Tea Party challenger threatens to ‘kill’ O-Care

The Tea Party candidate who is challenging Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) promised to “kill” ObamaCare, if he gets elected in November. 

“We are not going to stand with an eye toward trying to place a Band-Aid on ObamaCare,” Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel said at FreePAC Kentucky, a conservative gathering in Louisville on Saturday. “We’re not going to fix it. We’re going to kill it.”

{mosads}The event featured a number of other Tea Party speakers, including two who are running against fellow Republicans in the November elections. Many in the Tea Party are upset that mainstream Republicans aren’t doing more to fight the Obama administration.

McDaniel hopes to unseat six-term Cochran, who has been in office since 1978. While Kentucky businessman Matt Bevin, who was also speaking at the event, is vying to defeat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a five-term senator. 

“They say this race I’m in right now is a test of the old guard,” McDaniel said in a deep Irish accent. “I’m not sure what that means. I know my opponent has been there 42 years, been there as long as I’ve been alive. Richard Nixon was president when he arrived.”

Cochran had served for six years in the House before being elected to the Senate in 1978. He ran Richard Nixon’s campaign in Mississippi in 1968.

McDaniel promised to fight ObamaCare, but said he was disappointed that many Republicans have given up in the battle.

“Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) have given us an outstanding example of what courage can do, of what real leadership can do,” he said. “They stood there doing their best to defund ObamaCare. That was a fight they should have fought, it was a fight we should have won. But the same old (Republicans) told us that was not a winnable solution.”

McDaniel said the GOP should learn to stand up for itself and shouldn’t be afraid to go against the Obama administration.

“It’s the same thing everywhere we go, isn’t it?” McDaniel asked. “‘Republicans have to learn to compromise. We have to learn to reach across the aisle.’ I don’t remember the Democrats reaching across the aisle, when they basically took ObamaCare and rammed it down our throats.”

McDaniel also talked about lowering the national debt. “I’ve got 17.3 trillion reasons to never compromise on the debt again,” he said.

–This report was updated on Sunday at 1:06 p.m.