Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was scared. So scared that when he wasn’t plotting to bring down then possible opponent Ashley Judd by using her personal life against her in a dirty, desperate move, he wormed his way into the bed of the Paul family, as in Rand Paul, Ron Paul, etc. With the Pauls by his side, McConnell could inoculate himself against the primary rage of the Tea Party.
Detailing how the “Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has forged an alliance with tea party darling Rand Paul, picked up support from other national tea party leaders and brought in a campaign manager from the upper echelons of the tea party movement”, Yahoo traced McConnell’s wheeling and dealing back to his recent campaign manager Jesse Benton:
McConnell’s new allegiances go deep into the Paul family. Jesse Benton, who married the older Paul’s granddaughter, signed on last year to lead McConnell’s re-election campaign. Benton has previously served as campaign manager and political adviser to both Pauls, and his affiliation with McConnell sends a not-so-subtle signal to would-be tea party challengers to stand down and to potential donors to support McConnell or keep their wallets in their pockets.
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And look how easy it is to sell/pimp out big daddy. The Junior Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul (R-KY), said in a statement to the AP, “Mitch McConnell is an important ally and a conservative voice in Washington for the people of Kentucky. The commonwealth is stronger because of his service and I look forward to continuing to work with him.”
Rand Paul is helping Mitch McConnell with his Tea bona fides in exchange for McConnell smoothing the way among the GOP elite for Paul’s eventual presidential run. It would be funny if it weren’t so predictable and sad.
The followers of the Tea Party have a reputation for being easily used – they followed Sarah Palin to nowhere and gave her a ton of money to get there. They love a loser brownshirting his way into power. They love the uneducated because it makes them feel better even if the uneducated is playing their resentment against the alleged elite for cash. And now they’re buying the most entrenched DC guy there is, Mitch McConnell, all because he’s being sold to them by someone with Tea Party bona fides, with an agenda.
McConnell is the longest serving U.S. Senator in Kentucky history. The LaRue County Herald observed that McConnell is known as a cunning political strategist, “(T)he Republican known as a cunning, hard-hitting political strategist is about to achieve another milestone.”
Political strategy is supposed to be the opposite of grass roots rah-rah of the people Tea. But then so is being a puppet of big banks.
It doesn’t occur to the Tea Party base that people like McConnell are playing them. The Tea Party allegedly stands against the bailouts of the big banks (though they incorrectly blame Obama for something that happened secretly under Bush in 2008). But Republicans labeled a financial industry reform bill a “bailout” bill in order to justify not supporting reform of the financial industry. Their base bought it. Pretty slick.
Lucky for Republicans, their base doesn’t trust anyone but the folks who lie to them, so this is a winning strategy for the GOP — though it may be hard to get anyone independent or people who actually read on board.
McConnell has received more money in donations from the “Finance, Insurance and Real Estate” sector than any other sector according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Mitch McConnell is known as the puppet of big banks, with a reporter asking him in 2010 if he was just doing their bidding:
“There was a report that you guys met with hedge fund managers in New York,” a questioner said to McConnell. “A lot of people are viewing this particular line of argument, this bailout argument as spin…”
McConnell has been called an “entrenched obstructionist”, which should endear him to the Tea Party base, if only they can ignore the fact that he is serving as an obstructionist puppet for the GOP and for his own career, and has been for years. But the Tea Party base has been conditioned to salivate (vote/scream/donate) at the sound of Obama hate, so McConnell can pretend that he’s obstructing for the cause and not his own pocketbook/agenda.
Though to be fair to the Republican, CREW named Senator McConnell the Scoundrel of the Month three times in 2013 alone. If that doesn’t sound like the résumé of a true Tea believer, what does?
The Tea Party are just looking for symbols and cardboard strongmen, not real leaders. Any puppet will do. Mitch McConnell as a Tea Party radical is proof positive that Republicans can sell anything to the allegedly “independent” Tea Party and make them like it, too.
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