Posted on 06/27/2014 8:35:16 AM PDT by Kaslin
Last Tuesday in Mississippi, incumbent Republican Sen. Thad Cochran beat his challenger, State Sen. Chris McDaniel, in a Republican runoff. There is no dispute that Cochran won by bringing thousands of Democrats into the Republican runoff to support him.
Cochran's victory, if left unaddressed by conservatives, will set a dangerous precedent within Republican primaries. Republican PACs, national Republican political operatives and the Republican establishment collaborated to accuse conservative and tea party activists of racism. These Republicans painted their very base as the second coming on the KKK and Hitler.
These groups accused Chris McDaniel of being a neo-confederate and claimed that any group that supported him was supporting a racist. They passed out flyers designed to scare and intimidate black voters into voting for Cochran. One of the flyers had scenes of the civil rights struggle on it and declared Chris McDaniel would take away the right to vote.
It was all hysterical nonsense, but it worked. This is a tactic Democrats have used in the past to generate black turnout. In Georgia in 1998, flyers appeared in black neighborhoods in Atlanta with pictures of burning crosses and hooded Klansmen. The flyers urged black voters to go stop Republican gubernatorial candidate Guy Millner, lest all the advances of the civil rights movement be undone.
In Louisiana in 2003, Democrats in northern Louisiana passed out flyers to white Democrats that darkened Republican Bobby Jindal's skin color, making him look like a black man. The flyers encouraged white Democrats to go stop Jindal's election. It worked, but Jindal won the Governor's Mansion in 2007 with the votes of many who had opposed him after those voters saw just how incompetent Governor Kathleen Blanco was in office.
Democrats excel at this level of racial politics. But last Tuesday in Mississippi, it was Republicans doing it. National Republicans and their local allies in Mississippi made those attacks on their own base. They painted their own voters as crazy, bigoted racists. They were willing to do it to keep Thad Cochran, a man who has been in the Senate since 1978 and in Washington since 1973, in office.
Why Republicans were willing to attack their own base so savagely is eye opening. Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour left the Governor's Mansion and returned to his former career as a lobbyist. He ran of the key super PAC's supporting Cochran. Many lobbyists in Washington have, for years, used Thad Cochran as a marionette, pulling his strings and getting him to spread American tax dollars around.
Years ago, when a Jack Abramoff associate complained that Ann Copland, Cochran's executive assistant of 29 years, demanded too many things, i.e. tickets to see Paul McCartney and Green Day, Abramoff replied back, "She gets everything she wants." Abramoff and Copland both went off to jail. Cochran stayed, and the money flowed in other directions.
The Republican establishment in Washington no longer has core principles and values. It has a list of corporate donors and rich men with business interests. The party keeps its elderly leaders in the House and Senate to send American tax dollars to their preferred donors. In fact, all the Republican Party stands for at the moment is telling President Barack Obama "no" and rewarding large donors with tax breaks, government contracts, and our tax dollars.
But this becomes a problem for the Republican Party. Its core activists hate its leadership more and more. But its leadership are dependent more and more on large check writers to keep their power. Those large check writers are further and further removed from the interests of both the base of the party and Main Street.
To keep power, the GOP focuses more and more on a smaller and smaller band of puppeteers to keep their marionettes upright. At some point, there will be more people with knives out to cut the strings than there will be puppeteers with checkbooks. And at some point those people with knives become more intent on cutting the strings than taking the place of the marionettes.
If the Tea Party doesn’t do something about the election mess in MS, many contributors will stop supporting.
“The Republican establishment in Washington no longer has core principles and values. It has a list of corporate donors and rich men with business interests.”
Couldn’t have said it better.
For the same reason they're about to allow 20 million + illegals legal status, regardless of how suicidal for the party it is.
$$$
Its treasonous.
They are the party of status quo and managed decline.
Exactly right.
The priorities of professional pols in both parties are to serve their political parties, themselves and their pals - not the nation or their fellow Americans.
Somewhere, on a page they have never read, are quaint ideas of honoring the US Constitution, doing the job they were elected to do and serving the people.
When the behavior of the republicans is indistinguishable from that of the dems, what reason is there to vote republican?
As democrats voted for Cochran to deny the gop base the candidate of their choice, so conservatives should vote for the dem to deny the gop establishment their puppet.
Not just the behavior of the party-in-general, but the candidates they push in particular. (McCain, Romney, and remember NY-23?)
It’s called extortion pro quid quo. You scratch my back, I will scratch your back.
What we can do is contribute to a lawsuit. It will be expensive.
IMHO, this mess in MS is the beginning of the death of the Republican party. Only they don’t know it yet. They think they won.
What they don’t realize is the tea party is their most involved, most educated voter base. And they aren’t going to take this without hitting back.
Somewhere else I read a commenter suggest that all members of Congress wear jackets like the NASCAR drivers, so at least we can tell who their sponsors are.
Some Tea Party candidate ought to, tongue-in-cheek (ever so slightly), propose such a law when he is elected.
I think you are right. I’ve never been more disgusted.
Time for a new Party—GOP has stabbed the Tea Party in the back—time for the Liberty Party to kick some RINO butt. The UKIP has shown us the way. Look to England for a sollution.
It is clear from this election that the reformers (TEA Party or whatever you want to call them) currently have a majority of the Mississippi Republican Party. Hopefully they will not allow frustration and anger over the tactics employed by the old line bosses to cause them to give away their advantage.
The open primary allowed an unethical campaign to take an election that could not be won fairly. In response to this, a movement should be in place now to change the election law at the state level to have a closed primary. When Old Thad passes on or is institutionalized in a couple of years, the election to fill out his term will be decided in the republican party without democrat voter interference. If there is a desire to get even with the Haley Barbour crowd, that would be the time to do it.
Don’t allow their tactics to make you leave the party, especially when you have the majority. Use that majority at the local and state level to change the rules to prevent the tactics used against you. If someone has to leave the party, make it the ones who perverted it. The democrats might help them against you, but they are certainly not going to welcome them into leadership of their party.
The GOPe might just as well backed the dem candidate. They just destroyed their brand in Mississippi. Do they seriously believe all those crossover Dems will vote for him in the general election? And how many republicans did they just tell to F$&k off?
GOPe, putting the *stupid* in the stupid party.
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