Describing the Beltway coalition that tried to end the career of Jones, Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, writes: “The whole Bush White House crowd that destroyed the GOP’s commitment to fiscal discipline, bailed-out Wall Street and GM and launched disastrous wars … joined the attack. The heavy artillery included … Karl Rove, former governor and RNC chair Haley Barbour and the War Party’s highly paid chief PR flack, Ari Fleischer.”
Rep. Walter Jones
The GOP Beltway establishment is celebrating the victory of Thom Tillis, speaker of the North Carolina House, over his tea party and evangelical rivals in Tuesday’s primary for the U.S. Senate.
But the story ended less happily for the Beltway elite in the Tar Heel State’s 3rd Congressional District. There, the planned purge of Rep. Walter Jones was repulsed by his loyal Republican base.
Yet, this massively funded effort to kill the career of a 20-year House veteran, whose father held the seat for decades before him, testifies eloquently to the intolerance of the ideological and monied elite of the party to which conservatives give allegiance.
Reportedly, a million dollars of super-PAC money poured into the 3rd District from Republicans in support of a brazen Big Lie campaign to paint Jones as a liberal. But what is the congressman’s real record?
In the Bush I era, he voted against No Child Left Behind. In the Obama years, he voted against ObamaCare and the bailouts of the big banks, Wall Street and Detroit. He voted against cap and trade, and TARP, the trillion-dollar stimulus package.
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