MORNING LOL: Ted Cruz Could End Mitch McConnell’s Career With One Endorsement

MORNING LOL: Ted Cruz Could End Mitch McConnell’s Career With One Endorsement

Get this. Now that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has a primary challenger, he won’t be compromising so much.

Is it possible for the man who made limiting President Obama to one term his main goal and helped set the record for filibusters to compromise less?

“We’re going to see McConnell in the same mode that he’s been in for the past year — only more so now that he has a primary challenger — which is being very, very careful of being perceived as someone who’s accommodating the other side or making compromises, because the best thing to do in a Republican primary is to vote ‘no,’” said former Republican congressional aide Ron Bonjean told Bloomberg.

McConnell is effectively no longer the Senate minority leader. That job now belongs to either Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who engineered a compromise on the president’s executive appointments last week, or Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who will decide if McConnell survives his primary.

The senior senator from Kentucky has spent the last two years courting Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), after the junior senator beat McConnell’s candidate in a primary. McConnell hired Paul’s campaign manager and has been preparing for this primary since. This has probably limited the chances that the libertarian-leaning ophthalmologist will endorse McConnell’s opponent, Matthew Bevins.

If the minority leader can keep Ted Cruz from endorsing, his chances of survival rise infinitely. And if Cruz endorses Bevins, McConnell might as well get an Obama tattoo — he’s done.

This means you should count on McConnell going along with Cruz’s comic demands to defund Obamacare in exchange for a deal to keep the government operating.

Get ready to hear everyone calling each other “RINO!” (Republican In Name Only). This is race that will pit Tea Partiers against Tea Partiers.

“We see him a lot in the same vein as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz,” Scott Hofstra, spokesman for the United Kentucky Tea Party said about Bevins. “If he decides to get into the race, we will support him wholeheartedly.”

However, the leader of Tea Party Nation has said, “Fighting McConnell is not a fight to have.”

Other points:

National Journal‘s Ron Fournier looks at Detroit’s mess and sees a warning for the nation. He misses part of the problem, though, that is also a national problem: anti-tax folks are so eager to protect the rich from paying that they’ve made it difficult to fund the city.

Why do we waste $8 billion a year giving tax breaks on second homes? Congresspeople tend to have second homes.

Republicans. Lying to make Obamacare look bad when the truth is it’s lowering rates — even before subsidies kick in. But some Republicans are recognizing that playing games with their constituents’ health care is a bad bet. Because we all know they want the money for their districts/states.

Inequality’s relationship to geography is visually striking.

People’s views on the Zimmerman trial align with the 2012 election.

Libertarian populism is “viable.” All Republicans have to do is campaign against “trickle-down government” — as Romney and Ryan did — and give up on tax breaks for the rich — HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA.

Do you have a second home? What’s on your mind?

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com

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