3/27/2013, “Rand Paul endorses Mitch McConnell in 2014 Senate race, won’t back tea party challenge,” Daily Caller, Patrick Howley
.
“Rand Paul has endorsed McConnell,” Jesse Benton, McConnell’s 2014 campaign manager, told The Daily Caller.
Benton, who has worked for both Rand Paul and his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, is credited by insiders with brokering Paul’s support for McConnell.
The move quashes a determined effort by Kentucky Republican Liberty Caucus chairman David Adams, who launched Paul’s Senate bid and served as Paul’s campaign manager through the 2010 primaries, and other tea party leaders
to mount a primary challenge against McConnell.”….
=============================
.
Jesse Benton managed Rand Paul’s Tea Party Senate campaign, is married to Rand's niece, and now manages Sen. Mitch McConnell’s campaign:
5/26/2010, “Rand Paul names new campaign manager: Jesse Benton,” whas 10, Joe Arnold, via daily paul
“(Jesse) Benton was communications manager for the presidential campaign of Paul’s father, Texas Congressman Ron Paul, and is married to Rand Paul’s niece.”…
.
==================================
.
Rand Paul isn't fit to shine Ted Cruz’ shoes:
.
3/11/14, “Rand On Cruz: ‘I’m Not Real Excited About Him Mischaracterizing My Views’,” Breitbart, J. Strong
.
“Sen. Rand Paul continued his aggressive brush back of comments from his usual ally Sen. Ted Cruz suggesting that Paul is positioned at the left, dovish flank of the GOP on foreign policy, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity Cruz was “mischaracterizing” his views.
“We always have been good friends. I’m not real excited about him mischaracterizing my views. I won’t let that pass. I think that sometimes want to stand up and say hey, look at me, I’m the next Ronald Reagan. Well, almost all of us in the party are big fans of Ronald Reagan,” Paul said.
“I’ve always been a big fan of peace through strength. I think America should and has a responsibility around the world and really, virtually all of the opinions that have been coming from Republicans are somewhat the same on this – that Putin should be condemned, he should be isolated. I favor sanctions on Putin. So, for people to characterize that as somehow not being the Reagan position, I think they need to have a re-reading of Reagan, frankly,” Paul added.
The mini-feud started when Cruz, in a Thursday speech at the “Uninvited II” National Security forum, positioned himself between the hawkish John McCain at one end of the GOP and the dovish Paul at the other, with Cruz championing Reaganesque policies in the middle.
That didn’t sit well with Paul who struck back today with an op-ed at Breitbart.
Hours before Paul was set to appear on Hannity, but after the Hannity segment had already taped, Cruz sent out a statement to a number of publications trying to take the fight down a notch, saying he greatly respected Paul even while insisting they had key disagreements in foreign affairs.
Paul said he was firmly in the Reagan tradition.
“I also agree with Ronald Reagan who often said, or in one of his inaugural speeches said, to potential adversaries, don’t mistake our reluctance for war with a lack of resolve. He built up the military. He had a military that was second to none. I still believe all of that,” he said.
Asked by Hannity if he wanted Cruz to apologize, Paul said “No. I’ll settle for maybe he just needs to work on presenting his own ideas.””
.
=================================
.
12/1/2013, “Mitch McConnell: Time for GOP Establishment to ‘Stand Up to’ Tea Party,” onenewspage
“Senate 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.”…
.
==================================
.
Sen. Mitch McConnell and K Street share crony values:
.
12/3/2013, “Chamber of [Government-run] Commerce Circles Wagons Around McConnell,” Madison Project, Daniel Horowitz
.
“It’s not surprising that the Chamber of Commerce is running ads on behalf of Senator Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. After all, the Chamber of Commerce is Mitch McConnell – in the sense that they both share an ideology of power instead of principle.
As we’ve explained before, the Chamber of Commerce is not conservative, pro-free-market, or even necessarily pro-growth. They support the special interests of big business. Period. When those interests intersect or overlap with free-market, pro-growth policies, such as advocacy for tax cuts and lower regulations, they will side with conservatives. But when those interests require the stewardship of big government intervention, they will side with the forces of statism. Hence, they are not paragons of free-market commerce; they support government-run commerce, albeit with tendentious policies towards their interests.
Their special interests support illegal immigration, corporate welfare, increased gas taxes, and an internet sales tax. It’s not surprising that Chamber money pours into K Street coffers to lobby for those goals.
That is essentially the same description of Mitch McConnell’s tenure in the Senate. Birds of a feather flock together. It’s no surprise that many of McConnell’s former staffers work or lobby for the Chamber.
The bizarre thing about their ad touting McConnell as a warrior for coal is that they overlook his biggest failure in halting the war on coal. Earlier this year, Republicans had the opportunity to force the EPA to stop administrative cap and trade on the coal industry by holding up the nomination of Gina McCarthy as director of the EPA. McConnell cut the deal to allow her through by delivering 60 votes to Harry Reid.”...
.
=================================
.
Sept. 2012, Rand Paul’s nephew and former campaign mgr. Jesse Benton named Sen. Mitch McConnell campaign mgr.:
.
9/13/2012, “Why Ron Paul’s [and Rand Paul's] Campaign Manager Is Now Taking A Job With The GOP Establishment,“ Business Insider, Grace Wyler
.
“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced today that Jesse Benton, the grassroots political operative who ran Ron Paul‘s presidential campaign [and Rand Paul's US Senate campaign], is leaving Paul World at the end of this year to run McConnell’s 2014 re-election campaign.
.
The hire is already being heralded as a shrewd move by
McConnell, who appears to have seen the writing on the wall after Paul’s
son, Rand Paul, rode the Tea Party wave to defeat the McConnell-backed Establishment candidate in Kentucky’s 2010 Senate primary.
.
Benton, who ran Sen. Paul’s 2010 campaign
and is married to one of Ron Paul’s granddaughters, is the consummate
Paul insider, with deep ties to Kentucky’s Tea Party movement. His
presence on McConnell’s staff virtually guarantees that the Senate Minority leader won’t face a challenge from
the right in 2014 — or a challenge to his leadership in the Senate
should the Tea Party’s influence there continue to grow….
.
His decision to take a job deep within the heart of the GOP is likely to raise the ire of some of Paul’s most active supporters, confirming long-held suspicions that the Texas Congressman’s campaign aides sold him out to the Republican Party Establishment. …
.
In his first interview since taking the job with McConnell, Benton told Business Insider why he decided to take the job with McConnell, and why he doesn’t think he’s selling out.
Below is the lightly-edited transcript of our interview:…
.
BI: You ran Sen.
Rand Paul’s campaign in Kentucky in 2010, and Sen. McConnell endorsed
his primary opponent. What’s changed since then?
.
Benton: What changed was a
friendship that we cultivated, both Rand and Senator McConnell and our
teams cultivated in the [2010] general election….
.
Rand has really cultivated a great friendship with him up on the hill,
and I’ve cultivated a friendship with him and with some of his staff.
I’ve really gotten to see how the man ticks. I’ve really grown to have
quite a bit of admiration for him. So when they asked me if I was
interested, it was unexpected, but it was very welcome….
.
*Soon after our conversation, Benton got back to me and said he had found a letter McConnell sent to Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke
last year calling for transparency at the central bank, and saying that
he would vote yes on a bill to audit the Fed if Reid brought it to the
floor. That’s a shift in position from 2010, when McConnell drew
conservative ire for voting against an audit the fed “amendment, just
days before then-candidate Rand Paul won the Kentucky Republican Senate
primary.”
===========================
Republican 'leader' Sen. Mitch McConnell brags to the NY Times that he's going to "crush" conservative Republicans "everywhere" in 2014 primaries:
3/8/2014, "Leading Republicans Move to Stamp Out Challenges From Right," NY Times, Carl Hulse
"As conservative activist groups stirred up trouble for establishment
Republican Senate candidates in 2010 and 2012, party leaders in
Washington first tried to ignore the insurgents, then tried to reason
with them, and ultimately left it to primary voters to settle the
matter....
This election season, Republicans led by Senator Mitch McConnell
of Kentucky are taking a much harder line as they sense the majority
within reach. Top congressional Republicans and their allies are
challenging the advocacy groups head on in an aggressive effort to
undermine their credibility. The goal is
.
.
to deny them any Senate primary
victories,
cut into their fund-raising and
diminish them as a future
force in Republican politics.
“I
think we are going to crush them everywhere,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate
Republican leader, said in an interview, referring to the network of
activist organizations working against him and two Republican incumbents
in Kansas and Mississippi while engaging in a handful of other
contests. “I don’t think they are going to have a single nominee
anywhere in the country.”...
“I know this: Politics doesn’t like losers,” said Mr. McConnell, who
suggested that a high-profile series of defeats would deflate the
groups. “If you don’t have anything to point to, it is kind of hard to
keep it going.”"... Image, 1/4/2013, Getty
=============================
Comment: Mitch McConnell has been in office since 1984, has had access to a microphone every day for 30 years. I've never heard him apologize for his part in the destruction of this country and the Republican Party especially during the Bush years which enabled the radical left's takeover of the country. Normal people would've retired from the public stage in disgrace after such a long track record of failure. Not Mitch McConnell who still has access to a microphone every day. I've never heard him list the things the Republican Party did wrong that handed the US to the radical left, nor a list of actions he's taken as a 'leader' to ensure the country will be rescued from the radical left. The Tea Party didn't come into existence because people had nothing better to do with their time. It happened because the GOP had merged with democrats with help of people like Mitch McConnell. Half the country has no representation.
.
.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment