Posted on 06/27/2014 5:11:48 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s not the tactics themselves that bother them as much as the attention those tactics are receiving from conservative voters.
Says Red State’s Leon Wolf, “If any of these bastards want to avoid the fallout they should go on the record.”
According to these conversations [with two Republican Senate staffers], some $800,000 was raised for Cochran by his Senate colleagues after the McDaniel victory in the primary’s first round, largely under the rubric of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. This wasn’t seen as a particularly controversial matter at the time; the NRSC is an organization by and for the Republican members of the Senate and Cochran had raised money for his colleagues in the past, so there would have been no reason to deny him help. “It’s just what you do,” said one of the staffers. “It’s generally accepted that we probably can’t win the Senate if we lose our own people, so when Cochran’s people ask for help raising money, the answer is yes.”
Though there were published reports to the effect—and Barbour was open about it—that Cochran’s runoff strategy was to “expand the electorate” by seeking Democratic votes in a Republican primary, there wasn’t a lot of attention paid to where the funds being raised would go. And moreover, when Cochran lost a close race to McDaniel in the first round, there was a general assumption that his goose was cooked. “Nobody thought he’d win regardless of what he did,” said the staffer. “If you’re an incumbent and you’re behind a challenger that close to avoiding a runoff, you’re usually behind the eight-ball.”
As such, the staffers say, it wasn’t until Wednesday, when the fallout began to descend, that Cochran’s tactics became an issue. And now, several senators are more than a little uneasy with those tactics, which they feel responsible for since they raised money for Cochran.
AmSpec offers no names but says there’s “soul-searching” going on among “the Senate’s more outspoken conservatives” for not doing more to help McDaniel when they had the chance. *cough* (Rand Paul, of course, seems to think it was just awesome that Cochran won his party’s nomination with votes from the other party.) Was this, though, as Mollie Hemingway thinks, ultimately a pyrrhic victory for the GOP establishment? Before you say yes, tell me what you’re willing to do to punish the party for kitchen-sinking a guy who not only received the most votes in the first round of the primary but who, by wide consensus, won more Republican votes in the runoff too? Withholding donations is fine, but don’t kid yourselves: Money’s the one thing that GOP incumbents and the NRSC don’t want for. If they lose $10 million from the base in boycotted contributions, Sheldon Adelson can make it up for them in one check to the right Super PAC.
Are you willing to go this far?
Should the Republican establishment in Washington get away with tarring its own voters as racists? Should the Republican establishment in Washington get away with comparing its own base to Klansmen?
If there is no penalty for doing so, they will keep doing it. If there is no consequence, they will attack their own base to preserve their power. They will learn no lesson. In fact, some of you may want to donate to Travis Childers, Thad Cochran’s Democrat opponent. I cannot say that I blame you.
Cochran will now put the highest bidders first. The GOP will carry out this tactic of calling you racist klansmen Nazis everywhere it works. I would like to see the GOP get the majority and oust Harry Reid as leader. But I understand if you think Mississippi can still be sacrificed.
All true. If Cochran trounces Childers in the general election, the lesson learned by Republican incumbents will be that there’s no cost to beating conservative challengers by any means necessary. You guys will always turn out for them in November on the theory that the Democrat is worse, no matter how nasty to you they are in the primary, so they might as well be as nasty as they like. The question is, is the Democrat worse this time? He may be worse than Cochran on policy, but is he worse than the filthy patronage system that supports Cochran and which he supports in turn? That’s what you’re voting for, whether you like it or not, if you vote for Thad.
There are risks here. Electing Childers could give the Democrats the 50th Senate seat they need in the fall to preserve their majority. (Biden would cast the deciding vote in case of 50/50 ties, of course.) That’s not a big risk on legislation given that Republicans will control the House but it’s a huge risk on Supreme Court nominations, if/when Harry Reid ends up nuking the filibuster and allowing confirmation by simple majority vote. If O knows he can get a nominee through with just 51 votes, he’ll feel safer nominating someone who’s further left. Also, the more seats you hand to Democrats now, the better position they’ll be in come 2016, when they’re expected to clean up in battleground states. Sean Trende thinks there’s even a (small) chance that Democrats will win a filibuster-proof majority. If you sacrifice Mississippi now, you’re making that marginally more likely.
The counterargument is simple, though: If not now, when? The GOP might do well enough in the fall to retake the Senate even if they lose Mississippi. If they don’t retake it, that’s not a disaster — this is, by Nate Silver’s estimate, the “least important election in years” because control of the upper chamber matters so little. The GOP will have more leverage over Court confirmations if they have a majority, but who knows if there’ll even be a vacancy on the Court? And gridlock on legislation is a fait accompli given Obama’s standoff with the Republican House regardless of what the Senate does. If you’re unwilling to risk a protest vote for a Democrat after the grotesque spectacle of a group of GOP cronies using liberal votes to prop up an elderly man whose heart isn’t in it anymore, you’ll never be willing. And if you’re unwilling, maybe it’s time to stop complaining about Cochran and cronyism and the rest of it and accept that this is who we are and who we’re going to be.
That's the root problem. If MS conservatives had really understood who they were voting for, McDaniel would have won. Cochran's scumbag tactics wouldn't have worked and he'd be a thoroughly disgraced nonentity at this point. He'd be looking for the first train out of the state.
The temptation now will be to punish Cochran by staying home or helping the Democrat win. The problem is that an underinformed conservative base will draw the wrong conclusion if the Democrat wins. They'll blame tea party spoilers. So not only will the Democrat have won, but the tea party will be discredited. It will be a double loss for true conservatives.
The real solution is to educate the MS conservative base. An informed base won't elect scumbag Cochran types, nor will it be fooled into blaming the tea party. That is the answer, but of course it will take work.
What the Cochran campaign and the GOPe did in Mississippi is beyond the pale. Had Cochran won legitimately without resorting to wholly offensive smearing and then whoring himself out to the Democrats — who would never vote for him in the general election — I would say, “Okay, he won the primary with Republican voters, let’s hold our noses and support him in November.”
However, he did not win legitimately (see above), so screw him and the repugnant Barbour and the GOPe who pulled his sorry ass out of the fire, and let the Dim take the seat.
I believe in honor, and what Cochran and Barbour and the GOPe did was the very definition of DISHONORABLE.
Not one dime’s worth of difference.
We need names. Otherwise, they all condone the filthy accusations and illegal voting.
I will never vote for a democrat and I think conservatives who argue for that point are out of their freaking minds. Stay home, write in a conservative but vote for a democrat? Patooey!
This is why I send my money to individual candidates and not to the RNC nor the NSRC or any other nationalized party group.
In Cockroach Cochrans case, it makes no difference because he has proven that he is actually a dirty dem, so vote the real dem in and punish Cochran. I’m sick of these Rove Republicans getting away with trashing conservatives.
“.... how uninformed are conservative voters in MS.”
It has less to do with conservative voters in MS than the Democrat crossover voters.
Yes, I think that is a good idea.
And I think that is all precinct level stuff. I think we may really need to start at the bottom and claw our way up.
Or else, 3rd party, which up until this week I’ve thought was a very, very bad idea.
But if Sarah Palin, or whoever, came out with an announcement tomorrow, I’d join right up.
I read that the Democrat Childers is very conservative, pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment. I’d probably vote for him if I lived there.
Cochran needs to LOSE.
Tell your bosses to come take my money, that is the only way these corrupt neocommunists are getting anything, bye.
They are going to be very uneasy when they are finally deserted by us.
Childers will vote like every other Democrat once he gets there. So will Cochran.
Well-stated, Theodore R. Lots of work to do, educationally speaking.
Soap box (education), ballot box (results from an educated electorate) BUMP!
I don’t see how anyone can support Cochran at this point, nor vote for him.
Hey, I’ve voted for a lot of people I didn’t particularly love.
But the scurrilous tactics employed in this run off cannot be let stand.
Honest to God, do the Dems do this to their voters? Do they insult them and demean them?
OK, perhaps their policies ultimately hurt their constituancies, but do they do what was done in this race?
Informed conservatives would have outvoted the illegal crossovers in big numbers.
DITTO THAT!!!!
These paid callers probably barely exceed the minimum wage and many would have heard of neither Cockroach nor McDaniel. Some might not even be aware that there is a State of Mississippi. The American people are truly uninformed.
Mississippi politics. Two inseparable unforgettable words. A call to arms. Mourn for the Republic murdered in Jackson Mississippi
The GOPe is destructive...and doesn't give one DAMN about Conservatives.
You want to BLAME SOMEONE...blame the GOPe
It wasn't Conservative voters....!
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