Posted by Tina
Republican incumbent Thad Cochran could be the poster boy for everything that’s wrong in politics. His behavior in the Mississippi election has been deplorable by recent accounts. As it turns out some of the votes he garnered to win narrowly in Tuesdays election are now suspect and there may be enough of them to overturn his ill begotten victory:
The Chris McDaniel campaign has identified multiple Mississippi counties in which enough improper ballots have been cast that a legal challenge to the outcome of the election is warranted.
This after Thad Cochran reportedly relied on 25,000-35,000 Democrat votes to pull him to victory in the June 24 runoff.
UPDATE: The Cochran campaign is reportedly asking county clerks not to certify the voting rolls until the last day possible so that the McDaniel people will not be able to look at the rolls and challenge them.
I hope the citizens in Mississippi rise up to demand a recount and thorough investigation into the fraudulent voting. I am disgusted and enraged at what is being reported about the Republican elites in Mississippi. If it turns out what we are hearing is true and if McDaniel doesn’t win the ethics charges need to be filed immediately.
Stay tuned.
Could it be that this branch of the GOP has taken a page from the Dem Voter Fraud Playbook?
SHAME!
Off topic.
Shock report: All new jobs going to immigrants, not U.S.-born workers:
http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/06/27/shock-report-all-new-jobs-going-to-immigrants-not-u-s-born-workers/
Wonder how with secret ballots being cast they’ll b e able to tell who voted one party during the primary and the other party during the run off.
Peggy, the current problem is about separate primaries I think. They are comparing lists of voters from an earlier primary with a list from the current primary (two dates one dem and one rep). It isn’t how they vote. It’s that if they voted in the one they can’t vote in the other…that’s a no no (As I understand it) It’s okay to cross over but you don’t get to vote in both races.
If I’m wrong please correct.
“His behavior in the Mississippi election has been deplorable by recent accounts.”
Really? Who decided to exploit which dementia patient for political gain? There’s some “deplorable” for you.
And you should be grateful to those nefarious cross-voters. They saved your party a Senate seat. Nobody is taking the long view these days.
Libby please enlighten us poor dummies. What exactly is the long view? Show us where we are going and how we will get there. Show us how this story impacts the long view so like you, we can be better prepared. go ahead put your butt on the line for a change.
National Review
Re #1 J. Soden :
Republicans acting like Democrats is shameful.
Conservative editorialist Jennifer Rubin takes the sour grapes crowd to task:
“Chris McDaniel’s defeat in Mississippi’s GOP primary has set off a temper tantrum on the right. McDaniel won’t concede. Radio talk-show host Sean Hannity demanded that viewers not vote for the “despicable” (!) Republican in the general election. (Sen. Harry Reid agrees.) Rush Limbaugh grotesquely called African Americans who voted for Sen. Thad Cochran “Uncle Toms.” And Sarah Palin cried foul – how dare those nonwhite, non-Republicans vote for Cochran — calling on him to investigate “illegal” voting. (The point, someone might explain, is to expand the people who will vote for a Republican.) Granted, these people were humiliated first by the shutdown fiasco and then in backing a string of crackpot candidates, but there is no excuse for this behavior.
Republicans would be smart to condemn the utterances and then to deprive these characters of the attention and ratings they crave. The only platform they have disappears if their audience concludes that they are the poster boys and girls for what is wrong with the right. (Unfortunately, a great number of pols and conservative media figures who should no better will be silent. Afraid to incur the wrath of those who utter racial epithets and otherwise display in full view their quackery? Yes, welcome to the cowering world of Beltway politics and media.
Certainly, there is something bizarre about the reaction to Cochran’s win. The Post notes, “An intensive strategy over the past three weeks to draw black voters to the polls and spare Cochran from what once seemed like a certain defeat at the hands of a tea party challenger in Tuesday’s GOP runoff appears to have worked.” Rather than take notes, the far right is incensed, calling all that voting “irregular”:
Cochran and other Mississippi Republicans have long sought to lure at least a portion of black voters in general-election campaigns. African Americans make up more than a third of the state’s electorate. The push to draw blacks to the polls in a Republican primary was highly unusual. It appears to have been orchestrated largely by pro-Republican groups aligned with Cochran and groups connected to black political leaders and ministers. Ads that ran in African American newspapers stressed Cochran’s support for historically black colleges, a medical facility that serves a heavily minority community in Jackson and the farm bill, which includes food-stamp funding.
This is cause for outrage on the right? Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been trying for months to court African American voters and to his credit applauded the idea of going out to get more votes. The Republican National Committee should encourage candidates in other states to duplicate the Cochran model. Hey, Republicans might actually gain new adherents.
It took Club for Growth, which threw more than $3 million into McDaniel’s coffers, to be the voice of reason. Its president, Chris Chocola, told The Post: “What they did in Mississippi just from a pure electoral standpoint is amazing. That was an accomplishment, to expand the electorate in a runoff by getting people to vote that are not your natural constituency. So you’ve got to give them credit for figuring out how to do that.” Well, at least someone has a clue in the right-wing camp.
By Wednesday, Club for Growth and other sane voices on the right were trying to shut down (and shut up) McDaniel. Good luck with that. They might not have noticed, but this is not a man amenable to reason or prone to graciousness.
Perhaps next time the right-wing groups will find men and women with strong character and political skills who can attract a wide spectrum of voters. Hey, they might get Mitt Romney (whose record this cycle in picking primary Senate winners is perfect) to help with their candidate selection next time. If there is a next time for groups that wasted millions of dollars given by their donors.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2014/06/26/chris-mcdaniels-loss-in-mississippi-brings-out-the-worst-on-the-far-right/
I told you this already. McDaniels was supposed to win the primary, and then talk such utter and unconscionable nonsense that not even the citizens of Mississippi would send him to the Senate.
OK, let someone with more information enlighten the discussion. As for Libby and Chris, just act like you never saw this, because I could care less what you two think. It’s already been proved that a man can be involved in teenage prostitution rings and you would still support and love them if they had a “D” in front of their political party preference.
Mississippi state’s Democrat Chairman said, “It is very conceivable—it is highly conceivable” that McDaniel and his team “will find a number of irregularities that will reach 6,700 or greater.”
With the chairman of the Democrat party in the state having this opinion, you can guarantee that enough problems will be found for a recount. Once the recount begins, it will be any body’s election. I can see the democrats in Mississippi helping to taint the waters enough to throw the election to Chris McDaniel.
The Democrats will he doing so with the hopes of creating a civil war in the state Republican party, similar to the one that split the Democrat party in Florida which allowed the Republicans to take advantage of. The republicans have controlled the state since. Not that it helped in keeping Obama from winning the state, but it did make the Democrats look so crooked and out of control that the party is still fractured.
I am not saying the Democrats will be able to capitalize in Mississippi as the Republican did in Florida, but that is the end game for why the Democrat Chairman has joined the fraye.
That being said, the way the GOPe has been acting in their attacks on Tea Party candidates, many conservatives have already been considering leaving the party. This debacle in Mississippi, may be the straw that broke the proverbial camels back. Up until Tuesday, I felt that there wasn’t anything that could stop the the Republicans from gaining a near super majority in both Houses this November. However, what the GOPe did to secure a win for Thad Cochran in Mississippi, could very well change the fortunes of the Democrats.
I am in contact with many conservatives who have stuck with the party, regardless of how nasty the Republican establishment has treated them, but they are now saying enough is enough. Even Rush Limbaugh has told numerous callers that he would not blame them if they stayed home or vote for the democrat come November. That my friends is a first for Rush. When Rush has had it with the party, you can only imagine the angst down at the grass roots level.
The GOPe may very well rue the day they acted like Democrats, with the race bating political tactics they used to get Cochran a victory. Karl Rove and the GOPe may have won a primary, but lost the party, and thus the country when conservatives stay home in bigger numbers than they did in 2012.
Mississippi state’s Democrat Chairman said, “It is very conceivable—it is highly conceivable” that McDaniel and his team “will find a number of irregularities that will reach 6,700 or greater.”
Peachy!
Clarion Ledger:
The Gateway Pundit:
There’s more than meets the eye in this story and Democrats are not off the hook.
I prefer the thought of an emerging third party that would kick but on all of the corrupt a$$holes runnng this nation into the ground. I still think it is incredibly STUPID to stay home. We are where we are because too many Republicans thought Romney was not good enough after the disaster in 08 delivered the current occupant and his enforcers in the Senate and Justice!
Those who are interested will also appreciate these headlines.
Cochran is scum for stooping this low.
It’s clear to me why Libby believes he’s the one standing on the right side in the long view…he is operating exactly like a Democrat activist.
Her lack of interest in the scandals swirling around democrats is telling. Holding her President’s and his administration’s feet to the fire, as Tea Party members have been doing within the Republican Party, would show some spine (And intelligence) but it might risk her being labeled racist so she happily plays the loyal partisan.
Those “bizarre men” that tried to photograph cochran’s mother were probably on Cochran’s payroll, if they exist at all. And tonight a man described as decent committed suicide, possibly due to the damage to his family and reputation caused by the labeling and false charges against him.
The entire nasty mess is disgraceful.
Re #11 Chuck : Thank you Chuck. Please continue to contribute.
Re #2 Peggy :
Thanks for that! Sad news but it is exactly what we are facing.
Re This entire thread:
Blah, blah, blah, blah. An incumbent beat a challenger who did his best to hang himself. It was a close race and Chris McDaniel may have actually won but lost to corruption of the voting process.
Bottom line: Had McDaniel run a better campaign, it would have never been so close.
What the Daily Fail leaves out is that the McDaniel campaign DOES have links to white supremacists and neo-confederates, and McDaniel WOULD hurt black families with cuts to social welfare if elected. It’s not “race-baiting” to point out facts that matter to black voters.
Chuck: “It’s already been proved that a man can be involved in teenage prostitution rings and you would still support and love them if they had a “D” in front of their political party preference.”
Please elaborate on this charge, Pastor Wolk. I’d hate to think you, a man of God, are once again being dishonest.
That “connection” is an $800.00 donation from an attorney (Carl Ford) who defended a clan member. (Hillary recently bragged about getting a rapist off whom she defended are you gonna claim she’s in favor of rape?) McDaniel may not have been aware of Fords defense attorney connection. A donation from a defense lawyer does not prove “ties” to any organization or their beliefs.
Carl Ford has also made donations to at least one Democrat, Jim Webb.
According to the article you cited McDaniel was not involved in the filming incident either.
The headline in the beast is over the top.
McDaniel could not possibly hurt black voters any more than has president Obama who has flooded the nation with illegals who take the jobs that poor AMERICAN, blacks, Latinos, orientals, and whites might otherwise take. Black unemployment has been very high for six long years.
Your PC fixation makes you blind to realities.
The “headline” and takeaway in this story is that an old guard Republican from Mississippi, Cochran, realized he was losing and stooped to the lowest low bar of the Democrat Play Book and played the race card on his opponent while courting the black vote using an activist Democrat organization and a Democrat activist woman with her own questionable ethics.
Your constant moralizing is absurd, idiotic and, as always, filled with a PC prejudiced slant.
By the way, Jennifer Rubin’s piece was written before the details of this story came out so I guess we can forgive her for assuming Cochran’s luring of the black vote in Mississippi was in no way a result of “attracting” blacks to Republican ideas. Instead it was the result of using tactics that Democrats have used for years to deceive black voters into voting Democrat and buying their vote with handouts.
Republicans have a better idea for the black community. we would like policies that create conditions for blacks to climb out of poverty and rise up into the middle class and beyond. We would like policies and conditions that result in black schools being on par with white schools. we want policies that encourage families and families staying together. We encourage policies that change welfare into an opportunity bridge.
Democrats lie through their teeth about what Republicans and Tea party conservatives want and they get away with it because idiots like Chris and Libby enable them to.
Talk about racism and prejudice! are willing to use blacks, any minority group, to keep Democrats in power. They continue to support the same politicians regardless their failures to deliver improved conditions or their slime ball behaviors and tactics.
And then they have the complete gall to moralize.
What the established GOP did to Tea Party endorsed McDaniel showed how desperate they were to maintain their control in Washington. Actively recruiting democrats to vote for Cochran knowing it was a violation of their voting laws not only shows how desperate they knew they were on the verge of loosing one of their good old boy members and would be replaced with a Mike Lee and Ted Cruz supporters. They stooped as low as Democrats by adopting their voter fraud tactics and win at all cost/the end justifies the means philosophy.
Questions Mount About Effort to Drive Democrat Votes for Cochran:
CLEVELAND, Mississippi — “I still think the slaves should get their 40 acres and a mule,” LeeRoy Carter, a black preacher who’s working to get out the vote among black Democrats for Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) for the GOP primary runoff, told Breitbart News on Thursday. “I still think it, honest to God I do. Because we haven’t gotten it.”
Outside the Bolivar County Courthouse, Carter said he is delivering voters for Cochran in the Republican primary runoff but voting for Democrat Travis Childers in the general election in November. Experts argue that voting for a Republican in the runoff but a Democrat in the general election is technically illegal, but the strategy is the linchpin of a desperate bid by Cochran to use Democratic voters to prevail against Tea Party-backed state Senator Chris McDaniel.
Meanwhile, Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, Senate Conservatives Fund, and FreedomWorks have teamed up to send Adams, the former DOJ attorney, to Mississippi to fight for a clean election in the runoff on Tuesday.
Adams has already, on his blog at conservative outlet PJ Media, reported that there are Democrat notaries who engaged in allegedly illicit conduct in previous elections in state working to help Democrats vote for Cochran right now in the state.
“[PJ] Tatler [the name of Adams’ blog] has learned that Democrat notaries who engaged in illegal conduct in previous elections in Mississippi (according to a federal court ruling) are now harvesting absentee ballots for the Republican runoff from African-Americans who have always voted in Democratic Party primaries,” Adams wrote on Thursday, referring to various Democratic Party notaries public are “voting the actual ballots of the voters” for the voters.
“This is the sort of voter fraud that academics and political hacks (but I repeat myself) say is rare and doesn’t really amount to much,” Adams wrote. “Tatler can report that the notaries who have been engaged in voter fraud going back at least a decade are now in the field once again harvesting absentee ballots from African-Americans in the Republican primary who normally never vote in the Republican primary in Mississippi.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/06/21/Questions-Mount-About-Effort-To-Drive-Democrat-Votes-For-Cochran
Remember George Soros founded the group known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), to install democrats into the elected state position responsible for the election process.
Soros and liberal groups seeking top election posts in battleground states:
“A small tax-exempt political group with ties to wealthy liberals like billionaire financier George Soros has quietly helped elect 11 reform-minded progressive Democrats as secretaries of state to oversee the election process in battleground states and keep Republican “political operatives from deciding who can vote and how those votes are counted.”
Known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), the organization was formed by liberal activists in 2006 to put Democrats in charge of state election offices, where key decisions often are made in close races on which ballots are counted and which are not.”
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/23/section-527-works-to-seat-liberals-as-election-ove/?page=1#ixzz35xEKt6Y1
Current Mississippi Sec. of State Delbert Hosemann was a Democrat before switching to Republican.
“Political involvement[edit]
Hosemann was a candidate for election to the Mississippi’s 4th congressional district in 1998. Hosemann has also registered as Democrat early in his political life before switching to the GOP.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delbert_Hosemann
While Hosemann is a Republican and not a Democrat we can only hope he’ll fight to maintain the integrity of the state’s voters and speak out against voter fraud as he did when he spoke out in support of voter ID when attacked by the DOJ.
Delbert fires back at DOJ:
“Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann issued the following press release concerning the comments made by a Justice Department employee about Mississippi’s Voter ID law:
Jackson, MS—Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann addressed the comments allegedly made by a Department of Justice (DoJ) employee, calling her remarks irresponsible.
“Our Agency has taken great strides to educate voters on the implementation of voter ID. During the initiative process, we held nine public hearings on the issue in geographically dispersed areas of the State, when State law required we only hold five,” adds Hosemann. “Those hearings were transcribed and are currently on our website, along with written comments submitted by the public. Overwhelmingly, voters expressed concern over the integrity of the election process, voter impersonation, and inaccurate and inflated voter rolls.”
Voter roll maintenance is conducted at the county level. ”
http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/2012/05/delbert-fires-back-at-doj.html
“Voter roll maintenance is conducted at the county level.”
Now, that could be cause for concern based on the information Tina posted above. Hopefully, the state has oversight of the counties.
Pie you might be right about McDaniel…on the other hand, maybe not.
Tina: “McDaniel could not possibly hurt black voters any more than has president Obama who has flooded the nation with illegals who take the jobs that poor AMERICAN, blacks, Latinos, orientals, and whites might otherwise take.”
One can do no more than giggle at this feigned sympathy. You don’t even have enough respect for minorities to get the terminology right. No one is buying it, Tina, not even you.
#16 Pie, I do and don’t agree with your bottom line statement.
I do agree Daniels could have won if he’d run a better campaign, but when the polls just before the election showed he was ahead with double digits I don’t know what more they could have done.
What took him out was having his own party turn on him. That’s like having General Eisenhower having General Patten turn his troops against him. When your fighting the “enemy” ahead of you your not prepared to defend yourself with an attack from your own flank.
What makes me sick about this race is the voters of Mississippi lost. They won’t have a representative who was elected by the people who wanted him to represent them in DC. They were used as political pawns to keep one man out of office to preserve another’s contribution to the GOP power machine.
Now, is this the Charles Sumner moment for the GOP? Is this the straw that breaks the party apart like it did with the Whig party and formed the “New Republican party”?
When Republicans start acting like Democrats and are willing to “beat” another party member by any means possible whether, it’s wooden care or millions spent on ads to gain democrat votes, it will have many asking if they still want to be a member of that party. I’m one of them, and I know I’m not alone.
Charles Sumner:
“Charles Sumner (January 6, 1811 – March 11, 1874) was an American politician and senator from Massachusetts. An academic lawyer and a powerful orator, Sumner was the leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War working to destroy the Confederacy, free all the slaves and keep on good terms with Europe. During Reconstruction, he fought to minimize the power of the ex-Confederates and guarantee equal rights to the Freedmen.
In 1856, during the “Bleeding Kansas” crisis, Sumner denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In his “Crime against Kansas” speech on May 19 and May 20, Sumner attacked the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The long speech argued for the immediate admission of Kansas as a free state, and went on to denounce the “Slave Power”—the political arm of the slave owners. Their goal, he alleged, was to spread slavery through the free states that had made it illegal.[21]
Two days later, on the afternoon of May 22, Brooks confronted Sumner as he sat writing at his desk in the almost empty Senate chamber: “Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.” As Sumner began to stand up, Brooks beat Sumner severely on the head before he could reach his feet, using a thick gutta-percha cane with a gold head. Sumner was knocked down and trapped under the heavy desk (which was bolted to the floor), but Brooks continued to strike Sumner until Sumner ripped the desk from the floor. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and he staggered up the aisle and collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat the motionless Sumner until his cane broke, at which point he left the chamber. Several other Senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt who brandished a pistol and shouted, “Let them be!”[27]
The episode revealed the polarization in America, as Sumner became a martyr in the North and Brooks a hero in the South. Northerners were outraged. The Cincinnati Gazette said, “The South cannot tolerate free speech anywhere, and would stifle it in Washington with the bludgeon and the bowie-knife, as they are now trying to stifle it in Kansas by massacre, rapine, and murder.”[28] William Cullen Bryant of the New York Evening Post, asked, “Has it come to this, that we must speak with bated breath in the presence of our Southern masters?… Are we to be chastised as they chastise their slaves? Are we too, slaves, slaves for life, a target for their brutal blows, when we do not comport ourselves to please them?”[29]
Historian William Gienapp has concluded that Brooks’ “assault was of critical importance in transforming the struggling Republican party into a major political force.”[33]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sumner
Whig Party:
“The party was ultimately destroyed by the question of whether to allow the expansion of slavery to the territories. With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery faction prevented the re-nomination of its own incumbent President Fillmore in the 1852 presidential election; instead, the party nominated General Winfield Scott. Most Whig party leaders eventually quit politics (as Abraham Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties. The northern voter base mostly joined the new Republican Party. By the 1856 presidential election, the party was virtually defunct.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_Party_(United_States)
Does the GOP represent our values any more? No
Is it time for a new party that does? Yes
Re #9 Chris: Any supposed analyst who starts out with “temper tantrum” isn’t worth spit, left or right, and I certainly will not waste my time reading such tripe.
People have legitimate complaints over this affair. Whether it will come to something or not is not dependent on some ass’ insulting comments.
Re #22 Tina:
Tina, I make no claim as to political wizardry or acumen, I just call them as I see them. Right or wrong.
As for a recount, that is up to the people of Mississippi and the provisions in their constitution.
Re #17 Chris : What the *** Daily Fail *** …
Oh, how clever that introduction must feel to the ideological partisan goose-stepper whose party created the Ku Klux Klan and has kept in political power members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Re #24 Peggy :
I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Political polls have been dead wrong before. Many times. I am not saying there was not corruption and dirty tricks in the only poll that really counts, the ballot box, but Mississippi will have to determine that only if the citizens and the government choose to pursue it.
Re #24 Peggy Addendum : Does the GOP represent our values any more? No.
Again I disagree. Does much of the beltway GOP establishment not represent conservative values? A RESOUNDING YES!
I am not willing to abandon the GOP over Mississippi but I do not mind people raising a legitimate stink about it, and this stinks to high heavens.
Thank you Peggy for taking the time and so eloquently expressing your opinion. It has given me much food for thought.
I would prefer a re-invigoration of the GOP by pressure and political success of conservative groups like the Tea Party. When I do vote (and sometimes, in disgust, I do not bother) I vote straight GOP because I see it as the only real chance to oppose the evil Democratic Party machine.
But when Republicans act like Democrats I do admit I find that disheartening.
Re #24 Peggy 2nd Addendum :
I did not vote in California’s recent primary. I spent six hours researching and filling out my mail in ballot. Then I screwed up and did not get it mailed in time. But, in the end, my ballot really made no difference to the results.
The only ballot box I refused to check was for governor. I could not choose between a loose cannon who with a big mouth who ineptly insults and alienates some of our fellow citizens and an establishment GOP darling who had a brief career in “recapitalization” bailouts and then fled Washington.
Needless to say, when I fill out my ballot in November, I will be voting for Neel Kashkari, I only hope I don’t screw up getting down to the downtown post office and mailing it in time.
Chris we have been here before. The terminology you find so offensive, as a member of the dutifully offended, was used by a man of Japanese heritage to describe the many people in his organization we would be working with on a regular basis. If its a term he uses in talking with me I have to assume it is a term that does not offend him or the many people he knows in his community and family.
The PC college campus is a not America and does not reflect American values. it is a hotbed of propaganda and you are its defective product. The bilge you spout is doing more harm than good because it is based on lies and distortions made by political and social opportunist that can’t afford to see Americans of all races succeed.
Re: Peggy article at #21, “Remember George Soros founded the group known as the Secretary of State Project (SOSP), to install democrats into the elected state position responsible for the election process.”
Wikipedia:
The stated purpose of this organization was/is 100% political, yet they were not intimidated or placed under special scrutiny before being granted non-profit status by the IRS in 2006. Lois Lerner’s tenure at the IRS began in 2001.
More about Soros here:
And in regards to all of that, please read today’s post referring all of you to the excellent article by Richard Fernandez.
Pie:
#28 – We hear all elections are local, which explains why Cantor lost. He forgot where his voters lived and instead spent his time wooing his buddies in DC with expensive steak dinners.
McDaniel’s Mississippi voters were taken out because the beltway GOP establishment learned from what happened to Cantor and pulled out all of the big gun arsenal to make sure it didn’t happen again.
It went from a local election to one control by the strong arm reach from DC.
#29 – We actually do agree because I failed to make myself clear. I should have used “beltway GOP establishment” instead of just the GOP.
I too would prefer to reinvigorate the GOP, because like Ron Paul learned it’s impossible to wrestle control away from those in control even if you have strong supporters who lack the funds to level the playing field.
Rand Paul learned that lesson from his father, which is why he’s working within the GOP establishment. I’ve liked most of what Rand has said and done except his endorsement of McConnell’s reelection. His sitting on the fence playing both sides may back-fire on him.
#30 – I too vote straight GOP unless I find a candidate connected in any way with certain individuals in the Calif. Republican party. If I find a connection I will vote for the opposing candidate or not at all. I want to clean out what’s going on in the state as much as I do DC.
As the saying goes follow the money. Charles Munger’s money is all over this state and he’s got lots of it. He’s been supporting candidates for the state and CRP and look where we are. We don’t need another Arnie just because he has an R after his name.
I hope the GOP does become the Grand Old Party again, but if it doesn’t and another party forms to take its place I’ll switch with out hesitation.
Tell me why you’ll vote for Neel Kashkari, if you won’t mind sharing.
The latest news on the corruption in Mississippi.
Pastor Makes Bombshell Admission: I Was Offered Money to Recruit Black Voters to Cast Ballots for Thad Cochran:
“Were black pastors throughout Mississippi used as part of a massive illegal campaign machine, paying Democratic voters to swing the state Republican primary runoff in favor of the incumbent, Sen. Thad Cochran?
Journalism startup GotNews.com posted an interview Monday with a man claiming just that: He said he is a black pastor who paid black voters to turn out for Cochran last Tuesday, and that he did it because he was told Cochran’s Tea Party challenger, Chris McDaniel, was racist.
Rev. Stevie Fielder, the pastor claiming to have paid black voters to turn out for Thad Cochran. (Image source: screen grab via YouTube)
Rev. Stevie Fielder, the pastor claiming to have paid black voters to turn out for Sen. Thad Cochran.
“[The Cochran campaign] pretty much got the white folks they could get, and they needed some African-American folks to turn the election,” said the pastor, identified as Rev. Stevie Fielder.
And according to Fielder, the Cochran campaign was buying votes.
“If we had to buy the votes, we’d buy the votes just to keep [Cochran] in, to keep McDaniel out,” Fielder said.
Fielder said he worked with Cochran staffer Saleem Baird, a man whose checkered past includes a 2011 arrest in connection with improperly licensed strippers at a Jackson, Mississippi, club.
“What [Baird] would do is … put $15 per vote in each envelope and then give it to the people as they’d go in and vote,” Fielder said, adding that he was given many of these envelopes and tasked with recruiting black voters.
.
“Did he indicate that he was doing this program with many different pastors or just with you?” the interviewer asked.
“Many,” Fielder answered, “all over the state.”
Fielder says he recruited “hundreds” of voters by offering $15 per vote.
“[Voters] were glad to get $15,” Fielder said, adding that he also mentioned McDaniel’s alleged racism to prospective recruits as an extra incentive.
Fielder said he was promised $16,000 for his efforts, dependent on Cochran winning. He said he came forward to the press after the Cochran campaign reneged.”
Article w/video:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/07/01/pastor-claims-republican-senator-was-buying-black-votes-to-beat-back-tea-party-challenge/
#17 Chris :
What the Daily Fail leaves out is that the McDaniel campaign DOES have links to white supremacists and neo-confederates, and McDaniel WOULD hurt black families with cuts to social welfare if elected. It’s not “race-baiting” to point out facts that matter to black voters.
–
Exactly the campaign that was ran Chris…
Best part is now the Black Democrats have said they want something in return and they should get something!
So is this post a defense of the candidate for his beliefs? Cause that would explain the ideals believed here.
What makes McDaniel’s so good? What is his qualities his links to those groups?
And what about this? Politics is bought out and the Tea Party is no angel
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/mississippi-tea-party-courthouse-locked-in
@Dewey#35 , there is a difference between pointing out facts, and race-baiting, you are correct. Cochran’s campaign was pointing out the fact the Cochran is a pork-barrel spender ALL during the race; so was McDaniel! *Both* the Cochran campaign and the McDaniel campaign were pointing out the fact that McDaniel wants to kill the DC spending addiction so we can start paying down the trillions in debt. McDaniel website: “oppose increasing the debt limit unless significant spending cuts … fight for a Balanced Budget Amendment … earmarking … permanent ban.” Cochran is a big spender, proud of it, and MS is the poorest state as measured by median family income, making it a big recipient. This battle of ideas was too close to call in the primary, with McDaniel getting 49.5% of the repubs (all the tea plus some fence-sitting repubs), and Cochran getting 49.1% of repubs (all the estab plus a few of the fence-sitting repubs). That was 6/3.
During the three weeks leading up to the 6/24 runoff, the Cochran folks decided to attract some independents, as the only way to eek out a win. (When the challenger gets more votes in the primary the incum is in *deep* trouble. The most committed voters are already on the challenger’s side … that is where the gumption comes to back the challenger!) This is a perfectly legal thing to do in MS, and many other states, when done correctly.
But in practice, the *way* that the estab-folks made this win-over-the-independents-strategy happen, was horrific. First, the estab did their best to attract democrats, not just independents aka swing voters (people who sometimes vote R and sometimes vote D). That’s fine as far as it goes, legally speaking, and could even be a positive, as when Reagan converted a bunch of dems to his repub cause (contrast 1984 with 1980 voting-patterns).
Reagan appealed to dems that were fiscally conservative (or at least fiscally moderate), and dems that believed in liberty. The estab-folks for Cochran, trying to keep the pork dollars flowing, appealed to dems that believe the tea party is racist, and to dems that believe the government owes them free stuff. Needless to say, those are not republican party planks, even for an estab-repub like Romney! Those are far-left liberal dem ideas. If the estab-folks had said, McDaniel wants to spend way less money on the federal Dept of Edu than we will (in favor of state-level control over education), or that McDaniel would be much more careful about eliminating waste & pork from disaster-relief spending bills than an estab-repub would, or even that McDaniel favors a balanced budget which will force cuts to obamacare / medicaid / medicare / food stamps / similar in the long run … that would have been fine, and truthful.
Instead, “they” said that McDaniel is a racist, and will take away your food stamps, and will destroy public schools. That’s not hyperbole. That’s the nastiest sort of character-assassination. Now *technically* of course, the people saying such things were not official members of the Cochran campaign. Henry Barbour swears he had “no knowledge” of the race-baiting robocalls, nor the race-baiting radio ads (at least those “in Canton [Mississippi]” …). But see the dailyMail.co.uk article on the robocalls, that shows the estab-folks hired at least some of the people involved in the nasty work, for services.
There is also a solo blogger-journalist in LAX who is trying to dig up evidence of foul play, and has found a guy that was giving people $15 per vote, with incriminating texts to his phone from folks in the Cochran campaign — see gotnews.com
Anyways, at bottom, character assassination is not flat illegal, just extremely unethical. Adopting dem talking-points (without regard to their truth!) is anti-Republican, but again not illegal. Technically, pedantically, it is actually illegal to vote in any primary for any candidate you do not “intend” at the time to vote for in November, but this MS law is unenforceable in practice (voters can just say they changed their mind).
The only likely *legal* basis for a challenge to the runoff result is one specific thing only: people that voted in the 6/3 dem primary (for Childers or one of the other three dems), and then “switched parties” to vote in the 6/24 repub runoff. This is illegal, specifically, in MS, so I hear. There were about 76k dems who voted in the dem-primary. There were 13834 dem-primary-voters in Hinds county, and about 1500 of those dems in Hinds County also voted in the repub-runoff, making their votes invalid. (Hinds has the biggest population, it encompasses the western half of the state capitol, and is heavily dem-leaning.) Now, if we assume that 10% of the dem-primary-voters in the other 81 counties illegally crossed over, that would be ~7575 invalidated votes… more than enough to overturn the runoff-result, and force a redo. The trouble is doing the legwork fast enough: there are paper-based vote-books in every county, which each must be examined manually, to get a total number of invalid votes. There are also a bunch of absentee ballots, not subject to voter ID and therefore more prone to fraud, plus a smaller number of ballots where the voter forgot to bring ID that day (“affidavit” ballots). So, there is a non-zero chance that the runoff-results will be certified (aka officially finalized) before enough invalid votes are provably demonstrable before a judge. People close to the McDaniel campaign say around 3300 votes have been found so far, with just under half the counties reviewed (not sure about absentee/affidavit review); this number is lower than the 10% found in Hinds.
In the big picture, are the illegal votes *caused* by the tactics the estab-folks were using? Well, kinda-sorta. None of the flyers/robocalls/etc that I examined had a disclaimer that dem-6/3 then repub-6/24 voting was illegal, but that’s perhaps not surprising; they were polemics, not reasoned calls.
The other part of the big picture is the longer-term issue is whether the repub party will split, with the estab-pork nominees like Cochran returning to the dem party, and estab-pork lobbyists like Barbour taking the megadonor-money along. Plenty of tea-party folks are angry about the way McDaniel was beaten: by using dem ideas and character assassination. But if the business-friendly side of the repub party leaves, then the dem-party will become even more corporatist than it already is (at the leadership level as opposed to the rhetoric level), and there are simply not enough liberty-lovers to win against all those dem-style federal freebies *and* estab-repub fiat cash.
Is politics 100% bought out? No, that is no longer true. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz cannot be bought, although both are capable of saying the tactically ‘correct’ thing. (Rand’s response to the MS election so far was to say he is in favor of independents being able to vote in repub primaries … since Rand tromps other repubs amongst independents and is looking ahead to 2016/2020 races. Cruz was not happy with the things that were said in the MS primary, and said so, but also was careful to congratulate Thad.) Myself, I think the story from MS is not over just yet; as more and more nasty dirt is unearthed, I expect that Rand and Cruz will modify their initial stances. But only if enough dirt comes to light! As for the dems, there is a split in their party as well: do they continue to accept it when dem-hardliners assert that all tea candidates and all tea voters are racists? They now have a repub on their side, who tacitly and unapologetically accepts this tea=racism as a valid worldview: Cochran. But this isn’t correct; tea is about taxation and economics, first and foremost, which means cutting the size of government. Liberty benefits all equally, as long as it is coupled with (blind) justice for all. Dems support race-conscious “justice”; that is fundamentally why they wish to paint the tea folks as racists, despite T.W. Shannon and Allen West and Tim Scott and so on and so forth.
Negative campaigning *does* sometimes backfire; Cochran is now finished politically, even if the runoff is not overturned. The bigger question is Haley and Henry Barbour … are they finished as repub leadership in MS? If not, why not? If so, will they accept vice-leadership, or will they “revitalize” the corporatist side of the MS dem party? Nationally, will the tea folks accept their lumps … or will Remember Mississippi become a rallying cry, that leads to rooting out the estab porkerships in 2016 and 2018 and beyond? Will the dems admit that Obama is worse than Bush on drones and the NSA, and that liberTea-repubs (as opposed to estab-repubs!) are on the same side? We shall see.
p.s. I’ve already written a novella, so I’ll let somebody else give you the full background-facts about the courthouse incident; in brief, that was 6/3 in Hinds county (see above corruption), and one of the election-workers named Janis (a tea party member and McDaniel supporter) turned in her precinct paperwork at 8:30pm, but then returned to the courthouse at 2:30am when she saw the preliminary results hadn’t been published and wanted to know what was up (accompanied by a McDaniel staffer). The counting was being done under the auspices of Pete, who is a strong Cochran supporter (and who owns a company that the Cochran campaign paid $60k during the primary), but Pete had sent everybody home at 11:30pm with the ballots still half-counted, telling them to come back the next morning to finish the job (which they did). Janis and friends say they went in through a door which was propped open, but that it then locked behind them; she called Pete to be let out, but instead he called the cops on her. The sheriff said that no ballots were tampered with by Janis at 3am; nobody knows what happened at 1am, of course.
Reading between the lines, it seems clear both sides were *very* suspicions about the other group, but I don’t see much fire for all the smoke. Still, this mini-feud continued in the 6/24 illegal crossover stuff… there are allegations that Pete specifically tried to keep the precinct-workers (at some precincts only) from verifying that voters were *not* crossing over, and of course, 1500 votes allegedly make that case.
As Pie said above, this was a *close* election, and may have been decided by corruption, but that is *also* a close call (i.e. there were around 1k illegal votes in Hinds county … not 10k or 50k or something blatant). I expect we will continue to see McDaniel in politics personally, and more broadly we will continue to see repeated contests between the tea & liberty repubs versus the wallst & rockefeller repubs. I would rather a vigorous contest, as opposed to bitter strife, but Mississippi (and the reactions to it so far e.g. by Rove) does not make that hope look very promising.
At comment #36 I don’t know why your handle did not post. I went back to the edit page and it’s no longer there either???
Anyway, I want to thank you, whoever you are, for the update and clarification. It’s always good to hear from people who seem to have their arms around the situation. We must depend mostly on the news and websites and blogs we have found trustworthy.
I steal most of my knowledge on the McDaniel fiasco from here —
http://patterico.com/index.php?s=mcdaniel&submit=Search
They in turn steal from Charles Johnson, the DailyMail, and even an AP reporter has picked up the story. Keep up the good work, Tina, thanks.
p.s. My handle is “…a…” because on the internet nobody knows whether or not you are a vowel. 😉
Hello again Tina, an update for you. McDaniel filed an election-challenge with the SREC on 8/4, with a couple hundred pages of evidence. The SREC refused to even consider hearing the challenge (most of the folks elected there are estab-repubs… including Henry Barbour, Pete Perry, and Joe Nosef), let alone hold the hearing in public as McDaniel requested. So as soon as the ten-day-mandatory-waiting-period was up, McDaniel filed an election challenge in state court. (There is also a semi-related but distinct public records lawsuit ongoing in federal court from the Texas watchdog group TrueTheVote, since July 8th.)
There were ~3500 illegal-double-voters (people who first voted in the 6/3 d-prime, and then later also voted in the 6/24 r-runoff, which is a misdemeanor and thus invalidates their votes). The “certified” final total for the runoff gave Cochran the victory by a margin of ~7700 votes, so this is not enough to tip the scales in a slam-dunk decision. Finding that many illegal-double-votes would have been the easy way to win.
However, besides the ~3500 blatant illegal-double-votes, there are ~2300 invalid absentee-ballot-votes (most of them due to failure to file an absentee ballot application), bringing the total of bad ballots to ~5800, which is ~1900 shy of the target-margin. McDaniel folks have also provided a list of ~9300 suspicious votes… which are for a variety of reasons… but the most ‘interesting’ subset of that ~9300 questionable ballots, are the votes which LOOK like illegal-double-votes, where the person voted on 6/3 in the d-prime and then double-voted on 6/24 in the r-runoff, where somebody has retroactively ERASED the vote the person cast on 6/3, thus “legalizing” their double-vote on 6/24. From bit of evidence I’ve seen posted here and there, this retroactive-erasing of history was done wholesale, of hundreds of votes per county. Were some of them clerical errors? Sure, probably. Were ALL of them? Seems very unlikely.
A judge has been assigned, and there is a meeting on 8/20 (wednesday) to set a schedule for the case; after the initial case, there might be one or two state-level appeals, and then potentially a federal-level appeal or two, but election-challenge-lawsuits tend to be expedited … historically, in 1986 there was one in Georgia which took four and a half weeks.
There is a possibility that the judge will name McDaniel the winner outright, but it is more likely that the judge will order a court-administered redo-runoff, probably sometime in mid-October, to be followed immediately thereafter by the November election against Childers. (FEC reports are due out at the beginning of October… I don’t think Childers has been getting any money from the national DNC, and in a state like MS with PVI+9 that means there is almost no chance to win, against Cochran or McDaniel or any repub for that matter.)
Huge PDF of evidence here — http://mcdaniel2014.com
Hope you are well; enjoyed your piece on the Friedman, and got a laugh about Ted Cruz losing the vampire-voting-bloc.
Great to hear from you …a…! I appreciate the stealth moniker. A good friend here had his brand new truck trashed by a nasty freak.
I must confess I have not kept up with the goings on in MS so it’s great to get the latest information.
Thanks for the links.I’ll be interested to know how it turns out.
Hope you too are well. Re: Cruz, good to see us having a bit of fun in the midst of this very serious stuff.
A judge has been assigned (MS election-law specifies the MS supreme court must appoint one) to the case, Hollis McGehee. Previous decisions by this judge, who is also a Methodist reverend, suggest the decision will be fair.
http://www.law360.com/articles/521388/watson-gets-17-8m-jolt-for-medicaid-drug-pricing
http://biloxi.ms.us/pdf/annexruling09062011.pdf
Same judge also has a sense of humour, in a blog post mentioned they laughed at this scene in an old Streisand movie:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqvwea_what-s-up-doc-funny-courtroom-scene_shortfilms
The judge published a schedule on Friday. There will be a series of motions-to-dismiss on technicalities Aug 28th (the win-at-any-cost strategy of Cochran lawyers is to disqualify the case on a technicality or failing that to disqualify the evidence on a technicality or failing that to pound the table and razzle-dazzle the courts). This will be followed by the trial itself starting Sep 16th, with a decision forthcoming from judge McGehee before October 6th. Because the case is complex, the judge has scheduled ten days for McDaniel lawyers, and five days for Cochran lawyers. If there is an appeal, it goes straight to the MS supreme court (bypassing the state appellate courts). There is a possibility of an appeal to federal courts as well, theoretically.
Should the case go well for McDaniel, the most likely outcome is a redo-runoff, tea-McDaniel vs estab-Cochran (third try is a charm). Following that, if McDaniel wins of course, there would be an election between tea-McDaniel vs dem-Childers. Interestingly, from what I understand, this sequence (McDaniel vs Cochran redo-runoff followed by McDaniel vs Childers) will always happen… even if the legal appeals are not settled until *after* the November election!
So one possible sequence is McDaniel wins in court 10/6, McDaniel wins appeal ~10/16, McDaniel beats estab-Cochran in redo-runoff ~10/26, McDaniel beats dem-Childers 11/4, McDaniel sworn into Senate Jan’15. This is a very tight timeline, with not much room for delays.
However, it is also possible that we could see this longer sequence: McDaniel wins in court 10/6, general election 11/4 held (estab-Cochran vs dem-Childers), McDaniel wins appeal ~11/6, McDaniel beats estab-Cochran in redo-runoff ~11/27, McDaniel beats dem-Childers in redo-general-election 12/27, McDaniel sworn into Senate Jan’15. This is a more reasonable timeline, but also more fantastical; the judge is trying to avoid it if possible, in favor of the tight timeline above, since that is more fair to the electorate (if justice can be accomplished that fast).
McDaniel has a shot, but it is still a long shot. If the court-case goes well, the problem will be winning the redo-runoff and beating the dem; the media will not be siding with McDaniel in either election. Moreover, because of all the delays and misinformation during the July and August legal battles, not many tea/liberTea/conservative/etc folks are aware of what is happening, or know that McDaniel still might prevail (with a bit of luck and our help).
There will definitely be a move from crisis to crisis during the rest of 2014… some trumped up and largely rhetorical, some actual… but the McDaniel saga in Mississippi should not be forgotten, since it has such wide-ranging repercussions for tea/liberTea/conservative folks going forwards. (Even more than Dave Brat methinks.) Appreciate you keeping your ear to the ground for info, and letting your readership know what is happening; thanks.
p.s. “A good friend here had his brand new truck trashed by a nasty freak.”
Yes, there are definitely good reasons not to keep your SSN, full legal name, home address, and info about your children, plastered everywhere on the internet. Anonymous commenting can be a pain, since many spammers abuse it, and many internet bullies also abuse it, but it also is an essential part of politics. There is good reason we have a secret ballot, and much the same reasoning suggests that we need anonymous commenting, despite the possible abuses.
That said, of course the NSA and IRS can still figure out who is commenting, and the next Lerneresque bureaucrat can abuse that knowledge for political gain. Too bad Obama was not a Republican, the mainstream media would have done their best to destroy any repub president who permitted bureaucrats to target political enemies… with any luck, if 2016 goes well, maybe we can get somebody into the whitehouse who respects the 4th amendment (and believes it means what it says). But getting there will take a lot of work!
In any case, sorry about your friend’s vehicle; more sorry that people are capable of doing nasty things, for the most foolish “reasons” nowadays. There is an old Chinese curse, which applies here: may you live in interesting times. It may not help much, but tell your friend they will have a good story for the great-grandkids, about the olden days of 2014, someday.
As for now, keep calm and carry on, as the brits say, is the best advice I can give. Don’t stoop to the level of the freaks; don’t let them drag you to their level, either. Keep the high moral ground. As was once said by Reagan, our ideas are still on the table, and they won’t go away. Nothing can truly stop an idea whose time has come; maybe not in 2014, and maybe not in 2016, but soon and permanently, the historical moment for a revival of liberty and a resurgence of Constitutionalists will have finally arrived.
Keep moving towards the goal; don’t waste too much time worrying about the nasty freaks, just take the reasonable common-sense precautions you can, and get on with living life to the fullest. Best to you and yours, talk to you later.