but he has now become the party s leader on campaign issues and helped him get the campaign chairmanship, which led to his leadership position. mitch mcconnell, can you imagine him losing a race in the state of kentucky. yes. when he ran against bruce lunsford in 2008 after lunsford won the primary, he had a brief lead in the polls. and you believed it. it was a real lead. i think so. because lunsford had a primary bump and there is no great reservoir of love in kentucky for mitch mcconnell. respect and fear, but not love. there is about 25 or 30% of the republican party base that doesn t like mitch mcconnell. never been their cup of tea. they have never had an opportunity to vote against a credible candidate in a primary. so that s his biggest worry. there s going to be who knows how many people vote for matt bevin. but some of those people will not bring themselves to go to the polls and vote for the guy with an r by his name like they have done the last four or five times.
state. the kentucky primary is six weeks from tomorrow. in fact, mark may 20th on your calendar, probably the biggest primary of the year. and mcconnell has been beating the living daylights out of his primary opponent, matt bevin, banked $18 million for the effort. but the anyone but mitch sentiment hasn t been crushed. over the weekend, thousands of conservative activists cheered on bevin along with fellow challenger chris mcdaniel of mississippi who decided to come up to kentucky for this event and failed virginia gubernatorial candidate ken cuccinelli, all at this louisville event sponsored by freedom works. glenn beck announced in a rambling speech that mitch mcdonne mcconnell is as big a change to the country as barack obama. and then bevin challenged mcconnell to debate before the 20th primary. mcconnell has been benefitting from bev s own missteps and the latest for bevin, struggling to explain his appearance at a rally to legalize cockfighting,
has had been trending red ever since. but once he got secured in the senate, he hitched his wagon to the republican party, wherever it went, and he has moved right as the party has gone right. is he ideological in his heart of hearts? what is he? i think some people can t figure out i ll tell you this, the white house can t figure him out. president obama can t figure out mitch mcconnell. biden thinks he knows him, but it is very interesting that there is this sense that they don t know him. he is ultimately inscrutable. very few people really know the mind of mitch mcconnell. and they ain t talking. he is very much about this as a professional. when you call his home and get the voice message, before he changed it, he would say, this call is about business, please call my office. it s a business. he treats it like a business and aims to be as successful in business as possible. and his ultimate goal is to be the republican the majority
then we had more close elections. right. we had the ed whitfield victory in the first that 94 special. the first district was not the special. oh, the second the it was a wide margin. it was ten points. because you had low turnout and a morphed the democrat bill clinton. bill clinton. and mcconnell and gingrich worked together on that election. and that was an example of how mcconnell find ways to win by working with who have looks out for opportunities. they had the special in oklahoma two weeks before that. and there was clearly an anti clinton vote out there. and gingrich, who had been approached by mcconnell said let s go. and you had congressional campaign committees, you know, congressman committees giving 3,000 bucks. one for the special, one for the primary, one for the general. let s talk about mcconnell s rise into prominence into kentucky politics. was he always a natural
illegal under kentucky law. he said he thought he was speaking at a states rights rally, if that s any better. he defended the speech on a local radio show. so there weren t roosters pecking at your feet? there was literally no fowl of any sort. i take spiders out of my house on a piece of tissue paper and let them free. oh, come on. i m not kidding. i ve never been to a cockfight, i don t condone cockfighting, but i m not going to disparage people for exercising their first amendment rights. cockfighting and the first amendment. okay. he went on to defend cockfighting saying, quote, the founding fathers, many of them, very actively involved in this. where is little jerry? the primary has pushed mcconnell to the right, most memobly captured by his appearance at cpac. mcconnell doing his best to make this race a referendum on national democrats, trying to use his leadership role as an