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McConnell: No More Shutdowns Over Obamacare

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear on Thursday that repealing Obamacare would never be used by Republicans again to bring the federal government to a halt.

“One of my favorite old Kentucky sayings is there’s no education in the second kick of a mule,” McConnell told The Hill. “The first kick of a mule was when we shut the government down in the mid-1990s — and the second kick was over the last 16 days.”

“There will not be a government shutdown,” the Kentucky Republican added.

The Obamacare strategy was pushed by several young congressional Republicans backed by the tea party — including freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, who spoke against the healthcare plan for more than 21 hours on the Senate floor last month — which led to a 16-day partial shutdown of the government and jeopardized the nation’s borrowing authority.

“I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is,” McConnell told The Hill.

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Rand Paul Caught on a Hot Mic – What He Really Feels About Democrats and Their Shutdown Rhetoric

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Screen shot 2013-10-04 at 1.13.38 AMA local Kentucky TV news station caught Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul Wednesday morning discussing some congressional Republican messaging strategy regarding the showdown with Democrats over the government shutdown.

“I just did CNN and I just go over and over again ‘We’re willing to compromise. We’re willing to negotiate,” Paul is seen on-camera telling McConnell, who is standing by for his own interview remote from D.C. “I don’t think they (Democrats) poll tested ‘we won’t negotiate.’ I think it’s awful for them to say that over and over again.”

“Yeah, I do too and I — and I just came back from that two hour meeting with them and that, and that was basically the same view privately as it was publicly,” McConnell said back.

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McConnell to Newsmax: Defunding Obamacare Not ‘Waste of Time’ for GOP

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mcconnell64283Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Newsmax in an exclusive interview on Friday that Republicans weren’t fighting a lost cause to defund Obamacare as part of legislation to prevent the federal government from shutting down next week.

“I don’t think it was a waste of time,” the Kentucky Republican said. “The American people do fully understand that still, not a single Republican in the House or Senate favors this awful new law — and if they will send us enough additional new members to get rid of it, we will.”

The Senate voted 54-44 along party lines on Friday to temporarily finance the government through mid-December and pay for the troubled healthcare law for the next year. Independents Angus King and Bernie Sanders voted with the Democrats. Republicans Orrin Hatch and Jeff Flake did not vote.

The vote came after an amendment was approved to remove the language that defunded Obamacare, on the same party-line vote.

The House of Representatives had sent the legislation — a “continuing resolution” — to the Senate last week. The House bill included language to defund the Affordable Care Act.

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Conservative Group: Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn ‘Turncoats’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A conservative political action committee on Tuesday slammed two of the Senate’s top Republicans as “turncoats” who have “surrendered” on the health care fight.

“Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn have surrendered to Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the Democrats,” charged an email blast from the Senate Conservatives Fund. “More importantly, they have surrendered to Obamacare — the biggest job killer in America.”

The email took McConnell (R-Ky.) and Cornyn (R-Texas) to task over their declining to block a House-passed spending measure that would defund Obamacare. Some conservatives, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), are opposed to moving that bill forward, arguing that the process for doing so would allow Senate Democrats to remove defunding language from the bill. But McConnell’s and Cornyn’s offices have signaled that they won’t join attempts to thwart the bill.

“Sen. McConnell supports the House Republicans’ bill and will not vote to block it, since it defunds Obamacare and funds the government without increasing spending by a penny,” a spokesman for McConnell said in a statement on Monday . “He will also vote against any amendment that attempts to add Obamacare funding back into the House Republicans’ bill.”

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Source: McConnell, Cornyn Whipping Votes Against Ted Cruz

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picture - mcconnell-cornynA source in Congress tells Breitbart News that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn are using their leadership positions to pressure other Republicans to oppose Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in his campaign to defund Obamacare.

“Right now in the Senate, Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn are actively whipping Senators to shut down debate on the House continuing resolution so that Harry Reid can gut it with just 51 votes,” a senior congressional staffer with intimate knowledge of the situation said in an email to Breitbart News. “Unbelievably, they actually are leading the fight to fully fund Obamacare.”

McConnell and Cornyn stated earlier Monday that they oppose a possible filibuster from Cruz to keep Reid from adding language funding the Affordable Care Act to the continuing resolution passed by the House of Representatives.

As Breitbart News reported on Saturday, McConnell and Cornyn could help Cruz win:

First, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid brings the House continuing resolution (CR) to the floor next week, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell needs to deliver 41 Republican votes to filibuster it until Senator Reid agrees not to try and restore funding for Obamacare. McConnell has the power to ensure that Reid cannot get an amendment onto the bill that strips the Obamacare defunding language with a simple majority vote.

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How John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are Funding Obamacare

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Photo Credit: RedState

Photo Credit: RedState

Don’t be fooled by this political theater going on in Washington, DC. The fix is in and both sides are trying to fund ObamaCare while saving face.

The whole of House Republican Leadership thinks you are stupid. They have passed a bill that they know will be changed by Harry Reid before it goes back to the House in a few days. The smoking gun will happen when Boehner allows a Senate passed government funding measure to come up in the House minus the provision defunding ObamaCare. You wait and see.

Also, know that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is in on this too. He is going to stand with Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) to save his Senate seat, but he knows that he has the power to stop this scheme.

Here is how both Republican and Democrats in leadership are trying to fool you. The House passed a Continuing Resolution, a measure to fund the government for two and one half months, with two things attached. A measure to defund ObamaCare and another to reorder the debt payment priorities of the United States government to allow the federal government to operate if the debt limit forbids anymore federal borrowing. These amendments were grouped in a way making it very easy for the Senate to delete this provision. And that was by design.

After the House passed the resolution, they had a big fake rally to make believe they were happy that they were funding the government while defunding ObamaCare. Yet Republicans in the House think we are stupid. Representatives like Peter King (R-NY) and Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma) either went on TV or yelled at Tea Party minded constituents to tell them why the House could not pass a budget bill that defunds ObamaCare, yet they did it. These moderates only supported the House effort because they knew it was without teeth and an effort to make believe they are fighting ObamaCare.

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Conservative Group Comes Out Against Mitch McConnell

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McConnell_A national conservative group says they are preparing to run negative ads against Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, accusing him not being supportive of the new conservative strategy to defund Obamacare.

In an email to supporters Friday, Senate Conservatives Fund Executive Director Matt Hoskins said the organization is “preparing to launch a statewide media campaign in Kentucky to expose McConnell’s record on this issue and to persuade him to lead the fight.”

“Mitch McConnell is telling people he opposes Obamacare while he refuses to oppose its funding,” Hoskins said. “We can’t let him have it both ways.”

A group of conservative senators — led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio — are pushing a strategy to not vote for a continuing resolution to keep funding the federal government unless President Barack Obama’s healthcare law is defunded as part of the legislation.

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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.

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Tea Party Candidate Announces Senate Bid Against ‘Mud-Slinging Mitch’ McConnell

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Frankfort, Kentucky – Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin announced he would be running against Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell in the Kentucky Republican senate primary.

“Never before in American political history has the leader of a party lost a primary election,” Bevin acknowledged in his remarks, given in the rotunda of the Kentucky state capitol. “Never. But never before has it been so important to make that happen.”

Flanked by his wife and nine children, Bevin attacked the GOP as being “a party that is as complicit in our impending deficit crisis as the Democratic party,” according to his prepared remarks.

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Harry Reid: Mitch McConnell ‘Tried to Make Love to the Tea Party and They Didn’t Like It’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid is enjoying the possibility of a tea party backed challenger to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“He tried to make love to the tea party and they didn’t like it,” Reid quipped about McConnell to at an event hosted by the pro-Obama nonprofit Organizing for Action.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke after Reid, saying that President George Washington warned about political parties who were at war with their own government

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Harry Reid says nuclear option still on the table

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday that the “nuclear option” is still on the table if Republicans move to block more executive branch nominees.

The procedural move that would end filibusters of President Barack Obama’s nominees with a simple majority “can always come back,” Reid said at an event hosted by the pro-Obama non-profit Organizing for Action.

The Senate reached a last-minute deal last week to avoid the nuclear option. Since the deal, the Senate approved Richard Cordray’s nomination to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Gina McCarthy to serve as EPA administrator; Tom Perez as Labor secretary, among other nominees. Read more from this story HERE.