Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Good Riddance To Old Geezer

He needed to be shown the door.
From the Houston Chronicle:
Three weeks after his 91st birthday, U.S. Rep. Ralph Hall, the oldest man in Congress, was defeated in a hard-fought GOP runoff challenge from former U.S. Attorney John Ratcliffe, a contest that divided the loyalties of tea party groups that took sides in the race.
The Associated Press declared Ratcliffe the winner shortly after 9 p.m.
The loss could make Hall the first congressional incumbent to fall in 2014.
Hall, a former Democrat who was first elected to Congress during the Carter administration, had to fend off criticism that he was too old and had been in Washington too long. He fought back with an ad that got national attention for making a virtue of his age, showing off the wrinkles on his face which he said he got fighting "Obamacare" and other liberal causes.
While Ratcliffe got the support of some influential tea party groups, Hall refused to carry the establishment mantle. Most of the Texas Republicans in Congress rallied around him, but so, too, did maverick tea party figures like Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former Congressman Ron Paul, a libertarian Republican.
Hall's campaign also emphasized Ratcliffe's job as a partner in a law firm founded by former Bush administration figure John Ashcroft, hardly a tea party figure. Hall had said that this would be his final term in Congress in a northeast Texas district that skews heavily Republican.
With no Democratic candidate in the 4th congressional district, Ratcliffe will be unopposed in November.  http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Hall-the-oldest-member-of-Congress-loses-5508546.php?cmpid=bna
There should be no reason for a guy to be serving in Congress since the Carter admnistration.
And the good thing about the Texas primaries?  The Tea Party lives on.

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