Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Tea hee hee!!

A few weeks ago, post-primary Wednesday morning found gleeful Democrats celebrating the double-digit loss of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA).

Last night there was another set of primary elections, most notably in Mississippi where there was a runoff between incumbent GOP Senator Thadd Cochran and tea party challenger state Senator Chris McDaniel.

Early in the evening, BWD spoke for me:

But the result was much better than expected … Cochran won, unleashing the hounds of hell, specifically, an angry tea party activist named Amy Kremer:

@amykremer If Cochran wins this #mssen race, the GOP is done. They teamed up with Dems to steal a race. Kiss the base goodbye.

@amykremer

Sad that GOP establishment has to reach out to the Dems to help keep the Barbour lobbying business profitable. That’s politics ppl. #mssen

Base kissing? Very unsanitary. But the idea of angry Republicans boycotting the November election and opening the door to a Democratic pickup? Please proceed, tea partiers, please proceed.

And a bonus! The former vice presidential candidate and half-term governor of Alaska will not stand for this …

More below …

A little birdie passed these on …

LOLGOP @LOLGOP  

Republicans spent $15 million or so to win a seat they could have won for 200k.

LOLGOP @LOLGOP

I hope the Tea Party doesn’t take the wrong lesson from this and stop wasting Republicans money on self-mutilation. That would be terrible.

$pin $pin $pin …

~

Josh Marshall @joshtpm

I feel like Tea Partiers wake up tomorrow, feel like they got a fair shake, ready to move on, etc.

Yes, because nothing says “accepting losses and moving on” like a party built on the anger and resentment of Southerners who lost the civil war.

~


David Corn @DavidCornDC  

Remember this Tea Party Rs, you were sold out. You were betrayed. You were stabbed in the back by GOP establishment. Don’t accept that.

🙂


9 comments

  1. Only in Mississippi

    Is there another state where a Republican could deploy this same strategy and win? It would have to be a heavily GOP state with a sizable defense industry, no party registration, an unusually conservative “Republican Establishment” and a large percentage of minority voters. That pretty much narrows it down to Alabama and maybe Texas. Add in the fact that Cochran had managed to avoid race-baiting for a few decades in a race-obsessed state, and you have a really unique situation.

    Had McDaniel won, we might have had the interesting and potentially replicable scenario of conservative voters choosing ideology over self-interest in America’s poorest state, and then a general election test of partisan and racial polarization. […]

    It will be interesting to see if McDaniels and his national backers resort to the threadbare “voter fraud” explanation for Cochran’s win, especially if they rely on the even more threadbare argument that Mississippi law bans primary voting by those who do not intend to support the party in November (yes, it theoretically does, but absent brain scans it’s unenforceable, and if it were enforceable it would be unconstitutional). As for Democrats: they may hoist one or two cheers for their voters deciding a GOP nomination primary, but withhold more because they probably doomed their own candidate to defeat.

  2. Losing loser Chris McDaniel

    “Now it’s our job to make sure that sanctity of the vote is upheld. And so we will stand with courage, we will stand with judgement, we will stand with integrity and we will stand for dedication”

    A little history

    In the 1950s, Mississippi was 45% black, but only 5% of voting age blacks were registered to vote. Some counties did not have a single registered black voter. Whites insisted that blacks did not want to vote, but this was not true. Many blacks wanted to vote, but they worried, and rightfully so, that they might lose their job. In 1962, over 260 blacks in Madison County overcame this fear and waited in line to register. 50 more came the next day. Only seven got in to take the test over the two days, walking past a sticker on the registrar’s office door that bore a Confederate battle flag next to the message “Support Your Citizens’ Council.” Once they got in, they had to take a test designed to prevent them from becoming registered. In 1954, in response to increasing literacy among blacks, the test, which originally asked applicants to “read or interpret” a section of the state constitution, was changed to ask applicants to “read and interpret” that document.  This allowed white registrars to decide whether or not a person passed the test. Most blacks, even those with doctoral degrees, “failed.” In contrast, most whites passed, no matter what their education level. In George County, one white applicant’s interpretation of the section “There shall be no imprisonment for debt” was “I thank that a Neorger should have 2 years in collage before voting because he don’t under stand.” (sic) He passed.

    That kind of integrity?

  3. Diana in NoVa

    Thanks for this one, JanF.

    It’s highly unlikely that a Democratic candidate could win against Cochran anyway. Remember, this is Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, filled with voters who vote against their own interests.

  4. Strummerson

    claiming to stand for democracy and “the people” while calling legal election results theft.  When a white conservative votes legally they are exercising their democratic right and fulfilling the obligations of an engaged citizen, but when a black person, liberal, or anyone supporting another candidate exercises that same right, they are muggers.

    Also, they seemed to have little problem taking advantage of open primaries in 2008 when Rush was vigorously calling for republicans to vote for HRC to prolong the primary in what he called “operation chaos.”  That was kosher and this is crooked?

    Palin’s calling for a Tea Party 3rd party.  Sometimes I think we ought to stop contributing to democratic candidates and send that money to support that effort, and to the Texas secessionist movement.

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