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The TPA Lives! And Guess Who is Going Overboard to Force its Passage? RINO Senator Mitch McConnell [+video]

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Despite the looming deadlines for several other “must-pass” bills, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (54%, F Liberty Score™) declared his intention to finish debate and pass the trade bill before senators go home for the Memorial Day recess.

Employing a tactic commonly used by his predecessor, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), in a veiled threat to keep the chamber in for part of the upcoming recess, McConnell is using the jet fumes from the tarmac at Reagan National Airport to leverage members into dropping their amendments to the Trade Promotion Authority bill (“TPA”) and agreeing to pass it expeditiously.

This is the level of alacrity McConnell is employing to pass one of Obama’s top priorities. For once, McConnell is willing to play hardball with Senate Democrats (who oppose Obama’s trade deal for their own reasons) and keep them in during recess in order to placate his new friend.

When Obama announced his executive amnesty and nullification of our immigration laws last November, he likely never imagined this would be his “punishment” for violating the separation of powers.

Ironically, McConnell was presented with the same leverage point during the battle to defund Obama’s executive amnesty in February. A belligerent Harry Reid was blocking efforts to proceed with debate to the House-passed DHS funding bill, which funded every aspect of Homeland Security excluding the executive amnesty.

At the time, Congress was approaching a week-long recess in honor of Presidents’ Day. Conservatives called on McConnell to keep the Senate in session through the recess as leverage to wear down intransigent Senate Democrats until they agreed to proceed with debate. Needless to say, McConnell never thought twice about doing that.

Consider this for a moment: executive amnesty represents an existential threat not only to the safety and financial security of the country, but to the future of our system of government itself. We now have a president who is openly nullifying laws and engaging in actions that even King George III lacked the power to do. Local communities and school districts throughout the country are dealing with the crushing costs of the surge in illegal immigration engendered by the promise of legalization and amnesty. There are now 900,000 illegal aliens who have been ordered to leave the country by the courts, yet the administration is refusing to lift a finger. Of those ordered deported, 167,000 are criminal aliens, the very type Obama said he would prioritize for deportation.

Even after the court enjoined his executive amnesty, Obama continues to defy the courts by issuing work permits and abusing the asylum system. He now seeks to end the modicum of state and local immigration enforcement that still exists.

Yet, this was not an emergency legislative situation for Mitch McConnell. And to this day, despite the dangerous and illegal actions taken by this president on a daily basis, McConnell could not care less about restoring our sovereignty, the rule of law, and separation of powers.

What defines an emergency? Passing Obama’s TPA, which, ironically, would cede him de facto irrevocable political power to engage in unilateral actions under the veil of a trade agreement.

As noted before, there is no politically feasible way to block a trade deal once TPA is passed, irrespective of the concerns that may surface in the coming weeks.

Hence, Obama’s “punishment” for abusing his power in the most egregious manner is…Congress ceding him more power!

This is McConnell’s idea of “governing.”

Welcome to the GOP Majority. (See “Guess Whose Priorities RINO Senator Mitch McConnell Is Pushing?”, originally posted HERE)

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Mitch McConnell's Freighted Ties to a Shadowy Shipping Company

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Photo Credit: Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation

Photo Credit: Shanghai Mulan Education Foundation

Before the Ping May, a rusty cargo vessel, could disembark from the port of Santa Marta en route to the Netherlands in late August, Colombian inspectors boarded the boat and made a discovery. Hidden in the ship’s chain locker, amidst its load of coal bound for Europe, were approximately 40 kilograms, or about ninety pounds, of cocaine. A Colombian Coast Guard official told The Nation that there is an ongoing investigation.

The seizure of the narcotics shipment in the Caribbean port occurred far away from Kentucky, the state in which Senator Mitch McConnell is now facing a career-defining election. But the Republican Senate minority leader has the closest of ties to the owner of the Ping May, the vessel containing the illicit materials: the Foremost Maritime Corporation, a firm founded and owned by McConnell’s in-laws, the Chao family.

Though Foremost has played a pivotal role in McConnell’s life, bestowing the senator with most of his personal wealth and generating thousands in donations to his campaign committees, the drug bust went unnoticed in Kentucky, where every bit of McConnell-related news has generated fodder for the campaign trail. That’s because, like many international shipping companies, Chao’s firm is shrouded from public view, concealing its identity and limiting its legal liability through an array of tax shelters and foreign registrations. Registered through a limited liability company in the Marshall Islands, the Ping May flies the Liberian flag.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mitch McConnell’s Campaign Manager Resigns

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / John Sommers II

Photo Credit: REUTERS / John Sommers II

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s campaign manager, Jesse Benton, is resigning from the campaign.

Benton, who previously held high-level roles in Ron Paul and Rand Paul’s campaigns, confirmed his resignation Friday evening, explaining that he is stepping down after his name surfaced in news reports about a scandal involving the 2012 presidential campaign.

Earlier this week, a former Iowa state senator pleaded guilty to charges related to receiving money from the Ron Paul presidential campaign in return for his endorsement.

Benton, who was Paul’s political director, denies any wrongdoing but admits it has become a distraction for McConnell.

Read more from this story HERE.

Horowitz: Nothing Clever about Winning with Lies and Special Interest Riches

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GOP Civil WarOver the past few weeks, political news outlets have been filled with articles beaming about the masterful strategy of the GOP establishment in crushing grassroots challenges. They smugly celebrate the wily tactics of Senator Mitch McConnell, the Chamber of Commerce, and Crossroads in counterattacking the Tea Party. But when you think past the initial headline, you will find that there is nothing special, clever, or innovative about their strategy. It is quite simple.

Members of the political class, which is comprised of the leaders in both parties, support unconstitutional policies, corporate welfare, amnesty for illegals, consistent debt ceiling increases, federal control of local functions, and anything else demanded by the dominant moneyed interests. In return, they receive unlimited campaign support in the form of direct contributions and independent expenditures that are carefully coordinated with their candidates through McConnell’s network of the Chamber, NRSC, and Karl Rove – as outlined by National Journal.

In comes a grassroots candidate from the country class. Needless to say, unless they are a billionaire, they struggle to collect small donations from patriotic citizens in order to develop a modicum of legitimacy and grow their name ID with the electorate. In fact, it is precisely because these candidates support principle over power that they have a difficult time raising money – at least anywhere near the scale of the political class. There is a clear inverse relationship between principled stances on the issues and raising money.

The campaign finance “inequality” has been further exacerbated by McCain-Soros campaign finance laws that place upstart candidates at a disadvantage. They lack a large network of donors, but might know of a handful of patriots who are willing to fully support the candidate. However, they are hamstrung by caps on individual contributions.

Challenging the political class in both open seats (or Democrat seats) and incumbent seats would be arduous enough if the only inherent problem was the money gap. But there are two more challenges: defining of the candidate and ideological lies.

Read more from this story HERE.

McConnell’s Tea Party Opponent Raises $1.12 Million In First Quarter

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Photo Credit: AP / Timothy D. Easley

Photo Credit: AP / Timothy D. Easley

Though he’s trailing the Senate minority leader by more than 30 points, Matt Bevin’s influx of cash could force McConnell to spend vital funds to defend himself.

Updated 4/14/14 at 3:33pm to include McConnell’s first quarter fundraising numbers.

Matt Bevin, the Tea Party candidate challenging Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky, announced Monday that he raised $1.12 million from 30,000 donors in the first quarter of 2014.

“As Kentuckians learn the truth about Sen. McConnell’s record of repeatedly caving to President Obama and his long history of votes for bailouts, amnesty, and funding for Obamacare, they have rallied to our campaign,” Bevin, a businessman and first time candidate, said in a statement. “With the help of these grassroots conservatives, we will make history when we win on May 20.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Condi Rice Campaigns for McConnell, Sullivan and Other GOP Establishment Candidates

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Weekly Standard

Weekly Standard

House majority whip Kevin McCarthy introduced [Former Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice [at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner Wednesday night in Washington, D.C.] and raised the prospect that she might become even more involved in politics in two years. After listing various prestigious positions she’s held, he noted, “There’s one thing that’s not on her resume and I want her to put her mind to it to resolve that in 2016.”

Rice has downplayed those suggestions and there’s little reason to believe she’s angling for a run. Still, she has been increasingly active on behalf of her fellow Republicans. Earlier this month, Rice spoke at a Kentucky fundraiser for Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and the spring convention for the California Republican party. Rice appeared in an ad touting Alaska Senate hopeful and Marine reservist Dan Sullivan, a spot paid for by Karl Rove’s super PAC, American Crossroads. In the coming months, she will make appearances for the National Republican Senatorial Committee….

Before turning to foreign policy, Rice urged the crowd, including many Republican House members, to keep America a “nation of immigrants” and strafed liberals who send their kids to private schools but write New York Times op-eds claiming that school choice will ruin public schools.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mitch McConnell on Debt Ceiling: I ‘Protect’ the Country

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Photo Credit: APSenate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he voted to advance a clean debt-ceiling bill this week because his job is “to protect the country” when he can.

The Republican leader said at a Friday campaign event in Louisville, Ky., that he has long preferred making structural changes to fiscal policy as a condition to raising the debt ceiling.

But given that the House could pass only a clean debt ceiling — every policy rider Speaker John Boehner tried to attach failed to garner sufficient support — McConnell said he was left with one option: Avoid economic catastrophe.

McConnell and most of his leadership team voted to break a filibuster demanded by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), to the ire of many conservatives and surprise of Capitol Hill, given his recently stated opposition to any clean lift of the debt ceiling.

Read more from this story HERE.

SCF Invests Big in Mitch McConnell’s Challenger

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Senate Conservatives Fund has invested nearly $1 million in the candidacy of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s GOP primary opponent, the group said Friday morning.

SCF spent about $535,000 promoting the candidacy of Matt Bevin in Kentucky and passed along another $450,000 to the tea party candidate, nearly half of the group’s candidate investment last year. Bevin will need all the help he can get in taking on McConnell, who had nearly $10 million on hand as of October.

Read more from this story HERE.

Mitch McConnell: Time for GOP Establishment to ‘Stand Up To’ Tea Party

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Photo Credit: APSenate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican up for re-election in 2014, told the Washington Examiner in an interview published Friday that he believes it is time for the GOP establishment to stop conservatives and Tea Partiers.

McConnell argued it is “utter nonsense” for groups like the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), which has endorsed his primary challenger businessman Matt Bevin, to argue that Republicans like him in Congress are not fighting hard enough to defeat Democrats. In the interview, McConnell focused on deriding Tea Partiers for leading the effort to defund Obamacare—something that, coupled with the Democrats’ refusal to compromise on the soon-to-fail Obamacare, resulted in a government shutdown.

“The Senate Conservatives Fund is giving conservatism a bad name,” McConnell told the Examiner for the piece titled “The Establishment Fights Back: Mitch McConnell leads GOP battle against Tea Party insurgents.”

“They’re [SCF] participating in ruining the [Republican] brand,” McConnell said. “What they do is mislead their donors into believing the reason that we can’t get as good an outcome as we’d like to get is not because of a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president, but because Republicans are insufficiently committed to the cause—which is utter nonsense.”

McConnell had not only personally opposed, during the shutdown, the effort from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) to defund Obamacare, he actually whipped votes against them, according to a Congressional source. Cruz and Lee had staked their battle on a key cloture vote that would have, if McConnell had united the Republican Party to deliver 41 votes against the use of taxpayer money to fund Obamacare, stopped Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid from using a procedural ploy to fund Obamacare with just 51 votes.

Read more from this story HERE.

Tea Party to Mitch McConnell: ‘You Cannot Win Without Us’

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Photo Credit: APA major GOP donor who told Breitbart News Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made disparaging remarks about the Tea Party movement and about Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) continues to stand by his original story after claims that the reports were not accurate.

This individual reported that on the Oct. 30 fundraising call American Crossroads’ Karl Rove and Steven J. Law held with McConnell, “McConnell specifically talked about Mike Lee by name, specifically talked about Ted Cruz by name, and he specifically talked about the Tea Party by name,” the donor told Breitbart News in response to a story Rove’s and McConnell’s teams have purported shows otherwise.

That story, published by Charlie Spiering at The Washington Examiner earlier on Friday, confirms that McConnell “criticized conservative groups who supported the plan to defund Obamacare” and that he also criticized those conservatives who “are now actively working to defeat him in Kentucky.” The article adds that McConnell “repeatedly mentioned the Senate Conservatives Fund by name.”

Spiering, who says he was exclusively provided a 27-minute audio file of the call, reports that McConnell did, as Breitbart News’ source said, talk about dealing with conservative “schoolyard bullies” by “punching them in the nose.” While the article states those specific remarks were made “explicitly” about the Senate Conservatives Fund, he also reports that on the call Senator McConnell “criticized” other “conservative groups who supported the plan to defund Obamacare.” However, the Tea Party is certainly the pre-eminent conservative group that spearheaded, along with Senators Cruz and Lee, the plan to defund Obamacare.

In response to the Washington Examiner’s report, Breitbart News’ source also noted that McConnell’s comments at the Senate Conservatives Fund were in a broader context of an attack on the movement.

Read more from this story HERE.