When the Tea Party was first formed and began holding marches with their lies, misrepresentation of the facts and misspelled words, many in the established Republican party kept their mouth shut and in some cases, took the sides of the Teaparty. They felt the Tea Partiers were only fighting the Democrats and in that case, all was well. Well that then. Today, these same members of the established Republican party are facing primary challenges from the Tea Party.
In Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, the party’s Senate leader, is fending off a charismatic and wealthy conservative challenger. In South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, one of the Senate’s most reliably conservative voices on foreign policy, is being painted by primary opponents as a veritable clone of President Obama.
In Tennessee, Tea Party activists have vowed to take out Lamar Alexander, the veteran senator, former cabinet officer and two-time presidential candidate. “Senator Alexander has never been a true conservative,” said Ben Cunningham, president of the Nashville Tea Party. “His support for the amnesty bill has caused great problems for us,” he said, referring to the Senate immigration bill. “He is at best a moderate.”
Tea Party candidates have also emerged in races against Democratic incumbents in Alaska — Joe Miller, who beat Senator Lisa Murkowski in her last primary, has resurfaced — Colorado, Louisiana and North Dakota, and for open seats in Georgia, Iowa and South Dakota. Democrats hope they can benefit from a divided Republican electorate.
The Republican incumbents and party officials say they have learned from the hard lessons of the past when Tea Party candidates from the right were ignored or dismissed, only to prevail in primaries and lose in general elections. They have plans to avoid becoming the next Richard G. Lugar or Robert Bennett, two senior senators who were stunned by losses before the general election.
Susan Rice. Remember her? She was one of the names being talked about to take over as Secretary of State when Hillary Clinton steps down later this month. But Mrs. Rice had to withdraw her name after Republicans, specifically John McCain and Lindsey Graham, placed a target on her back and relentlessly fired away, blaming her it seemed, for the events in Benghazi where four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens were killed.
The unwarranted attacks on Rice came after she went on television and repeated the talking points given to her about the events in Benghazi. Rice, who is the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, had no first hand knowledge of the events in Benghazi, but Republicans crucified her anyway, causing her to withdraw her name from consideration for Secretary of State. And it is noteworthy to point out that since Rice withdrew her name, the attacks mysteriously stopped.
For Months since the Benghazi September 11th, 2012 attacks, Republicans wanted blood. They wanted someone from the Obama Administration to pay for what happened in Libya. Their next target after Rice, was the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Previous attempts to get Mrs. Clinton to testify failed due to some health issues. After it was reported that Mrs. Clinton suffered a concussion in her home, Republicans tagged that news as her trying to avoid the testimony. They called it Benghazi-gate.
Well now the time has come. The climax of the Republican party is here. Hillary Clinton is testifying today about the events in Benghazi and Republicans are having the time of their lives and the time of their political career. This is their opportunity to bring the Obama administration to its knees. This is their chance to blame a high-ranking official for the four American deaths in Libya.
But their plan may not be working out just yet. Early reports from the testimony are showing that Mrs. Clinton is holding her own. Apparently she is not the raving lunatic Republicans would have us believe. Apparently she has a heart and although she acknowledged that things could have went differently, it seems that she and her department are doing everything possible, including implementing 29 recommendations from an independent review board, to make sure another future Benghazi does not happen.
Almost coming to tears at times, the Secretary of State tried to reassure the Republicans on the panel. “Make no mistake about it, we have got to have a better strategy,” she said. “I stood next to President Obama as the Marines carried those flag-draped caskets off the plane at Andrews,’ she said. ‘I put my arms around the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters.”
A Republican representing Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, dug in.”There were systemic [security] deficiencies and I know you know that,” he said. “To my knowledge no one has been held accountable.”
‘These officials were screaming out for more security.
Mrs Clinton replied;
“We can’t think now about what could have, should have, would have happened. Benghazi didn’t happen in a vacuum,’ she said. ‘The Arab revolutions have scrambled power dynamics and shattered security forces across the region. And instability in Mali has created an expanding safe haven for terrorists who look to extend their influence and plot further attacks of the kind we saw just last week in Algeria.”
Senator John McCain, the man responsible for the personally attacking Susan Rice and questioning her education and experience, called Benghazi “a cover-up from the beginning.” He is the newest member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
It is the hope of Republicans to take Hillary Clinton out now. She is the Democratic favorite to run for President in 2016 and tarnishing her exceptional job as Secretary of State they hope, will be a deciding factor for many Americans if she runs. But so far, these hearings are not turning out the way Republicans plan. They are coming off as a group of hypocrites, who ignored the attacks on September 11th where almost three thousand people died in New York, focused instead on Benghazi where four Americans were killed.
If they can ask about security now, why shouldn’t they answer that same question about September 11, 2001? After all, there are documented proof that their president, George W. Bush, had intelligence that Bin Laden was about to attack.
Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham says President Barack Obama is a “small ball guy” but it’s time for him to start “manning up” on cuts to earned benefits like Medicare and Social Security.
Speaking to Fox News host Martha MacCallum on Monday, Graham suggested that Republicans should not agree to tax rate hikes on the rich and should hold a debt ceiling increase hostage until Democrats agreed to “entitlement reform.”
“Here’s where the president is going to have a rude awakening,” the senior senator from South Carolina opined. “In February or March, you have to raise the debt ceiling and I can tell you this, there’s a hardening on the Republican side. We’re not going to raise the debt ceiling, we’re not going to let Obama borrow any more money or any American Congress borrow any more money until we fix this country from becoming Greece. And that requires significant entitlement reform to save Social Security and Medicare from bankruptcy.”
MacCallum noted that Obama told business leaders last week that he would not “play that game” with Republicans because “we’ve got to break that habit” of allowing them to use the debt ceiling in budget negotiations.
“Yes, we will play that game, Mr. President, because this is not a game,” Graham insisted. “The game you’re playing is small ball. You’re talking about raising rates on the top 2 percent that would run the government for 11 days. You just got re-elected. How about doing something big that’s not liberal? How about doing something big that really is bipartisan? Every big idea he has is a liberal idea that drowns us in debt.”
“How about manning up here, Mr. President, and use your mandate to bring this country together to stop us from becoming Greece?” he continued. “So when it comes debt ceiling time, Mr. President, you’re going to have a Republican Party that’s going to make sure we save Medicare and Social Security from bankruptcy and we save this country from becoming Greece.”
Graham concluded: “He’s a small ball guy. He’s afraid of his own party.”
Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill appeared on Meet The Press today and defended United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice. Asked about Susan Rice and the roadblock Republicans are building to deny her the job of Secretary of State, McCaskill said;
“I think it’s terribly unfair what has happened to Susan Rice.
“I do not understand for the life of me — the talking-points came from the intelligence community, yet you don’t hear one criticism of [former CIA Director] David Petraeus. It was his shop that produced the talking-points that Susan Rice talked about, and she mentioned al-Qaeda in the interviews.”
McCaskill also compared Susan Rice to Condoleezza Rice, who worked in the Bush administration and promoted the Bush talking-points making it possible to start the war in Iraq.
“I mean, really? Is there a double-standard here? It appears to most of us that there is. A very unfair one. This is a strong, smart, capable, accomplished woman, and I think there are too many people over there that are looking for a scalp.”
Republicans led by John McCain and Lindsey Graham have vowed not to support Susan Rice’s nomination for Secretary of State if she is nominated by President Obama, and they claim the talking-points Rice used to describe the events in Benghazi is their reason to deny her the nomination. McCaskill correctly pointed out that these talking-points did not come from Rice, but this little fact makes no difference to Republicans.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. John Kerry is angling to be the nation’s top diplomat by being, well, diplomatic.
The longtime Democratic lawmaker from Massachusetts has largely stayed quiet while President Barack Obama considers him for the next secretary of state. Kerry has asked his supporters to avoid overt lobbying of the White House on his behalf. And he’s defended his chief rival for the post, Susan Rice, amid Republican criticism of her initial explanation of the attack on Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
Kerry’s strategy reflects what people close to the senator say is his disdain for some aspects of Washington’s personnel politics. But it also underscores his awkward role in the process. If Obama taps Rice for the job Kerry covets, the senator would have to shepherd her difficult nomination through the foreign relations committee he chairs.
White House officials say Obama is still mulling over his pick to replace outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, though a decision is expected soon. Rice, who has a close relationship with the president, is widely viewed as the favorite. But Kerry’s stock may be rising as GOP lawmakers threaten to hold up Rice’s confirmation until they’re satisfied with her answers about the early public statements about the Benghazi attack.
But don’t expect Kerry or his allies to make his case to Obama as the president nears a decision, as is standard practice for people who are on a short list for a new job. People close to the senator say he finds backroom lobbying for top jobs irritating and counterproductive. That view, they say, is shaped from his experience on both sides of the process: as a contender for previous high-level jobs and as the one making the decision in 2004, when he tapped John Edwards as his running mate during his presidential bid.
“John Kerry is very seasoned at how personnel decisions get made by chief executives,” said Michael Meehan, a former Kerry aide. “He wouldn’t be out there advising anybody on how to make this decision.”
While Rice has several high-level advocates in the White House, particularly among advisers who have been with Obama since his 2008 campaign, Kerry has his fans within the administration as well. He backed Obama early in his 2008 presidential run and was under consideration to be his first secretary of state. More recently, Kerry spent months helping Obama with his campaign debate preparations, playing the role of Republican nominee Mitt Romney in practice sessions.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has a message for his Republican friends in Congress. Don’t blame the President or even the Democrats. Don’t blame anyone else for the mess over raising the debt ceiling, blame yourself.
“Our problem is we made a big deal about this for three months. How many Republicans have been on TV saying, ‘I’m not going to raise the debt limit.’ You know, Mitch [McConnell] says, ‘I’m not going to raise the debt limit unless we talk about Medicare.’ And I’ve said I’m not going to raise the debt limit until we do something about spending and entitlements.’ So we’ve got nobody to blame but ourselves.
“We shouldn’t have said that if we didn’t mean it.”
The Republicans are beginning to break.
With the President holding his ground in the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling, and with Americans looking at the Republicans as obstructionists whose only goal is protecting the rich while the rest of the country slides into default, Republicans are beginning to wonder out loud why they intentionally mislead the American people over a very routine matter – raising the debt ceiling. On Tuesday, Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell proposed a feeble detour to get the debt ceiling raised, and now this from Lindsey Graham.
The American people are keeping track of what’s going on, and the Republicans are beginning to see the writing on the wall… in the form of a political suicide note that is.
The ‘Michele Bachmann’s A Joke Show’ continues, this time, in friendly territory. But even there, on the Foxnews Network, Michele Bachmann – another wanna be Republican candidate for the 2012 presidential campaign – couldn’t answer a question truthfully.
Interviewed by Chris Wallace of Fox, Michele was put on the spot. Caught like a deer in the headlights, she appeared ill-prepared and quite frankly, ill-informed on the most basics of war ethics – you don’t believe what the enemy says, especially when the enemy is Qaudaffi;
WALLACE: We’re going to have Lindsey Graham on in a moment. Is he wrong when he says in fact we should get more deeply involved and in fact should take out Qaddafi? I would also like your reaction to the missile strike overnight that apparently killed some of Qaddafi’s family.
BACHMANN: Well, remember, Defense Secretary Gates said we were not attacked by Qaddafi, nor were we threatened attack. He also said we have no vital national American interest in Libya. Those are the two prerequisites for our United States military entry.
He was later asked what our military goal was in Libya. He couldn’t state what our military goal is. What in the world are we doing in Libya if we don’t know what our military goal is? And if we still aren’t sure about who the opposition forces are? What possible benefits–
WALLACE: When you say the opposition, you mean the rebels?
BACHMANN: The rebels. What possible benefit could there be for the United States if in fact we could potentially be benefiting Al Qaida of North Africa or Hezbollah, which is a very strong likelihood?
This would be a terrible mistake for this reason, because if we give Al Qaida of North Africa access to sustained revenues from oil, they could continue to fund global terrorism. How is that going to help anyone? This is a disaster in the making.
That’s why President Obama’s policy of leading from behind is an outrage. And people should be outraged at the foolishness of the president’s decision. He said he wanted to go in for humanitarian purposes, and overnight we are hearing that potentially 10,000 to 30,000 people could have been killed in the strike. Those are some of the reports.
WALLACE: In the NATO strikes, 10,000 to 30,000 people?
BACHMANN: There is a report that came out from an ambassador from Tripoli that said we won’t know until we’re able to go in.
WALLACE: But did the NATO strikes kill 10,000 to 30,000 people?
BACHMANN: Yes.
WALLACE: So you’re believing the Qaddafi regime?
BACHMANN: We don’t know. We don’t know. All I’m saying is that —
WALLACE: Do you think Muammar Qaddafi is a reliable person?
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