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Democrats Step Back From Ashley Judd For Senate Drive

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Photo Credit: AP

Hollywood actress-turned-Senate-hopeful Ashley Judd may have a harder time winning the hearts and minds of Democrats to support her campaign against Sen. Mitch McConnell after all.

Democratic Party leaders are stepping back and taking a clear look at the candidate, and some say she may not be best to run against the five-term Kentucky senator in 2014, Newsmax reports.

“She’s going to have a tough road to hoe,” said Jim Cauley, campaign manager for Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear in 2007, in a ThisWeek.com report. “She doesn’t fit the damn state,” which is a conservative stronghold. Fully 60 percent of Kentuckians voted for Mitt Romney in 2012.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bid To Defund Obamacare Gains Momentum In Senate GOP

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

This week it appeared Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee would wage a lonely war over their threat to hold up a continuing resolution to fund the U.S. government if they are not given a vote on a budget amendment to defund Obamacare. Now, it’s not quite so lonely. Sens. Marco Rubio and James Inhofe have joined Cruz and Lee, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday that he “looks forward to supporting” the amendment.

It’s a significant step forward for Cruz and Lee. But the Senate Republican caucus remains deeply divided about defunding Obamacare. Sources say that at a Republican caucus lunch a few days ago, several GOP senators expressed opposition to Cruz and Lee’s proposal. And of course, the 55-member Democratic majority will not give it the time of day. But Cruz and Lee are determined to keep up opposition to Obamacare, even though it has flagged in some other quarters of the Republican Party.

And in Rubio, the two have an ally sure to bring a higher profile to the cause. The continuing resolution fight is “a perfect opportunity for us to have a debate once again on Obamacare,” Rubio told radio host Hugh Hewitt Friday. “I don’t think there’s been enough attention paid to it. It’s been awhile, we’ve moved onto these other issues, but there is, right now out there, probably nothing more damaging to our economy in the short term than this implementation of Obamacare.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Super PAC: Progressive/Tea Party Alliance Aiming To Topple Mitch McConnell?

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Photo Credit: APRepublican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is becoming increasingly concerned about his 2014 re-election chances in Kentucky, according to a progressive Super PAC that says it is partnering with unnamed Tea Party groups to paint McConnell as a corrupt insider and knock him out of his longtime Senate seat in a Republican primary.

A recent McConnell campaign fundraising email accused liberals of “attempting to infiltrate conservative” groups in Kentucky. Another McConnell campaign email accused the liberal organization MoveOn.org of supporting a “phony tea party” in an attempt to beat the senior senator. Though MoveOn disputed the McConnell campaign’s charges, the progressive super PAC Progress Kentucky is openly waging the kind of attack that McConnell seems worried about.

“Mitch McConnell has recently contributed through [his wife] Elaine Chao’s family $80,000 to the Kentucky GOP,” Shawn Reilly, executive director of the progressive super PAC Progress Kentucky, told The Daily Caller. “It looks to me like he’s trying to buy the Kentucky Republican Party in order to try to avoid a primary.”

“He also set up his campaign office a year earlier than he ever has, and he placed it in the same office where his 1984 campaign — his first successful Senate race — was housed,” Reilly added. “I hear from people that he’s pretty superstitious.”

Progress Kentucky, which filed as a Kentucky-based super PAC on Dec. 13, says it is making a concerted push to align itself with tea party groups in order to field and support a viable Republican primary challenger for McConnell. Reilly said that his group is already in productive communication with tea party leaders across the state.

Read more from this story HERE.

Tea Party Favorite Confirms Interest in McConnell’s Seat

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photo credit: Donkey HoteyMatt Bevin, a potential Tea Party challenger to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), confirmed on Tuesday that he has met with groups in Kentucky about launching a Senate bid, but has not made a final decision.

“As a point of clarification, Matt has made no final decision with respect to this race. He has, however, met in recent weeks with various individuals and groups who have expressed their frustration with their current representation in Washington DC and have encouraged him to consider entering the race,” reads an email sent “on behalf of Matt Bevin” by Amy Lowe.

Lowe is listed as operations manager at Waycross Partners, the investment firm at which Bevin is an adviser.

“These meetings, together with the recent reaction to the possibility of a primary race, have served to reaffirm the general sense of political disenchantment among many voters in Kentucky that has been widely reflected in recent articles and polls,” she wrote.

The Hill reported Monday that Bevin had been in touch with local Tea Party leaders about potentially launching a bid.

Read more from this story HERE.

Tea Party Changes Tack To Hit McConnell

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Photo Credit: Tom WilliamsSome individuals in the tea party movement will try anything to undermine Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, even going so far as to question the Republican’s tenacity in bringing money back to Kentucky.

It’s an unusual stance for a conservative movement best known for opposing federal spending on just about everything. But McConnell has long been a target of anti-establishment conservatives, and their latest attack on his failure to secure funding for a deteriorating bridge over the Ohio River would seem to bring them closer to President Barack Obama’s position on federal infrastructure spending.

After all, Obama used the Brent Spence Bridge as a backdrop for a September 2011 event in an attempt to pressure Republicans to back more infrastructure spending. That Obama picked a “functionally obsolete” bridge which carries motorists between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Ky., for the photo-op was no surprise. It connects the congressional district of Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, with McConnell’s Kentucky.

Despite the notoriety the president brought to it, efforts to upgrade the bridge remain delayed. So last month, a former Northern Kentucky Tea Party leader named Cathy Flaig used the deferred construction to criticize McConnell, questioning, “What has he done for Kentucky?”

Read more from this story HERE.

Judd Uncertain of 2014 Run: McConnell Now At-Risk of Conservative Challenger

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Photo Credit: Genevieve719Actress Ashley Judd and Indy Car driver Dario Franchitti are ending their marriage after 11 years, and, yes, the news impacts Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Judd is weighing whether to jump into politics and challenge McConnell in Kentucky in 2014. She was in Washington for the inauguration and attended an event at EMILY’s List, the group that backs pro-choice Democratic women running for governor or Congress. Judd even carpooled with Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who demonstrated she knows how to win in a red state after defeating the self-injurious Todd Akin.

In a statement, the former couple said they mutually agreed to end the marriage. Judd tweeted at Franchitti suggesting they plan to remain close — making a reference to “family,” an awfully politically correct tweet.

Given this development, there’s a chance Judd won’t want to jump into a messy political campaign.

Read more from this story HERE.

Sen. Mike Lee Says Republican Party Continues to Benefit from Tea Party

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photo credit: Michael.JolleyLee’s comments came after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) deemphasized the influence of the Tea Party in the House.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) argued that the GOP continues to benefit from the Tea Party.

Lee’s comments, made during an interview Friday with Laura Ingraham on Fox News’s “The O’Reilly Factor” came after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) deemphasized the influence of the Tea Party in the House. In a recent interview with ABC News, Boehner said that “We don’t have a Tea Party Caucus to speak of in the House.” He added that “all of us who were elected in 2010 were supported by the Tea Party.”

“I’m not sure what his intent was. And he’s not here to speak for himself. But what I can say is that this party has benefited because of the grassroots conservative political movement that started in 2009. Some have called it the Tea Party,” Lee said. “That brought us a Republican victory in 2010 in the House it brought us some victories in the Senate. And it has continued to benefit the party in the 2012 election cycle.”

“I really don’t know what John Boehner meant about this Tea Party Caucus,” Lee added. “It may have been that all he meant was that the Tea Party cause is itself the Republican cause. If that’s all he meant, then I agree with him wholeheartedly.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Boehner, McConnell Agree to Let Obama Borrow Another $2.4 Trillion

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House Speaker John Boehner (R.-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) have reportedly agreed to give President Barack Obama the authority to borrow as much as an additional $2.4 trillion—thus allowing him to get past the November 2012 election without having to seek another increase in the legal limit on the federal debt.

A pleased President Obama announced the deal in a briefing at the White House press room at 8:40 p.m. on Sunday.

“Most importantly,” Obama said of the deal, “it will allow us to avoid default and end the crisis that Washington imposed on the rest of America. It ensures also that we will not face this same kind of crisis again in six months, or eight months, or 12 months. And it will begin to lift the cloud of debt and the cloud of uncertainty that hangs over our economy.”

Neither Obama, nor Boehner, nor McConnell released the details of the deal on Sunday evening.

The New York Times reported that the money to increase the debt limit would come in an initial installment of $900 billion followed by a second installment of $1.2 to $1.5 trillion. The first $900 billion would include an immediate $400 billion to allow the government to pay its immediate bills. Both the initial and second installment, according to the Times would be subject of disapproval votes by Congress which would cancel the debt limit increases, but that these disapproval votes would be subject to a veto by President Obama—meaning that both houses of Congress would have to vote by two-thirds majorities to prevent the debt limit increases from happening.

Read More at CNSNews By Terence P. Jeffrey, CNSNews.com

Why Is John Boehner Letting House Republicans Be Mitch McConnell’s Toy?

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Here is what is going to happen unless House Republicans stage an immediate revolt against their own House leadership.

Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are going to win. They have managed to cut the legs out from under John Boehner and the House Republicans. In fact, the House Republicans have taken on all the appearances of Mitch McConnell’s basement gimp.

I’m not sure why we need them any more if the McConnell-Reid-Pelosi Pontius Pilate Act passes.

See, John Boehner ceded authority to Mitch McConnell. Instead of embracing the conservative “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan or even pushing forward with Paul Ryan’s plan as an alternative, Boehner let McConnell move forward and cut Boehner’s legs out from under him. It was a willing sacrifice on Boehner’s part because he’d rather be legless than fight.

Now here is what Boehner and McConnell have agreed to do.

 Read More at Red State by Erick Erickson, Red State

Short debt limit hike possible: McConnell

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Congress and the White House could raise the debt limit for a few months while they seek a comprehensive, long-term budget deal, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Sunday.

The Obama administration has warned it will run out of money to pay the nation’s bills if Congress does not raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit by August 2 — a prospect that could push the country back into recession and upend global financial markets.

Congressional Republicans, particularly in the House of Representatives, have balked at raising the debt ceiling unless it is accompanied by significant spending cuts.

McConnell said on Sunday the ceiling could be raised enough to last a few months so that negotiations can continue on a larger deal that would include changes to so-called entitlement programs like Medicare.

“The president and the vice president, everybody knows you have to tackle entitlement reform,” McConnell said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Read More at Yahoo! By Dave Clarke, Reuters