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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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’

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.

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Conservative Group’s New Attack on Mitch McConnell Dismissed as ‘Dumb’ (+video)

Photo Credit: YouTube The advocacy group Senate Conservatives Action announced Tuesday that it will spend six figures on a new television ad bashing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — but national Republicans are brushing off the buy.

Senate Conservatives Action, the PAC of the Senate Conservatives Fund that last week endorsed McConnell’s Republican primary opponent, Matt Bevin, will spend $330,000 to air the television ad across Kentucky, the group said. The 30-second spot attacks McConnell for his role in negotiations to end a 16-day government shutdown by restoring government funding, but without blocking the implementation of Obamacare.

“Conservatives asked Mitch McConnell to lead the fight against Obamacare,” the ad’s narrator says. “He didn’t listen.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

Photo Credit: AP While most of us took a relaxing break from work over the weekend, politicians did not. In fact, they were out en masse doing what they do best. Believe me, it wasn’t pretty.

First up, Marco Rubio.

Florida’s junior senator has a lot of making up to do with his base after becoming the face of scamnesty in the Senate. He went quiet after the bill went to the House, then began appearing again with Ted Cruz in the defund ObamaCare fight. He helped Cruz considerably during his filibuster and he voted the right way on both cloture and on the spending bill. His name was being mentioned again by conservative websites who had all but disowned him.

And then, he went and blew it.

On Fox News Sunday (of all places), Rubio endorsed Mitch “Benedict Arnold” McConnell in his primary against Tea Party candidate Matt Bevin. Guess Rubio’s perfectly fine with that almost 3 billion dollar bribe McConnell got to sign the deal that Rubio voted against.

Stupid is as Stupid does.

Read more from this story HERE.

Kentucky-Bribed Statesman: Mitch McConnell Unmasked

Anthony Weiner recently lamented that “if the internet didn’t exist,” he’d be the mayor of New York.  In other words, if John Q. Public weren’t so privy to the facts, and so readily able to investigate those facts and exchange opinions about them online, politicians could more easily manipulate their political images and determine the outcome of elections.

Likewise, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is now feeling the stinging disapproval of an informed public that he may not have felt twenty years ago.  Like the grand reveal at the end a Scooby-Doo episode, McConnell the “fiscally conservative” Senate leader has been unmasked in the last month’s proceedings and identified as what he really is — a career politician who’d sell his constituents and American taxpayers down the river for a buck (or in this case, a couple billion bucks).  And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for meddling Matt Drudge and the like.

In late September, Mitch McConnell used his lofty position in the Republican minority to stand against Senate conservatives like Ted Cruz and fellow Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.  He made and underhanded effort to block a House bill which would fund the government and raise the debt ceiling in exchange for defunding ObamaCare.  Knowing that the Senate would not have the 60 votes necessary to amend the House bill to fund ObamaCare, he and fellow collaborators voted in favor of a cloture vote which would allow Harry Reid and Senate Democrats to amend the bill with an easily attainable straight majority vote.  Then, having cleared the Senate Democrats’ path to funding ObamaCare, he cast a show vote against the amended spending bill, which included the funding of ObamaCare, hoping it would absolve him of any blame.

We noticed it.  In fact, it was insulting and infuriating that McConnell took such care to conceal the betrayal of his stated conviction to oppose ObamaCare.  Now, his efforts to fund ObamaCare have culminated in what’s being described as the “Kentucky Kickback” by the Senate Conservatives Fund.  “In exchange for funding ObamaCare and raising the debt limit,” the group says, “Mitch McConnell has secured a $2 billion earmark” to a pet project in his home state of Kentucky.

Of course, in a further insult to our intelligence, McConnell is again trying to shirk any responsibility for billions in new taxpayer liability which will uniquely benefit his state.  The language, his office reminds reporters, was introduced by Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), and the provision will raise the spending limit of Kentucky’s Olmsted Lock and Dam project from $775 million to $2.9 billion. 

Read more from this story HERE.