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McConnell’s Challenger’s Campaign Picking Up Steam, Gains Key Conservative Group’s Endorsement

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Photo Credit: Gage SkidmoreMatt Bevin, who plans to challenge Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in the 2014 Kentucky GOP primary, picked up a big endorsement from a national conservative group Sunday evening.

The Madison Project, a conservative fundraising group headed by former Rep. Jim Ryun (R-Kan.), who once held track’s world record in the mile, will give Bevin access to donors from around the country. Ryun’s son, Drew, a former deputy political director at the Republican National Committee, is also involved.

The group praised Bevin’s candidacy in a letter to activists and donors as someone poised to storm “the decaying castle of the GOP establishment for millions of conservatives.”

“As a self-made successful businessman, Matt Bevin understands that the failed leadership in the Republican Party cannot be fixed with the very elements that precipitated its failure,” they wrote.

The letter touts Bevin’s accomplishments in the private sector, such as building two investment companies and being named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009. One of those funds, Integrity Asset Management, grew to $1.8 billion in assets.

Read more from this story HERE.

With Ricin Case Crumbling, FBI Finds a New Target, Former GOP Candidate (+video)

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Photo Credit: Smoking Gun Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, was arrested last week for allegedly sending the threatening letters to Obama, U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, and a Mississippi county judge. But Curtis has been released from custody amid signs that the case against him has collapsed.

During a court hearing yesterday, lawyers for Curtis contended that he had been framed and pointed investigators toward James Everett Dutschke, a 41-year-old Tupelo man with whom Curtis has feuded. Like Curtis, Dutschke is a martial arts expert, a musician, and a Mensa member.

Dutschke was arrested in January on a child molestation charge in connection with the alleged assault of a seven-year-old girl at the tae kwon do studio he operates. In March, he was named in a three-count felony indictment accusing him of fondling a victim under the age of 16 (each count carries a maximum 15-year prison term). Dutschke, now free on bond, has previously been convicted of indecent exposure…

In 2007, Dutschke was the unsuccessful Republican candidate against Stephen Holland, the incumbent Democratic state representative from the Tupelo area. Holland’s mother Sadie is the judge to whom one of the ricin-tainted letters was sent.

Read more from this story HERE.

Tea party pushes GOP candidates to right

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In the first presidential election since the tea party’s emergence, Republican candidates are drifting rightward on a range of issues, even though more centrist stands might play well in the 2012 general election.

On energy, taxes, health care and other topics, the top candidates hold positions that are more conservative than those they espoused a few years ago.

The shifts reflect the evolving views of conservative voters, who will play a major role in choosing the Republican nominee. In that sense, the candidates’ repositioning seems savvy or even essential.

But the eventual nominee will face President Obama in the 2012 general election, when independent voters appear likely to be decisive players once again. Those independents may be far less enamored of hard-right positions than are the GOP activists who will wield power in the Iowa caucuses, the New Hampshire primary and other nominating contests.

“The most visible shift in the political landscape” in recent years “is the emergence of a single bloc of across-the-board conservatives,” says the Pew Research Center, which conducts extensive voter surveys. Many of them “take extremely conservative positions on nearly all issues,” Pew reports. They largely “agree with the tea party” and “very strongly disapprove of Barack Obama’s job performance.”

Read More at the Washington Times by Chris Babington, The Washington Times