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Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) office sent out a deeply strange message to supporters, which was unhinged even by contemporary GOP standards. The letter, signed McConnell's 2014 campaign manager, condemn "executive orders" that don't exist and rejected universal background checks as a "thinly-veiled national gun registration scheme" intended to "ensure federal government minders gain every bureaucratic tool they need for full-scale confiscation."
None of the claims was even remotely true, but Team McConnell didn't much care.
It now appears to be part of a pattern. Indeed, McConnell and his aides are under the impression that the key to winning another term is by relying on conspiracy theories and rampant paranoia.
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell's re-election campaign is contending that Democratic liberals are trying to infiltrate conservative groups in the state to oust McConnell next year.
Tea Party activists in the state who disfavor McConnell deny the claim, saying they are not working with any Democratic group in an effort to retire the Republican senator from Louisville.
In a campaign fund-raising email Monday, McConnell's campaign manager, Jesse Benton, said every conservative in the state needs to be aware of "an important development."
And what, pray tell, is so "important"? According to McConnell's office, a Politico piece "confirmed that (President) Barack Obama's Democratic allies are attempting to infiltrate conservative organizations across Kentucky to encourage and fund opposition to Senator Mitch McConnell."
Well, that sounds pretty provocative. Unfortunately, it's not what Politico reported at all -- the piece said Democrats were prepared to support a Tea Party candidate in a Republican primary as a way of weakening McConnell, but that involved "reaching out" to conservative activists, not "infiltrating conservative organizations." McConnell's office just made that up.
So why would Team McConnell, once again, push a bogus message to its own allies? A few reasons, actually.
First, apparently, McConnell's aides don't think the truth is good enough to rally supporters, so the facts have to be wildly exaggerated.
Second, McConnell seems to be deeply concerned about a primary challenge -- though there are no announced candidates -- and hopes to discredit opponents from the right before they exist. If that means saying things that aren't true, so be it.
And third, McConnell really does have a problem on his hands. Recent polling shows him in a weak position going into his re-election bid, and just this week, the Louisville Courier-Journal found that only 17% of Kentucky voters are committed to vote for McConnell next year. For a powerful incumbent, that's not an impressive number -- and it's certainly not a figure that's likely to scare away would-be opponents.
And so, the solution from Team McConnell's vantage point is to start making stuff up about Democrats "infiltrating" conservative groups in Kentucky, and pursuing "full-scale confiscation" of guns in Washington.
After five terms in office, McConnell probably shouldn't have to resort to this nonsense, but regrettably, he and his team disagree.
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Well Mitch McConnell was, I presume, born and raised in the South, and so he is harboring a proclivity learned in his formal years and practiced by many a Southerner:
The old Southwest Brag - the type Davy Crockett was famous for, and just as Davy could ride two alligators across the Mississippi while catching two bolts of lightening coming right at him, Mitch McConnell will snatch victory out of defeat if only he can produce a big enough brag. Perhaps something like this:
I'm Mitch McConnell and I have Harry Reid for breakfast, run effective insurgency in the upper chamber of our nations legislature, and will provide every Kentuckian with a coon-skin cap, a Bowie knife, musket ball and power, and an Alamo to fight in if they merely vote for me!
Maybe nowhere else would this campaign strategy work, but Kentucky may be a land fertile for such exaggeration, and thus a winning strategy for Mitch in his Herculean effort not to be primaried! -Kevo
McConnell is going to retreat into his shell!!!
He is one creepy guy, isn't he. Kentucky seems to like creepy guys. They have Rand Paul, too.
Now that is really rude to those animals who have shells. I was thinking he could retreat into his slime pit (because I cannot think of a slimy animal that deserves good press).
Only in the bizarro dual reality of the right wing mob does the National Rifle Association and the various collection of gun nuts that have been drawn out by this debate speak for any large percentage of Americans. The country has made it abundantly clear in poll after election after public demonstration that they want common sense gun regulations that will save lives. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson did not bestow upon us a divine right to own machine guns and ammo clips with ore than 100 armor-piercing bullets. The media and our lawmakers must stop giving attention to the idiots at the NRA. Ignore tham and listen to real Americans. - progressive
Actually, they bestowed the Second Amendment, with it's well-regulated State militia, to convince the South they could keep their slave-catching militia patrols, without fear that the national government would make them illegal in an attack on the "peculiar institution." Madison originally wrote the Second Amendment to say that a well-regulated militia was necessary to the freedom of a Country, not a State. But the paranoid slave owners wouldn't take the risk that this would give the national government the power to disband state militias, which were the only thing standing between Ol' Massa and meeting his maker in the middle of the night with an ear-to-ear grin under his chin.
Amending the Constitution is not impossible, we have accomplished it 27 times. Difficult, yes. Impossible, no. We have even repealed one amendment with another (21st repealed the 18th) and had one reverse a SCotUS decision (16th).
It may now be possible, with the current popular mood, to repeal the 2nd. This is probably the only way to settle the debate permanently. Anything short of that will just continue the argument resolving nothing.
In Kentucky, McConnell's success is actually dependent more on which Jesse Benton is his campaign manager. If it's Jesse Jack Benton or Jesse Bob Benton, it's one thing. Especially in the northwestern part of the state. If it's the southern area then it'd have to be Jesse John Benton, Jesse Billy Benton, or even Jesse Sue Benton, but that'd be a stretch there. The eastern tip it could be Jesse Jerry Benton, or Jesse Lou Benton, the brother sister cousins, maybe Jesse Jesse Benton from horse country, or lastly, might be, if Mitch really had it together it'd be Jesse Bessie Benton... she'd be the one people'd believe...
If Mitch was smart he'd retire, sit back with a bourbon, and finally get that chin implant...
McConnell's top priority to make Obama a one term President did more damage to our nation than anything else, why would anybody be surprised that he's also a liar?
We voted for President Obama because we want the Obama agenda. The stupid right has spent years making people afraid of the Obama Agenda, it didn't work. This is what we want, reasonable gun restrictions that prevent mass shootings and stop many people from getting a gun in the first place. The most important part of which is the registration of ALL guns, even hunting rifles and shotguns.
I would give people one year to register their weapons, then, if you are caught with an unregistered weapon after that, you would get 10 years in prison for the first count, and if you get out of prison and are caught with a weapon any time in the rest of your life, you go to prison for life with no possibility of parole. No lawyering your way out of it, you're convicted, you are gone. March enough of these people in front of TV cameras and show the people of the US that we will no longer put up with scoff-laws when it comes to guns I'm pretty sure many people would ditch their fire arms or register them.
McTurtle is an ass and a liar, say it ain't so...Sniff, sniff....
One can only hope & pray that someone with decency, common sense and wish to do well for US would throw their hat into the ring.
This is a smoke screen. He's getting tea partied from the right so let's put the threat out there that the threat is from the left-what a puttss!!!
See my post from Jan 24th and an article from the Lexington newspaper
McConnell will have a Tea Party challenge in 2014!!!! Yahoo!! That will save us a lot of trouble!! However, Carl Rove bought Rand Pauls' election in Kentucky so RUN ASHLEY JUDD-FILE YOUR PAPER WORK!!!
http://www.kentucky.com/2013/01/22/2486321/several-kentucky-tea-party-groups.html
does anybody else here feel like they've been marinating in $hit?
The dummies - they PAID someone to write this stuff for them when our trolls would have done it for them for peanuts - literally.
I live in kentucky and for the life of me I cant figure out why or how McConnell got elected, and yes he does look like a creep and rand paul looks like a creepy boy who hasnt grown up. I will do my part to see he is not relected
As Mark Twin said:
"When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky, because everything there happens 20 years after it happens anywhere else."
Now I am thinking maybe 120 years after it happens anywhere else.
Isn't MItch, Make Obama a one term President, McConnell always right? One would think so to listen to him!