Posted on 06/30/2014 4:38:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
Incumbent Republican Senator Thad Cochran’s successful game plan, which drove his run-off victory over Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel for Mississippi’s Republican Senate nomination, was unconventional.
But most incredible was the success of this game plan – to reach out to liberal black churches and get Democrat black voters to turn out and vote for Cochran – despite being executed in broad daylight.
Soon after Cochran lost to McDaniel in the primary, necessitating a run-off because McDaniel fell short of getting 50 percent of the vote, papers reported the intent of Cochran’s team to turn out black Democrats to overcome the thin margin by which Cochran lost.
McDaniel knew exactly what to expect. The Cochran campaign told him. Yet he remained a spectator through it all. His counter strategy was no counter strategy and just continue what he was already doing. Appealing just to Mississippi’s conservative white electorate.
Sitting in the White House today is the most left-wing president in the nation’s history, elected twice without winning the white vote. I have written about the demographic changes taking place in the country and the need for Republicans to talk about limited government and traditional values to non-white Americans.
If this is true about the nation as a whole, it certainly is true in a state like Mississippi whose black population, at 40 percent of the state, is the largest in the nation. Half this black population is poor.
Cochran’s forces dumped money into liberal black churches, communicating that he is their champion because of the government pork he’ll continue to bring into the state.
But a news flash for McDaniel, which he should know, having served as a state senator, is that not all blacks are liberals. In Mississippi’s huge black population are many conservative black pastors who want freedom for their flocks. They know that black poverty is not about government money.
A few of these conservative black pastors in Mississippi are part of the national pastor network of my organization, CURE.
Former NFL star Brett Favre made an ad for Cochran in which he talked about Cochran getting “…critical funding for our schools.”
But in the latest Quality Counts report from the publication Education Week, Mississippi is rated 51st in the nation, among 50 states and Washington, DC, in K-12 student achievement.
The report continues, as reported in Mississippi Business Journal, that “Mississippi ranked among the lowest 10 states in providing young people a chance for success in life, financing schools and improving teaching.”
If the success of Mississippi’s schools was about “critical” funding from the federal government, why are they the worst in the nation?
The main victims of Mississippi’s dismal schools are black children.
In a Pew Research survey of last October, 25 percent of blacks expressed favorability toward the Tea Party, just 6 points less than whites.
But the McDaniel campaign seemed clueless that there were potential allies in Mississippi’s huge black population to counter Cochran’s liberal assault.
It is pathetic that some commentators are actually writing that Cochran’s government plantation appeal to blacks shows how Republicans can reach this community.
In a scene early in the Oscar-winning film Patton, General Patton, who was sent to take command of the demoralized American troops in North Africa in the early days of World War II, is shown looking through field glasses, watching a tank battle which would become America’s first victory in North Africa. He studied the tactics of his adversary German commander Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. As he watched, Patton bellowed out “ Rommel, you magnificent b------, I read your book!”
Thad Cochran laid it out for McDaniel – he gave him his book - but McDaniel chose not to read it.
There are plenty of black conservatives who understand that big government politicians – Democrats or Republicans – hurt their communities. They just need Republican candidates to recognize they exist.
Blacks don’t elect Liberal candidates.
Liberal blacks who vote elect Liberal candidates.
There’s an untapped vein of Conservatism, rooted in Social Conservatism, within the Black community.
What I find amusing are the people who demand that GOP/Conservative candidates do outreach to the Tea Party can’t see the benefit of those same candidates doing outreach to Conservative Blacks. If we feel entitled to not vote (or even vote for Democrats - see KY and MS) because candidates don’t reach out to us, why can’t we understand that Conservative Blacks feel the same way?
At what point does anyone hold these alleged black conservatives to account that the information is available that there is an alternative to the liberal standard.
This is the same ol’ stale mantra we hear every single election; that it is the REPUBLICANS that are always to blame for blacks not voting conservative. That is total bullcrap. There have been many instances where “conservatives” showed up at black churches, etc., or talked to the NAACP to encourage blacks to vote and it falls on deaf ears.
This is the crap that has to stop: that we, as a society, create victims and then completely let them off the hook to have to be responsible for anything. I’m sick of it.
If blacks are conservative then, by God, they need to vote conservative. Not vote liberal because no one courted them.
Go back and read the article again. Parker isn’t talking about going into Liberal Black churches or to the NAACP. Those are folks who will never come over to Conservatism.
My thought as well. I am not sure what that "outreach" looks like, though. Conservatives have to find each other. A thing that bothers me is reflected in thinking of black Americans as a monolith.
Yes, Voting stats show that. But, accepting that as irrevocable and unchangable is a loser's mindset. If I were a black Conservative reading some of these comments, I would wonder how welcome I would be.
I have been watching, studying actually, the TV program The Wire.
In the fourth season,the corrupt black mayor of Baltimore goes into the churches and passes out money and favors. To his dismay and disgust he loses to a white upstart challenger that has campaigned on the streets among worst of the bad black areas. He wins the election by taking 20% of the vote in the bad, crime ridden, precincts.
It is fiction but the message is that the black vote even among the poverty burdened wretches that are the worst of the worst is not monolithic. A few, some, can be persuaded to see the light.
Parker seems to be pointing the way with mentioning the CURE network. Yes, it’s self serving because it’s her network, but it is at least one pathway.
It also takes a ton of money... to create PR deflecting the media focus on the haranguing that you'll get from the pastor. Even if only one negative thing is said the whole sermon, the only thing on the news broadcasts for the next week will be "Blacks express their frustration at racist senate candidate..." How much money and resources will it take to combat that? How many more blacks will vote against you because of the news coverage?
You have a very simplistic view of how modern (Democrat) politics works...
Exactly....Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
It’s not as if they would vote for him anyway.
McDaniels should have won the black community by telling them that amnesty will overrun our schools with children her illegally and that more illegal aliens will result in less jobs available and lower wages.
Race-baiting. Breakfast of Champions.
Her points ignore the reality that money brought those blacks to cross over and that money originated from the national GOP via Barbour’s network.
$50 is some serious money to the poor because each day they are looking for that little extra to get them to next week. $50 will buy some groceries or some gas or some hope with a lotto ticket or some cigarettes. We can look down at such self debasement but it won’t change the reality of such people.
To buy 50,000 such votes at $50 a head requires $2.5 million of ‘walk around money’. Parker ignores this.
And how McDaniel’s campaign will handle this if a new election is won is a mystery we should not hear about as it can tip off the Cochran camp.
I pray two things; that McDaniel wins a new election and Cochran is no longer funded for buying crossovers.
I think he would have done that very thing in the general, but it's hard to approach people when you are reeling from being sucker punched by your own side.
So I'm defending both McDaniel AND Star Parker here.
No, Starr, he didn’t. He trusted them not to commit fraud by voting in the demo primary and then change in the runoff. It simply shows me that there are enough blacks that will lie, cheat and steal -—just like most of the democrats—in an effort to win.
She brings up that point while completely ignoring the fact that the blacks who did vote for Cochran voted for non-conservative reasons and were motivated by Alinsky-style attacks by the Cochran campaign. Which makes here point absolutely pointless in this situation.
She is right if she adds one more word, black DEMOCRATS!
She isnt talking about the (Liberal) Blacks who voted.
She’s talking about the (Conservative) Black who didn’t vote because McDaniels didn’t bother to reach out to them.
And note, outreach doesn’t mean vote buying. She’s specifically speaking about (even specifically says) Blacks who want freedom from government handouts.
You mean blacks that are now being found to have illegally voted in both the Democrat and Republican primaries?
Correct! the RHINO lost and then they had to use their garbage tactics to win, cheating and voting fraud.
So is ‘race just a skin color’ or not? This suggest that it is not. Maybe whites should take heed and start acting accordingly.
Hard work and what is best for the nation will never win out over pork.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.