Late last month, Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt and Andrew Mangione of the Association of Mature American Citizens gave us an interesting peak into the internal fighting within the GOP.
In a May 31 conversation on Pratt’s Gun Owners Radio Hour, the two conservative activists agreed on many things — including a visceral hatred of the Affordable Care Act and a fear that President Obama will send “goon squads” after people who fail to report gun ownership to their insurance companies. (Mangione’s group was founded as a conservative alternative to the AARP after the AARP got behind the health care reform).
But things got contentious when Pratt brought up his frequently-expressed anger at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who he thinks hasn’t done enough to obstruct President Obama , and declared, “If I lived in Kentucky, I’ll tell you right now, I’d vote for the liberal Democrat just to get rid of Mitch McConnell out of leadership in the Republican Party, where he does so much damage,” adding, “he is poison, pure and simple.”
Mangione, aghast, responded, “So you’d rather lose the seat than have a Republican, regardless of how pure he is on the conservative scale.”
“You’d rather have the seat go to a Democrat, you’d rather give the seat to the people who brought you Obamacare because of your personal dislike of this Republican?” he continued. “That’s why we got Obamacare, that’s why we got another four years of Obama. You’re talking crazy, sir, with all due respect.”
Pratt responded that “Mitch McConnell is the reason we got Obamacare,” to which Mangione replied that McConnell successfully denied health care reform a single Republican vote in the Senate and gave the GOP an election issue that has lasted for years.
