Moe Lane

When you shear away all the fluff, ham-handed politicking, and let’s-poke-the-Republicans-with-a-stick troublemaking, what you’re left with in this Politico article is pretty much this: Mitch McConnell wants to win his Senate election next year – and he’s apparently got a good idea on how to do that, damn his eyes*.  Seriously, this is their big revelation?

[Reid's people say that McConnell's strategy will be to] organize early, raise big money early to scare off opponents, scorch potential rivals to shape the field, push back against polling showing vulnerabilities to depress potential rivals and third-party groups, bolster the state party that each effectively runs and invest in new technology to run an even better campaign than their previous one.

…yes, as opposed to Mitch McConnell stripping himself naked, painting his body with purple and green woad, and doing the Fish Dance at the next debate. (more…)

I don’t know whether this qualifies as irony:

In 2003, McConnell v. FEC temporarily determined that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act – usually called “McCain-Feingold,” after the two Constitutional illiterates that inflicted this law on the rest of us – was in fact Constitutional.  The reaction to this was to create various types of organizations that could operate around the new restrictions on free speech; one of these types of organization is something known as a “super-PAC.”  Super-PACs continued to exist even after the Supreme Court came partially to its senses and restored key free speech rights in Citizens United v. FEC; and in a fine bit of hypocrisy, the Democratic party and the Left has wholeheartedly adopted using such groups for various purposes, including the occasional deniable attack run (as was possibly discussed in a shadowy December meeting that allegedly involved groups like Mother Jones and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics In Washington).  The most recent example of this would be the attacks made by “Progress Kentucky,” which have catastrophically blown up in the Left’s collective face (like, say, Mother Jones and CREW); it is now somewhat more likely that said attacks will instead help re-elect… Senator Mitch McConnell, who brought the original lawsuit against McCain-Feingold in the first place.

Ironic?  Possibly not.  Hysterical?  Hoo, yeah.

Moe Lane

PS: You know, if you had told me last year that large sections of the Right would be shaking their heads in horrified admiration at McConnell at this point, I’d have laughed in your face.

Can’t improve on this, and won’t even try.

Epic ProgressKY-Politico Buttdial politico.com/story/2013/04/… twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/st…

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) April 13, 2013

I’m not going to be cute about this:

• Progress Kentucky is a racist organization.  We know this because they went after Mitch McConnell’s wife for being, apparently, a spy for the Chinese.
• Progress Kentucky is a crazy organization.  We know this because they thought that Ashley Judd was a viable candidate for Kentucky Senate (nobody else did, honestly).
• And, allegedly, Progress Kentucky is a stupid organization.  We suspect this because Kentucky Democrats are confessing that the organization apparently bragged about taping Mitch McConnell and staff during a strategy session:

Jacob Conway, who is on the executive committee of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, says that day, Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison, who founded and volunteered for Progress Kentucky, respectively, bragged to him about how they recorded the meeting.

[snip]

“They were in the hallway after the, I guess after the celebration and hoopla ended, apparently these people broke for lunch and had a strategy meeting, which is, in every campaign I’ve been affiliated with, makes perfect sense,” says Conway. “One of them held the elevator, the other one did the recording and they left. That was what they told to me from them directly.”

(more…)

Let us unpack this CYA from Mother Jones on the tape that they released today:

Update 4/Mother Jones Statement: We are still waiting for Sen. Mitch McConnell to comment on the substance of the article. Before posting, we contacted his Senate office and his campaign office—in particular, his campaign manager, Jesse Benton—and no one responded. As the story makes clear, we were recently provided with the tape by a source who wishes to remain anonymous. We published the article on the tape due to its obvious newsworthiness. We were not involved in the making of the tape, but it is our understanding that the tape was not the product of any kind of bugging operation. We cannot comment beyond that, except to say that under the circumstances, our publication of the article is both legal and protected by the First Amendment.

Background: MJ got its hands on an audio tape that had Mitch McConnell and his staff discussing how to make Ashley Judd regret that she had ever decided to run for office.  They then published it, despite the fact that a) Ashley Judd effectively did publicly regret that she had ever decided to run for office and b) the information in the tape would hardly be a surprise to anybody familiar with political campaigns.  But then there was a new wrinkle: Mitch McConnell called the FBI.  Potential wiretap law violations, you understand. (more…)

They’re not SUICIDAL.

As [Ashley Judd] contemplated whether to move back to Kentucky and challenge Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell [Johnathan Miller] was alternating with Congressman John Yarmuth as witness for the defense against a steady stream of salacious recriminations.

The prosecution was assisted in nearly every article by the same handful of Democratic professionals railing against the prospects of a Judd candidacy, promoting instead the potential Senate candidacy of Kentucky’s young Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes.

(more…)

She just didn’t know the territory:

Actress Ashley Judd has decided not to pursue a bid for the Kentucky Senate race, according to two sources familiar with her decision.

Moral of the story: normal people simply don’t like rabid progressives all that much.  Particularly ones that babble on and on about how much they hate coal mining, to the point where they’re trivializing rape.

Glad we cleared that up!

Moe Lane

PS: Yeah, of course I was looking forward to Ashley Judd running.  But, honestly: it’s better for the Republic if progressives don’t get encouraged too much to think that they’re viable outside of very carefully designed and maintained demographic hothouses.  Aside from everything else ,it’s… cruel to do that to them.  Sometimes you have to think of the country first.

…offers to help them both.

Clinton encouraged Grimes to consider taking on [Mitch] McConnell, adding as he did with Judd that he would support her. The conversation was described as “candid” and “frank” with Clinton saying “all options are available” to the 34-year-old secretary of state and that she has “unlimited potential.” He did add that “bigger is always better”…

[pause]

No.

You know something?  I’m better than this.  Bill Clinton is merely doing this to bait me.  Or ABC News is.  But I’m not going to play their twisted little game.

Moe Lane

Sorry to do said editing, but the woman’s grasp of Standard English generally makes my teeth ache.  Anyway, the aforementioned non-denial denial about whether Ms. Judd is running for Senate in Kentucky:

“I am not sure who is saying this stuff, but it is not [me]! [A]s a fan of your journalism[, I would prefer] that you stay [both] accurate and credible. [My... office? call service?  Butler? Needs context, here] told everyone who called us yesterday [that] these stories are fabrications.”

…Yeah, HuffPo (H/T: Hot Air Headlines) isn’t buying that, either.  Excuse me: “ain’t.” Sounds more ethnic that way*; God forbid that we should try to torpedo Ashley Judd’s attempt to sound like what she fondly thinks the average Kentuckian sounds like… (more…)

Or, the Kentucky Curb-stomp.

Let me start by noting something: yes, many people have at least a small problem with Mitch McConnell. Including myself, sometimes. But that does not mean that the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy will simply tolerate anybody calling his wife a traitorous double agent for the ChiComs. Which is what the rabidly liberal Super PAC (the Democrats still have those? Hypocrites) Progress Kentucky just did.

Recently, the group turned its attention to McConnell’s wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, with a focus on her race.

In a Feb. 14 Twitter message, Progress says: “This woman has the ear of (Sen. McConnell)—she’s his wife. May explain why your job moved to China!”

[snip]

Other messages from Progress’s social networking account about Chao have run for the past several days, saying her “Chinese (money)” is buying state elections.

(more…)

It’s kind of significant that there are Kentucky Democrats who were willing to go on the record to scream “NOOOOOOOO!” about the thought of Ashley Judd running for Senate in Tennessee - oops, sorry, Kentucky.  Normally, neither politicians nor their support staff like to put their names to comments like these:

“If [Rep.] John Yarmuth wants to be highest ranking Democrat in the state of Kentucky, he should keep pushing Ashley Judd,” [Kentucky Democratic consultant] Jimmy] Cauley said. “Because we will lose the Legislature and we will lose the governor’s office and he’ll be the only one left.”

(more…)

Let me just list the House races that Democratic strategists are willing to admit – some, even by name! – as having been endangered by Barack Obama’s sub-par October performance.  Just list.

• AZ-01 (Jonathan Paton)
• CO-03 (Rep. Scott Tipton)
• FL-18 (Rep. Allen West)
• KY-06 (Andy Barr)
• NH-02 (Rep. Charlie Bass)
• PA-12 (Keith Rothfus)
• VA-02 (Rep. Scott Rigell)

And then there’s the generic ballot, which has gone from plus-Democrat to even-steven. Also note the ostensible swing-state nature of most of the races on that list; you can be certain that official political operatives from both parties have.  All in all, this is pretty good news to have, less than two weeks out – both on the Congressional, and the Presidential, level.

Needless to say, the Republicans in all of the races above could use whatever support that you can muster.  The Democrats were counting on taking or holding all of those seats.  Deny them the satisfaction.

Moe Lane

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