Mitch McConnell Sends Tea Party a Message: Don't Get in My Way

Sam Youngman

Kentucky’s senior senator wants to be majority leader more than anything else and he has been determined to crush conservative opposition in Tuesday’s primary to do it.

LEXINGTON, Kentucky — Matt Bevin was scheduled to arrive at the Oasis Pizza Station in Barbourville at noon, but showing remarkable punctuality for a politician, he walked through the door into the dark, smoke-filled restaurant at promptly 12:02.

Finding only three non-voters and a staff that didn't know he was coming or who he was, Bevin remarked that he "must be early."

But given the Tea Party successes of the last two cycles and polling that shows Bevin losing in a landslide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky's Tuesday primary, it seems safe to say that Bevin is late.

Despite a lot of hype when he first entered the race last July, Bevin never really took off, and the only real questions political observers in the Bluegrass will be asking on Tuesday are how much of the pie can Bevin end up with and will it hurt McConnell in the fall.

There are a number of reasons why Bevin never got off the ground: There's not much room to McConnell's right, he struggled to raise money to match McConnell's Death Star war chest and he repeatedly played into McConnell's efforts to define him as prone to exaggeration and untrustworthy.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/19/mitch-mcconnell-sends-tea-party-a-message-don-t-get-in-my-way.html