GOP U.S. Senate Candidates Looking To Seize On Elizabeth Warren’s Efforts To Raise National Profile

By | January 3, 2018, 16:02 EST

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2018/01/03/gop-u-s-senate-candidates-looking-to-seize-on-elizabeth-warrens-efforts-to-raise-national-profile/
GOP Senate candidate Beth Lindstrom.(Contributed)

BOSTON — Beth Lindstrom, the former Mitt Romney aide who happens to be the only woman in a Republican field of potential 2018 challengers to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, appears to be taking the same tactic as her male GOP counterparts in criticizing the Cambridge Democrat’s apparent angling for a 2020 White House bid.

Reacting to a POLITICO.com piece published Tuesday outlining a series of “under-the-radar” moves Warren has allegedly made to position herself against President Donald Trump, Lindstrom vowed that her “number-one focus will always be the people I represent here in Massachusetts.” 

“My opponent is more concerned with championing a national political agenda even if it puts her at odds with the interests of her constituents, as in the case of her recent opposition to the tax reform bill,” Lindstrom said in a prepared statement. “By declaring her opposition to tax reform before even knowing what was in the final bill, she sacrificed any leverage she may have had to improve the bill.”

Last month, just before Republicans successfully pushed their tax reform measure through Congress, Warren took to Twitter and uploaded a video of herself ranting against the legislation. The video proceeded to go “viral.”

“They [GOP] have just released the tax bill, it is about 500 pages, and they want us to vote on this thing in about an hour,” Warren tells viewers in her video. “I spent more than an hour making a decision about the refrigerator that we recently bought.”

Lindstrom in her statement recalled how she “had asked Senator Warren to push for repeal of the medical device tax as part of the overall effort.”

That deadline passed on January 1.

“But apparently pushing for tax cuts does not fit with her presidential campaign agenda,” Lindstrom added.

Democratic lawmakers like Warren made numerous claims of being shut out of tax reform talks, but Republicans have countered that instead of writing up their own tax reform counter-proposals, Democrats spent valuable time and effort on trying to tear down any and all GOP efforts at drafting reform.

Lindstrom continued: 

“This is the price we pay for having as our senator [Warren] a person who is more interested in scoring partisan political points than doing the hard work of lawmaking.”

Lindstrom isn’t alone in her criticisms of Warren. Her two male GOP colleagues who also want to challenge Warren in November, state Representative Geoff Diehl (R-Whitman) and Winchester businessman John Kingston, have also taken turns questioning Warren’s devotion to Massachusetts.

On Wednesday, Diehl challenged Warren to join him in pledging to serve Bay State residents in the Senate for the upcoming term’s full span of six years.

“Our state deserves a full time Senator — not a part-time Senator, part-time author, and part-time presidential candidate,” said Diehl in a prepared statement. “As your next U.S. Senator, my priorities will not be divided by selling a book or running for another office. I will be there for Massachusetts from the time I get out of bed in the morning until my head hits the pillow in the evening.”

Kingston also took notice of the POLITICO report regarding Warren, and had this to say:

Warren, according to recent reports, has a campaign war chest that amounts to nearly $13 million heading into the current election year.

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