Mitch McConnell: The Pesky 2014 Challenges He's Facing (Heh)

by Sunnyjane

 Did you say I'm facing a Democrat, a Tea Partier, and an Independent?  Gawd!

When Mitch McConnell easily won a fifth term in the U.S. Senate in 2008, the next six years were supposed to be, shall we say, orgasmic: make that uppity Barack Obama a one-term president, become Senate Majority Leader, elect a Republican president in 2012, and glide easily back to the Senate in 2014 with his turtle-smirk firmly affixed.

Needless to say, McConnell's highly arousing plan was a bit, um, ejaculation praecox.  President Obama is still the president, the Democrats still control the Senate, his disapproval rating at home is fifty-one percent, and he is up against a variety of challengers in the My-Old-Kentucky-Home state.

Curses!  Foiled again.

McConnell: The Tea Party is Ruining Conservatism! 

Isn't it awkward when you invite a bunch of crazy people into your home and they start ransacking it and trying to throw you out at the same time?  Well, meet the 2010 Republicans, those who decided to bring some of the most ideologically divisive individuals into their tent just to show President Obama a thing or two!  And then they continued it in 2012 -- don't know why, but Ted Cruz comes to mind.

Well, there's another Tea Partier who is anxious to take Mitch McConnell's job in the Senate in 2014 because he believes that the Minority Speaker is not conservative enough.  Meet Matt Bevin, whose political experience consists only of giving money to conservative politicians and the Republican Party of Kentucky.  Whoo hoo!  Now that's just top-notch governing experience for you.  (Shades of Rand Paul, whose only political experience before he Tea-Partied himself into the Senate was giving campaign speeches for his do-nothing father.) 

Of course, Mitch cannot be happy that his Tea Party challenger has recently been endorsed by Jim DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund:  Matt Bevin is a true conservative who will fight to stop the massive spending, bailouts, and debt that are destroying our country.  He is not afraid to stand up to the establishment and he will do what it takes to stop Obamacare.  (He'll do what it takes to stop Obamacare?  Snort!)

The McConnell campaign sniffed their disdain by retorting, Matt Bevin now has the dubious honor of standing with a self-serving D.C. fundraising group that made its name by recruiting and promoting unelectable candidates that ensured Barack Obama a majority in the Senate. They clearly care less about Kentuckians than they do about their reputation for supporting laughably bad candidates.

So while Bevin is touting himself as THE conservative in the race, Mitch has to straddle the line between being ultraconservative and blaming others for being TOO conservative.   (I know, it's hard to keep up with these fools, isn't it?)  I'm sure we'll hear more about Mr. Bevin as the campaign gets hotter in early 2014; Mitch knows how to find out stuff about his enemies, you know.  Doesn't it make you giddy with anticipation of watching this freak show?

Obamacare's Roots and Branches  (It's Complicated)

While Mitch declares that the Republicans will not shut down the government again over the Affordable Care Act, he intends to get enough conservative butts in the Senate by 2016 to take Obamacare apart by it's roots and branches because it's hurting Americans, is a catastrophic failure, and is not fixable. 

Kentucky's Democratic governor, Steve Beshear, begs to differ, and went to Washington recently to say so -- rather strongly: There is a tremendous pent-up demand in Kentucky for affordable health care.  People are hungry for it.
 
It seems Governor Beshear is correct.  Citing statistics for Kentucky's exchange website, more than 550,000 people have visited Kentucky’s Obamacare site since its Oct. 1 launch. More than 180,000 have called into the healthcare call center, meanwhile, and about 69,000 people — 41 percent of whom are under the age of 35 — have signed up. 

And Then There's The Democratic Challenger 
     

Alison Grimes:  If Mitch McConnell had a kidney stone, he wouldn't pass it.

Although Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes will have at least two primary challengers, it is presumed at this point that she will become the Democratic nominee against McConnell in November.

She has a lot of good backing, including family friend former President Bill Clinton.  But as the Daily Beast pointed out recently, she's got to get out there and talk about what she stands for.  It seems that, at this point, she's been somewhat wishy-washy on several issues, including gay marriage and the Affordable Care Act.

We'll see.  Mitch McConnell -- the GOP obstructionist-in-chief, really needs to be retired from the United States Senate.

End Note