Hmmm. It seems each accused the other of supporting amnesty. Conservatives can’t win every election, but nearly every Republican primary winner *claimed* to be conservative in order to win.
Kingston was definitely an amnesty guy.
Got rid of a devil we knew.
(I don’t put much credence in a 95% CU. Too many garbage votes. I firmly believe that if you don’t win, it don’t count. And if it only moves left slower, it don’t count either. That leaves them all 0/0.)
Many liberal Democrats running in the South until a decade ago did the same thing. Perdue just used their playbook.
This is what I can tell you about Kingston. After Eric Cantor stepped down from his post as House Majority Leader, there was an open election among GOP House members to replace him. The candidates were pro-amnesty moderate (and GOPe disciple) Kevin McCarthy, and anti-amnesty conservative Raul Labrador.
So here we have Jack Kingston who is actually stepping down from his House seat at the end of the year. And because of that, he has the opportunity to vote his conscience for the new Majority Leader. He's leaving the House, so he has no favor to curry with anyone. This was a golden opportunity for Kingston to prove that he is a TEA Party conservative who is fed up with the GOPe. Yet when it came time to vote, he voted for McCarthy.
That to me says it all. If he had voted for Labrador, that one act alone would have given him a 10-point margin of victory. Yet even when it no longer mattered, he still sided with Boehner and Company.