time when the East Coast con-man thought so little of Kentuckians that he pathologically lied to us about absolutely everything until an undercover camera caught him red-handed at a cockfighting rally.”

Bevin’s campaign released a statement that doesn’t exactly deny that Bevin fibbed about his participation or his endorsement for legalization, but instead called it “just a rehash of an old story”:

The Bevin campaign, in a statement to POLITICO, said the report was “a rehash of an old story” and a distraction from the “old liberal policies” from the Senate minority leader.

“This is just a rehash of an old story,” the statement read. “Primary voters will have a choice on May 20th between a veteran, small business owner, father of nine who will fight for our conservative values in Matt Bevin, or more of the same old liberal policies from Mitch McConnell. Since McConnell can’t defend his record, all he can do is try to make his opponent look worse. Instead, we should be addressing the core issue — that the federal government has gotten too big, too intrusive, and needs to be reined in.”

An “old story”? The rally took place on March 29th, about four weeks ago.

In my opinion, cockfighting belongs to the same dustbin of history as dogfighting does, and plenty of conservatives vented their outrage over the latter when Michael Vick got busted doing it. Kentuckians might feel differently, though, and the rest of us won’t get a vote. But Bevin’s attempt to have it both ways and duck responsibility for his choice of venues and campaign pledges doesn’t make him a terribly attractive alternative to Mitch McConnell.

Tags: cockfighting, dogfighting, Kentucky, matt bevin, Michael Vick, Mitch McConnell, US Senate

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