Desperate Cochran pleaded w/ black Democrats and welfare recipients that he “brings home bacon.” Cochran is symbol of everything wrong w/USA
— Wayne Allyn Root (@WayneRoot) June 25, 2014
It appears that the sectarianism is deepening:
In essence, tea party activists are the RINOs. A Republican Party campaigning on making the Senate “conservative,” used liberal Democrats to preserve an incumbent Republican and defeat a conservative. The actual conservatives are the outsiders with the GOP establishment doing all it could to preserve its power at the expense of its principles.
The problem for those who call themselves Republicans is that it is harder and harder to say exactly what a Republican is these days. The great lesson from Mississippi is that Republican means, more or less, that if elected the party will reward its major donors, who are just different than the Democrats’ major donors. Policy differences are about different donors, not an actual agenda to shift the country in a different direction. The Republicans have become the party of lobbyists, most of whom were on twitter celebrating their purchase.
And we have arguably the most incendiary sectarian tactic yet – deploying African-American Democratic voters to beat back the Tea Party, with an extra-nuts-making flier making a difference:
In Jackson’s Hinds County, where two-thirds of the population is black, Cochran won 73 percent of the vote, 7 points higher than his performance in the primary. Turnout was up significantly in heavily African-American counties in the Mississippi Delta, like Quitman, Sharkey, Humphrey, and Coahoma, where Cochran increased his primary-election margins over McDaniel. Over 347,000 voters cast ballots in the runoff, a higher total than in the primary—marking the first time in 30 years that has happened in any Senate race.
“Looking at county data, Cochran’s #MSSEN win is almost entirely attributable to a large turnout increase among black voters b/t 6/3 and 6/24,” tweeted Cook Political Report analyst David Wasserman.
Here’s a little nugget from the NYT that will send every Drudge reader up the wall:
Kino Sintee, 17, and three black friends waved “Thad” signs on a street corner in a black Hattiesburg neighborhood. They said the preacher from Mount Olive Baptist Church asked them to help out. “They’re talking about taking everything away from us,” he said. “People still need stuff.”
And the entire legitimacy of the process is being challenged by an infuriated base:
“As you know today, folks, there were literally dozens of irregularities reported all across this state,” McDaniel said. “You know why. You read the stories. You’re familiar with the problems that we have. Now it’s our job to make sure that the sanctity of the vote is upheld. Before this race ends, we have to be absolutely certain that the Republican primary was won by Republican voters. We will stand with courage, we will stand with judgment, we will stand with integrity. This is our fight conservatives. This is necessary. We are not prone to surrender, we Mississippians. A strong and sturdy people we are, a brave people we are, a people that can still lead the conservative revival in this country. We will lead the resurgence. That begins right here in Mississippi.”
This party is deeply fractured; and this run-off election has taken every factor deepening those fractures and intensified them. And the insurgency rages on …
(Graphic from Nate Cohn)
The Dish 