RUSH: The Tea Party is Far from Dead -- in North Carolina or Anywhere Else

www.RushLimbaugh.com ^ | May 08, 2014 | Rush Limbaugh

[Yosemitest]

The Tea Party is Far from Dead --
in North Carolina or Anywhere Else
May 08, 2014

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Some election news out of North Carolina.
You know I don't get involved in primaries.
I never have gotten involved in primaries.
From my standpoint, it's always been a -- not losing proposition.
It's just policy-wise, basically driven by my instincts,
stay away from primaries.
So I didn't talk much about what was going on in North Carolina,
and there was a lot going on in North Carolina.

North Carolina is thought to hold the key election determining who will control the Senate, the Republicans or the Democrats, particularly the Kay Hagan race.
So there was a big election this past Tuesday, and there was a Tea Party candidate that a lot of people supported
who got handily defeated by what is considered to be an establishment toady.
And that may not be quite an accurate representation.

I know some Tea Party people.
The Tea Party, by the way, is not a party. It's a name.
The Tea Party is a coalition of grassroots activists that have just come together.
There is no official Tea Party.
They're idea people and they're not totally unified on everything,
but they're identifiable as people who are fed up with the establishment of both parties, including the Republican Party.

They're fed up with the spending.
They're fed up with out of-control-Washington.
They're fed up with growth of government.
They're fed up with that.
This Senate race in North Carolina, I talked to a lot of people who would call themselves Tea Party people or sympathizers
who were not particularly in favor of the supposed Tea Party candidate there.
But that's not the race in North Carolina that's really explanatory.

The media is taking that Senate race in North Carolina and, predictably, they're running with the news
that the Tea Party's dead,
that it doesn't exist,
that all these powerful people came out and endorsed this candidate,
and they went down in flames.

It's the end of Ted Cruz.
It's the end of Mike Lee.
You Tea Party people may as well just give up and either join the Republican Party establishmentor

shut up and go home.
I mean, that's the tenor of the coverage, and it's actually quite different.

There happened to be another election in North Carolina on Tuesday that is far more representative than the Senate race was.
And that was North Carolina Third District, where the incumbent is a Republican, Walter Jones.
The Democrats and the establishment types in the Republican Party went in there,
there was a combined one million dollars spent on a single district race
to get rid of the 20-year incumbent, Walter Jones,
and they failed.
And that is the true indicator of the strength of the Tea Party
and of, I would say, the weakness of the establishment.

The Republican establishment wanted to get rid of Walter Jones
because he went against the leadership on the debt limit vote
and a couple of other really defining things.
So the leadership, quite naturally, was out to get him.
The Democrats piled on, they wanted his seat, and it went up in flames.
Walter Jones held on.
Let me read you an account.

"In a race that saw big outside money spent by 'independent groups,' the Washington establishment suffered a defeat.
I am not talking about the GOP primary for the US Senate race to face Sen. Kay Hagan,
which, by the end, was not really competitive."

This is Francis De Luca, by the way, writing the piece here in Civitas.

"I am talking about the 3rd Congressional District in eastern North Carolina.
The incumbent, Rep. Walter Jones Jr., defeated challenger Taylor Griffin in a race that saw Griffin’s D.C. and New York allies independently spend more than a million dollars to defeat Jones.


This does not count the money Griffin was able to raise for his campaign from the same well-connected crowd of insiders, enabling him to out raise Jones in the final reporting period.
By the way, a million dollars goes a long way
in the Eastern North Carolina media market."

That's a lot of money for one district.
And I'll guarantee you Walter Jones was supported by Tea Party voters, and he won.


"Proportionally, more money was spent in the 3rd District primary than was spent on the US Senate primary
when compared to candidate spending.
The disparity is even greater when you factor in the cost of the 3rd District media market versus the cost of statewide media buys.
This is not an indictment of independent expenditures or of more money in campaigns.
In fact, campaign spending of all types is good -- it drives turnout.
In the 3rd District, the turnout was up over 60 percent from the primary in 2010.
That meant voters learned more about both candidates,
and they preferred the incumbent to the Washington insider."

The incumbent, again, had fallen out with the Republican leadership, Walter Jones.
"Why did this race attract such big money in a primary?"
when everybody was focused on the Senate race?
By the way, Kay Hagan doesn't have a prayer, I don't think. But it's early.
Too much of anything can happen, but as I say, this November is gonna be huge.
If just half of the lies of Obamacare had been known, this wouldn't be a wave election.
We'd be talking about the Democrat Party funeral.
It's one of the up sides there is in all of this.

"Why did this race attract such big money in a primary?
Walter Jones is a 20-year incumbent, first getting elected to Congress in 1994 after having served multiple terms in the state legislature.Jones has had a record that can best be described as independent.
He is solidly conservative on social issues."
A social issues conservative WON !
They tell you that can't be done, either.
"He has opposed increasing the debt limit and the bailouts Congress passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis."

So he's conservative on the financial side as well.
This last, by the way, is why the leadership is unhappy with him.
"What appears to be his biggest flaw to his colleagues in D.C. (but not his voters) was his falling out with the House leadership.
This resulted in his being removed from his seat on the Financial Services Committee.
He was one of several GOP members removed from committee assignments immediately after the 2012 elections,"
'cause he was considered to be -- well, not traitorous,
but he had strayed from the shackles of the leadership.

"The 2014 campaign against Jones looks like an attempt to send a message to other potential House GOP --"
this is what's key about it.
We're told that the Tea Party House Republicans don't have a prayer because of what happened in this Senate race.
We're told the media's got the Tea Party buried
and these Tea Party House freshmen and other young Turks that are Tea Party,
"You guys, your days are gone, the Tea Party's finished."
And the point here is
that this campaign against Walter Jones looked like an attempt to send a message to other potential Republican renegades,
that the leadership and the D.C. establishment could come after you
and beat you,
and they did,
but they didn't.

They came after Walter Jones with big money, and they failed.
And I think that race is a little bit more indicative,
A, of the strength of the Tea Party,
B, public moods and attitudes, and a predictor of future elections in North Carolina
than what happened in that Senate primary.
The establishment's guy in North Carolina,
Tillis I think was his name,
he didn't even get 50%, with all the backing that the D.C. establishment and the consultant class,
he didn't even get 50%.
It was pretty split.

"The other interesting story in this election battle was the fascination of the media and lobbyists in D.C. with this race.
This probably is a direct result of Griffin’s having operated in the bureaucratic, media and communications circles in D.C."
So don't allow yourself to be deflated by whatever the media coverage is out of North Carolina.
It's not all bad.
And, in fact, there are a whole lot of positives to take from it, if you are inclined to want to take a positive.
Some people think that's missing reality and so forth.
But I'm telling you, they came after Walter Jones BIG TIME
'cause he just angered the leadership,
and they threw a DC establishment inside-the-Beltway guy at him,
and the Republican establishment was aligned WITH the Democrats trying to get rid of Walter Jones,
and THEY BOTH FAILED,
with a million dollars, in a SINGLE congressional race.


Walter Jones,
known for bucking the leadership on the debt limit.
Known to be a prominent social conservative.
Violated every tenet.
There's no way this guy should have won.
If America has become what they want you to believe it has, there was no way Walter Jones wins, and he did.

END TRANSCRIPT

Related Links


• Civitas: DC GOP Establishment Flops in NC - Francis De Luca
  
  
• CBS: Tillis Wins GOP Nod To Challenge Democrat Hagen For Senate Seat
  
  

[BillyBoy]

Yikes. Rush for was RINO Walter Jones? The RAT who became a Republican to get elected in 1994 and profusely apologized to the liberal media for renaming French Fries "Freedom Fries" to snub Jac Chirac?

Jones' ACU ratings in recent years have been 79% in 2006, 71% in 2007, 58% in 2008, 83% in 2009 (the lone year in recent memory where he scored over 80 like conservatives are SUPPOSED to EVERY year), 65% in 2010, and a pathetic 60% in 2011. He is one of only a handful of Republicans who votes with the RATS on the minimum wage and to censure Joe Wilson for shouting "You lie!" at Obama for lying about Obamacare. If that's Rush's idea of principled conservative, I'd hate to see what liberal looks like. Jones' voting record looks like a typical New England "centrist", not a conservative from a safe GOP seat in North Carolina.

This is worse than Rush's silly support for drafting Rick Perry for POTUS in 2012. I really like listening to Rush but he does go off the deep end from time to time, and this is one of those times.

Fortunantely I don't worship talk radio show hosts and consider their opinions to be infallible, unlike some conservatives (::cough:: Mark Levin worshipers ::cough::)

[Yosemitest]

I'd have to research it.
There are too many "Establishment Republicans" Who'll lie in a heartbeat to trash a TEA Party Conservative.
Damn ALL the "Establishment Republicans" to HELL !

[Impy]

Not just the ACU which is getting less and less relaible and has their 2013 and 2012 ratings posted sideways for some reason so you have to tilt your head to see them.

Look at the national journal ratings.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/free/document/5075

It’s an XLS doucment but if you can open it you’ll have to scroll way down to find Jones because they have him as the 4th least conservative Republican in the (they are in order of CON RANK from highest to lowest) House behind only NY RINOs Hanna, Grimm, and Gibson! That’s worse than I thought.

It’s complete madness to call Jones “tea party”, madness. The only thing he has in common with them is that he hates the party establishment, in his case cause he’s a liberal.

Paulbots Amash and Massie also score poorly.

I’m disappointed to see IL Republican John Shimkus rated so poorly for 2013.

Auh2orepublican has a combined rating system that he outlines

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3102832/replies?c=53

There.

<<<<<<Yosemitest: There are too many “Establishment Republicans” Who’ll lie in a heartbeat to trash a TEA Party Conservative.<<<<<<

There are also way too many a**holes ranging from random millionaires who gave money to democrats to Ron Paul kooks to Liz Cheney (as establishment as they come) who claim to be “tea party” when they sure as hell don’t fit my definition of a good conservative. Seems like all they have to do is rail against the “establishment” to fool people into believing them.

[BillyBoy]

Go ahead and “research it”.

Jones voting record speaks for itself. He is probably the most liberal Republican in the south. Lifelong Dem prior to 1994, comes from a LIBERAL Democrat family, and his dear ol’ daddy Walter Sr. had a longtime reputation as a “progressive leader” in the North Carolina RAT Party.

Now “Republican” Walter Jr. is one of only a handful of Republicans who voted with the RATs for the minimum wage. One of only a handful of Republicans who voted with the RATs for tax increases. One of only a handful of Republicans who voted with the RATs to censure a conservative congressman for shouting “You Lie!” at Obama. “Republican” Jones is 9/11 truther who supports causes with the likes of Dennis Kucinich.

Feel free to look up all the previous posts about Walter Jones on FR, you’ll find out this guy is a RINO’s RINO, which is why all the mainstream (non-Ron Paulite) tea party groups and Sarah Palin OPPOSED Jones in the primary.

I agree with Rush 95% of the time, but he’s dead WRONG here. Rush failing to properly research Jones is no excuse for freepers not doing so.

[BillyBoy]

Here's a good article on FR from 2012, showing just how far left Jones has drifted in recent years:

Walter Jones, that was then, this is now

[BillyBoy]

Ironically, it looks like RINO Jones was one of the turncoats who joined the Dems in trying to start a backlash against Rush by making hay out of his “phony soldiers” comment. Jones even took it so far that he was the ONLY Republican who announced he would co-sponsor the congressional resolution to condemn Rush:

http://triangle.johnlocke.org/blog/?p=1101

Rush would probably be kicking himself now if he knew he endorsed one of the mainstream media suckups who went after him.

[Servant of the Cross]

Ironically, it looks like RINO Jones was one of the turncoats who joined the Dems in trying to start a backlash against Rush by making hay out of his “phony soldiers” comment. Jones even took it so far that he was the ONLY Republican who announced he would co-sponsor the congressional resolution to condemn Rush:

LOL. Rush needs to improve his "show prep" team ping ...

[Impy]

I’m not sure if he actually endorsed him before the election or just deiced to ballyhoo his victory to offer a counterpoint to the “tea party is dead” storyline that cropped up because Tillis won. Either way, he made an error.

The fact that Tillis is not a RINO and that Brannon was vastly overrated as candidate adds another dimension of sillyness to the whole thing.

[weezel]

Either way, EVERY ONE needs to get behind Tillis now, and get kay hagan the hell out of there!

[C. Edmund Wright]

Agreed.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Well….Tillis has some RINO tendencies, but he’s not awful…..and I would also add that Brannon was fine, his team was not.

[ObamahatesPACoal]

“A big shout-out and Mega Dittos to my pal, Rush Limbaugh, who talked about our victory over the Washington Insiders in Tuesday’s primary race. It was Main Street vs. Wall Street and K Street.

Rush and I - and the voters in Eastern North Carolina - know that the Washington Republicans’ prescriptions - endless debt, foreign aid, Wall Street Bailouts, and amnesty for illegal aliens - are wrong for America

Here’s a link to Rush’s audio and a transcript:”

https://www.facebook.com/WalterJonesCommittee/posts/618776598206231

Limbaugh failed to mention immigration and foreign policy.

Also part of the Tea Party bashing was that they claim there is a mandate to ram through amnesty.

Ellmers the RINO said she wanted to have a long discussion on immigration and it wont happen in 2014.

Tillis even said he wanted the border sealed before they debate any immigration law changes.

Taylor Griffin said we either deport 12 million or we give them legal status.

[Pelham]

“Limbaugh failed to mention immigration”

He never was interested in it although he’s improved a bit recently. For years he used to parrot the Chamber of Commerce line, the usual pro amnesty treason lobby garbage.

[ObamahatesPACoal]