Kentucky’s New Cock-Fightin’ Teabaggin’ Gov. Matt Bevin!

[Syt]

Article might be slightly biased.

http://wonkette.com/595613/meet-kentuckys-new-cock-fightin-teabaggin-gov-matt-bevin

Meet Kentucky's New Cock-Fightin' Teabaggin' Gov. Matt Bevin!

Kentucky's a hell of a drug. Extra-crispy wingnut Matt Bevin was too crazy even for Republican primary voters to send him to the Senate in place of RINO Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2014, so the whole state decided Bevin is juuuuuuuust right for the governorship.

We're not saying outgoing Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear was any dream beau or anything; he led Kentucky's doomed mission to maintain its ban on marriage equality to the very bitter end, even after all the state's judges and Attorney General Jack Conway — the Democrat who just lost to Bevin, oy — told him that was big fat waste of taxpayer dollars. Beshear is what passes for a Democrat in Kentucky, because Kentucky.

But Matt Bevin is what passes for cray-cray in Any Town, USA. And yet.

Let us stroll down the memory lane of his primary race against McConnell, to refresh ourselves with the batshit madman nutso Kentucky elected Tuesday night, to be its new boss.

We first met the millionaire tea party darling in the summer of aught 13, when he caused the various teabagger splitters to quarrel amongst themselves about whether they were or were not Standing With Mitch. We soon learned that what little we knew about Bevin probably wasn't true anyway, since he apparently inflated his LinkedIn profile with extras like "graduated from MIT." (He did not graduate from MIT.)

Bevin continued to distinguish himself by opposing renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, on the grounds that it was "unconstitutional" to include Native Americans, immigrants, and lesbosexuals in the bill. He knew this the way all Republican dudes know stuff about chicks and stuff: He has a lady-wife and girl-daughters.

The two men held the exact same view, of course; the distinction was that McConnell pretended he supported VAWA, even though he voted against it. Bevin made no such gestures.

We subsequently discovered, from Bevin's own mouth, that he holds the obligatory views on marriage equality:

"If it's all right to have same-sex marriages, why not define a marriage — because at the end of the day a lot of this ends up being taxes and who can visit who in the hospital and there's other repressions and things that come with it — so a person may want to define themselves as being married to one of their children so that they can then in fact pass on certain things to that child financially and otherwise," Bevin said. "Where do you draw the line?"

Naturally, he also believes it was "utterly unnecessary" for Rowan County clerk Kim Davis to have gone to jail, just for the crime of loving Jesus — and being held in contempt of court — too much. He even has a plan to protect Davis's right to not do her job and everything.

He's quite the catch, that governor-elect, ain't he? And we haven't even gotten to the cocks yet.

Cocks, you say?

But it's interesting when you look at cockfighting and dogfighting as well. This isn't something new, it wasn't invented in Kentucky for example. I mean the Founding Fathers were all many of them very involved in this and always have been. [...]

I'm going to defend the right of people to freely gather and discuss whatever they want to. I'm a believer in the Constitution and in the First Amendment, not just for raising money but also for freedom of speech.

In case you were wondering whether it was possible for someone to defend cockfighting on the grounds that the founders loved cock, and also states' rights, yes, it is possible. Not advised, but possible.



Bevin went on to lose the primary battle against McConnell, but looks like he's won the war against Kentucky. Enjoy your new governor, Bluegrass Staters, and the nifty plans — like undoing your Medicaid expansion you've so enjoyed, thanks to Obamacare, and "repealing" Common Core — he has in store for you.

[garbon]

I tried reading that but the style was too obnoxious / it is very unclear what he has actually said/done - got as far as lesbosexuals and went, wtf is this?

[Darth Wagtaros]

I tried reading that but the style was too obnoxious / it is very unclear what he has actually said/done - got as far as lesbosexuals and went, wtf is this?

Ya. Smug git style writing.

[Syt]

A more serious article from The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/kentucky-governor-race-bevin/414055/?utm_source=SFFB

An Upset in Kentucky

Republican Matt Bevin, who trailed in the polls, won decisively, throwing the future of Kentucky's health-insurance expansion into doubt.

Conservative businessman Matt Bevin won the Kentucky gubernatorial race on Tuesday night, handing the Republican Party its 31st governorship in a state that has elected Democrats to that office all but once since the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Bevin's victory comes as a surprise after pre-election polls showed Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, the Democratic candidate, holding a slight to substantial lead. Instead, Bevin won the race by a margin of 52 to 44 percent, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Bevin also ran a sometimes-troubled campaign marked by friction with the state and national GOP establishment, as my colleague Russell Berman reported last month.

Things were looking rosy for Republicans in Kentucky. And then came Matt Bevin. Again. The Tea Party outsider had tried to oust McConnell in a primary challenge, and had been routed. But a year later, he squeaked out a victory (by 83 votes!) in the GOP gubernatorial primary over the party's preferred candidate, James Comer. Republicans—McConnell included—reluctantly embraced their unlikely standard-bearer, but Bevin's path to the governor's office has not been smooth.

Conway has vastly outspent Bevin on television, and the Democrat has maintained a small but sturdy lead in the polls. Republicans have been frustrated both by Bevin's frequent missteps and by the manufacturing executive's hesitance to put much of his own money into his campaign. Late last month, the Republican Governors Association pulled its TV ads for Bevin, sending a signal it believed the race was lost. Bevin responded by putting up a million dollars worth of commercials on his own, and on Tuesday morning, the RGA announced it was going back on the air for the last two weeks of the race. "We decided to go back in because we've been doing the polling, and the polling shows the race very winnable," RGA spokesman Jon Thompson told me.

Bevin fought back hard by emphasizing his outsider credentials—an easy argument to make after his high-profile scuffles within his own party—and praising Donald Trump, whose anti-establishment campaign upended the GOP presidential contest. He also rallied to the defense of Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who was briefly jailed this summer for defying a federal court order to enforce the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

Some Democrats, surprised by Bevin's come-from-behind win, blamed the fierce anti-establishment mood that suffuses the current political landscape for their defeat. "Attorney General Jack Conway ran a strong campaign focused on the issues that matter to Kentuckians: good schools, good-paying jobs, and economic opportunity," said Democratic Governors Association executive director Elisabeth Pearson in a statement after the loss. "Unfortunately, he ran into the unexpected headwinds of Trump-mania, losing to an outsider candidate in the Year of the Outsider."

Bevin will succeed incumbent Steve Beshear, a Democrat who could not run for a third time due to term limits. Despite Beshear's popularity among Kentuckians, Bevin campaigned against his record and his signature achievement: the creation of KYnect, one of the state health-insurance exchange formed under the auspices of the Affordable Care Act. The Washington Post's Dave Weigel referred to Kentuckians' divergent views of Obamacare and KYnect as "one of the great paradoxes of American politics."

In polls, Kentucky voters rejected Obamacare at roughly the rate they rejected the president, 2-1. But they were fond of KYnect, which Beshear created by executive order, bypassing a gridlocked Kentucky legislature. Month by month, Kentuckians took advantage of the state's Medicaid expansion or the plans offered on the exchange, and the state's uninsured rate plummeted from 20.4 percent to 9 percent. Beshear predicted that "the Democratic nominee will make this a major issue and will pound the Republicans into the dust with it."

But the opposite happened. Bevin campaigned on shutting down KYnect and transferring those on it to the federal exchange, as well as reversing the state's expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. The impact on health care in the Bluegrass State would be significant if both programs are reversed. About 400,000 Kentuckians qualified under the ACA's Medicaid expansion, according to the Huffington Post, and another 100,000 received health insurance through KYnect.

While some states have refused to implement the Act's Medicaid expansion in the first place, Kentucky would be the first state to reverse the expansion after its acceptance. Bevin's success (or failure) could herald the next wave of political battles to be fought over the implementation of President Obama's signature domestic legislative achievement.

[Caliga]

I didn't bother to vote yesterday.

[Valmy]

I didn't bother to vote yesterday.

You lazy bastard! Don't you understand the huge sacrifice our forefathers made to earn you the right to vote? Did the Minutemen bother to show up at Lexington? Fuck yes! And they had been up all night drinking in the tavern. Did they just go home and sleep their hangovers off? Hell no! They assembled in front of the British for a few minutes before running away. You could have at least shown up for a few minutes like our intoxicated ancestors did. What has America come to?

[Ed Anger]

I didn't bother to vote yesterday.

Good man.

[Caliga]

You lazy bastard! Don't you understand the huge sacrifice our forefathers made to earn you the right to vote? Did the Minutemen bother to show up at Lexington? Fuck yes! And they had been up all night drinking in the tavern. Did they just go home and sleep their hangovers off? Hell no! They assembled in front of the British for a few minutes before running away. You could have at least shown up for a few minutes like our intoxicated ancestors did. What has America come to?

Hey, relax.

[Valmy]

I didn't bother to vote yesterday.

Good man.

Well I hope he at least stayed up all night drinking. He has to have some patriotism in him.

[Ed Anger]

It's an off year election. Good for him not having to go to a smelly gym or a church. Relax Val.

[Syt]

I didn't bother to vote yesterday.

Indifferents like you are the reason retards like Trump have a chance in elections.

[Valmy]

It's an off year election. Good for him not having to go to a smelly gym or a church. Relax Val.

You should have seen the stupid shit I had to vote on. Nothing but approving laws (Well actually I voted no on most everything because the laws they passed were either idiotic or blatant attempts to shield politicians from all those pesky corruption charges they keep being annoyed by) the legislature had passed. Hey don't I elect people to vote on laws? So I have to vote on people to vote on laws that I then have to vote on? I don't know if we are getting our money's worth with these politicians.

[Ed Anger]

It's an off year election. Good for him not having to go to a smelly gym or a church. Relax Val.

You should have seen the stupid shit I had to vote on. Nothing but approving laws (Well actually I voted no on most everything because the laws they passed were either idiotic or blatant attempts to shield politicians from all those pesky corruption charges they keep being annoyed by) the legislature had passed. Hey don't I elect people to vote on laws? So I have to vote on people to vote on laws that I then have to vote on? I don't know if we are getting our money's worth with these politicians.

You are going to make yourself all nervous and raise your blood pressure. democracy is a joke anyways.

I worry about you kids sometimes.

[Valmy]

You are going to make yourself all nervous and raise your blood pressure. democracy is a joke anyways.

I worry about you kids sometimes.

I maybe spent 10 minutes total thinking about this election. I have not even bothered to see how the election turned out.

[Ed Anger]

You are going to make yourself all nervous and raise your blood pressure. democracy is a joke anyways.

I worry about you kids sometimes.

I maybe spent 10 minutes total thinking about this election. I have not even bothered to see how the election turned out.

I enjoyed the Houston "no men in women's restrooms" bit.