Utah Senator Bob Bennett failed to get the Republican nomination today for his fourth term as Utah's junior senator. He came in third place behind the decidedly more conservative Tim Bridgewater and Mike Lee, the two of which will have a primary runoff on June 22nd to determine who the final GOP nominee for the United States Senate seat from Utah will be.
Bennett has faced huge and growing opposition in the state of Utah for his decidedly leftward shift in voting over the last term, including his aggressive seeking of earmarks, his weaker stance on illegal immigration, and then the final straw of having voted for the bank bailouts with the TARP legislation.
This is the first time that an incumbent senator has not regained his party's nomination in the state of Utah since 1940 when the Democrats threw out Senator William King. Bennett could still try for a write-in candidacy but it is all but certain that the state of Utah is done with candidates that have a tendency to tack left on vital legislative votes.
Utah's senior senator, Orin Hatch is up for re-election in 2012 and after having read the tea leaves, as it were, is desperately attempting to repair his drift to the left in recent years so that he too will not follow his current senatorial colleague from the state of Utah when the citizens go to vote for the presidential elections in November of 2012. As of now, it is very likely that Hatch will end up also being replaced with a candidate that is more conservative and thus more representative of the people of Utah at that time.
I suspect that Senator Bennett's political demise will only be the first of many as the primary season rapidly approaches. People across this country are fed up with the huge and egregious over-reaching of our federal government as has been the case under Senator Reid (who will almost certainly lose his senate seat), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and President Obama.
The socialistic legislation being passed, even though the public has overwhelmingly warned against doing so, will lead to a giant shake up of the legislative branch of the federal government this fall. I, for one, am very glad to see it happen so that we can restore our government to the rightful place under the control of We The People!
4 comments:
Let's hope that this is the first of many Republican 'heads to roll'
Amen to that!
Was very surprised to hear about this. From the perspective of an actual liberal, Bennett is certainly not one of us.
He has been weak on securing borders and he voted for TARP. Those are two huge deal breakers.
He has also done various other decidedly un-conservative things over the course of his career.
I suspect he is a decent guy, but his being replaced with a more conservative senator will only be a good thing for the state and country, in my opinion.
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