{"id":1739,"date":"2014-05-20T07:31:43","date_gmt":"2014-05-20T14:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/?p=1739"},"modified":"2014-05-20T07:31:43","modified_gmt":"2014-05-20T14:31:43","slug":"todays-kentucky-primary-hughhewitt-com-05-20-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/2014\/05\/20\/todays-kentucky-primary-hughhewitt-com-05-20-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s Kentucky Primary | HughHewitt.com | 05.20.14"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, Tuesday, May 20th<\/sup>, Kentucky Republicans go to the polls to decide whether to nominate Senator Mitch McConnell for another term.<\/p>\n

Why is this even a question?<\/p>\n

The simple, essential fact is that the GOP would be no place \u2014 no place \u2013 today if it were not for McConnell\u2019s leadership in the Senate.<\/p>\n

Does that implausible?\u00a0 Consider this.<\/p>\n

The only reason Republican criticisms of Obamacare have any legitimacy in Washington or the country is that every GOP member of Congress voted against it.\u00a0 Every single one.\u00a0 Both houses.<\/p>\n

People listen to the party on Obamacare now, because not just today but when the key votes were cast, the party spoke with a clear, principled, unified, The party sang out in complete unison warnings of what was coming and what has now arrived, the most disastrous domestic program ever enacted by any congress in the nation\u2019s brief 227-year history.<\/p>\n

That unanimity is the GOP\u2019s single biggest argument for why it deserves to retake the Senate.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t typical late political arrival at the anti-Obamacare party.\u00a0 It was there full force from the start.<\/p>\n

The party in Congress can say with utter truthfulness that not only were the Democrats were disastrously wrong, but we warned them.\u00a0 We fought them.\u00a0 And for the first time in the history of the nation and despite massive pressure to cave, a major program passed without a single vote of support in either house of Congress coming from the opposition party.<\/p>\n

It takes nothing from Speaker Boehner to say that getting unanimous GOP opposition to the bill was not a heavy lift.\u00a0 The House operates in a very different way from the Senate.\u00a0 The Speaker has power.\u00a0 The Senate majority leader has only persuasion.<\/p>\n

And we all know that the Senate GOP is particularly factious.\u00a0 It is not just that senators are generally hard animals to herd.\u00a0 The Founders set up the Senate to be a group of independently minded souls \u2013 and today\u2019s GOP senators lift independent mindedness to a historically rare level.<\/p>\n

Take yourself back to the early years of the Obama administration and put yourself in Senator McConnell\u2019s place.\u00a0 Your goal is (as his was) to achieve unanimous GOP opposition to noxious bill the administration was selling as health reform.\u00a0 You know that if you can\u2019t pull off that unity trick the party\u2019s ability to reverse this engine of liberalism later on and repeal the bill will be nearly zero. \u00a0In other words, you know you need to get Maine\u2019s Olympia Snow and Susan Collins to link arms with the likes of Mississippi\u2019s Saxby Chambliss and Kansas\u2019 Sam Brownback.\u00a0 How do you do it?<\/p>\n

Now if you actually know how to get that done, you are better than I.\u00a0 You are better than almost any one in the country.\u00a0\u00a0Almost\u00a0anyone.\u00a0 Because, from what I can tell, only one man had the slightest idea how to get that one done. That was Mitch McConnell, and he did it.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s the point I\u2019m making.\u00a0 It is one thing to throw Bob Bennett out of the Senate, particularly when there is a candidate like the brilliant Mike Lee to replace him.\u00a0 It is a very different thing to throw out that man who kept the party in the Obamacare battle \u2013 the biggest battle not just for saving quality US health care, though it is certainly that, but for our Constitution and our basic rights, as well.<\/p>\n

It was because of McConnell\u2019s leadership that the GOP has a fighting chance of repealing and replacing Obamacare today.<\/p>\n

Senator McConnell deserves to go into the November race \u2013 the most challenging he has faced in a long time \u2014 with the wind to his back and the party\u2019s support of him confirmed in an overwhelming vote in today\u2019s primary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Tuesday, May 20th, Kentucky Republicans go to the polls to decide whether to nominate Senator Mitch McConnell for another term. Why is this even a question? The simple, essential fact is that the GOP would be no place \u2014 no place \u2013 today if it were not for McConnell\u2019s leadership in the Senate. Does […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[52,50,12,57,44],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-commentary-general","tag-campaign","tag-gop","tag-hugh-hewitt","tag-primary","tag-republicans"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1740,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions\/1740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}