I wrote this originally to Adjoran and Dana in the comments to TOM’s post on Cochran’s “victory,” but I want it placed here for the record.
Adjoran wrote:
Seems to me Cochran WAS as good as buried, but somebody dropped the ball. Somebody tried to play dirty, and it blew up on them. It’s a bit late for that side to complain about rough politics.
This is, of course, the establishment GOP’s line, and that it’s gained so much traction over the last two days makes me sick, particularly when it’s espoused by people who, were you to ask them, would claim to be conservatives.
So. Let me make this as clear as I can, because as you are all aware I no longer give a shit about being marginalized, which means only that I was principled long before it became fashionable: Dana, Adjoran, and others are advocating pulling the lever for a Republican primary nominee who won the primary run-off by campaigning against conservative principles and with the necessary and statistically substantial support of the putative opposition party. Thad Cochran, therefore, wishes to be the representative of a party whose members in MS he and his team have asserted are racists and (more troublingly) dangerously anti-big government constitutionalists. He ran on pork spending, food stamps, and segregation. He was praised by Barbara Boxer for his position that, naturally, it is the job of Senator to leave his state dependent on a flow of federal dollars and all the strings that come attached to them. He is, therefore, beholden.
Anyone who pulls the lever for him because it’s “pragmatic” to do so — because taking the Senate is of foremost importance, regardless of principle — let me ask you this: if it meant keeping the Democrats out of control of the Senate, would you let Haley Barbour bang you in the ass literally? If not, then stop with the bullshit sophistry and phony nuance. Liberty is not for sale; this is not a game; and until you take a stand against your abusers, your slave masters, you’re nothing but the GOP equivalent of an Uncle Tom. Me, I’m nobody’s slave. And the last time the GOP controlled the House, Senate, and Presidency — with the same establishment “realists” — we got TARP, enormous debt, bailouts, increased spending, No Child Left Behind, and an extraordinary increase of government. I learned my lesson then.
We have Obama because of the establishment. Those of you who still can’t see that are admitting to blindness while asking us to follow your lead.
There is absolutely no honor in supporting a team whose management refuses to make changes when better position players come along. Worse still, they actively look to injure said players while lecturing us about the importance of team. So for people who keep crying that we “Teasters” are “sore losers,” let me just say that we seldom hear the same charges when the “hard-nosed politicians who know how to play the game right” reject the wills of their supposed constituencies. Or maybe I’m just imagining Murkowsky or Lugar or Specter or Crist or Castle or Rove, etc.
Being a Hobbit means my hairy feet and fidelity to hoary old white man documents sometimes distract me, so I guess anything’s possible.
update: let me append to this post what is, I believe, a brilliant comment from Ernst, responding to Erick Erickson’s misguided idea that Cochran won fair and square [my emphasis]:
Whether it was fair and square or not is to really miss the point. The point is who get’s to do the deciding. Increasingly the Republican party is the proverbial politician looking to elect better voters.<
That’s what you call nutshelling it.
update 2: According to Chris McDaniels, among Republicans he won the GOP primary run off by 25000 votes — a GOP primary landslide, particularly against an incumbent who’s been in DC for 42 years.
And we have would-be “realists” counseling us to just put it behind us and go win the Senate. Because yay team!
Well. Fuck them. They called me a racist and they both wanted and needed the support of liberal democrats — progressives, Marxists, perennial entitlement recipients — in order to “win” the most conservative state in the union.
This won’t stand. It can’t.
Proving yet again the old political adage that if you give the people a choice between a Democrat and a Democrat, they’ll elect the Democrat every time.
Just ask Presidents McCain and Romney. They can tell you.
forgive my saying so but i don’t think it’s an accident that both Dana and Adjoran are passionate lifeydoodles
So is the person who wrote the original TOM article fully condemning Cochran and calling for a rebuke to the GOP establishment. As are many of the people here who share my sentiments on the establishment GOP and contemporary government more generally.
forgive my saying so but i don’t think it’s an accident that both Dana and Adjoran are passionate lifeydoodles
So are most of the commenters here. Your point?
That would only matter if the choice was between a pro-abort Republican and a pro-life Democrat, and we were testing the a Repubican is alwasys better than a Democrat hypothesis.
i think there’s a substantial faction of people what love fetuses more than beans and fishsticks what see everything through the lens of Supreme Court appointments is my point dicentra
and i think this faction may comprise a greater proportion of the electorate in mississippi than elsewheres
Here I thought abortion was already legal, and that the Supreme Court — at least putatively — is 5-4 toward the conservative side.
At any rate, let’s not let this thread be hijacked. And I encourage you to Tweet this or Retweet this, because the pragmatists just can’t help but reading things aimed at them, even when it’s written by me.
It’s a kind of reflex.
Mr. Scalia is 78 years old
The “lifeydoodles” don’t seem to be making the argument that we gotta have Any Republican because fetuses. They actually think that the GOP is a bulwark against the Obama agenda.
Party Unity, My Ass!
#GOPpuma
I’m at work now, but I’ll give a more detailed reply after I get home this evening.
Mr feet wrote:
If by “passionate lifeydoodle” you mean pro-life, that would be correct in my case.
Mr. Hobbes thought everyone a passionate lifeydoodle when they had a sharp knife at their throat, no exceptions. Just to be clear.
Awesome. Flippin’ poetry for an age when poetry is as popular as this blog, because people forget that poetry came first, then shitty tv shows about nothing.
Dana, I avoid being a dick cause, well, I have to be one in my day to day life so much I ironically avoid it on the internet, but it’s telling that your avatar is a king.
Dana should also include in his explanation why we should reward anyone for breaking the law, which Cochran most certainly did in seeking to get all those Democrats to cross over and keep “those racist Teabaggers” out of the Old Boys Club.
MS Code 23-15-575: “No person shall be eligible to participate in any primary election unless he intends to support the nominations made in which he participates.”
http://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/2013/title-23/chapter-15/article-17/b/section-23-15-575
But who needs the Law when you are seeking to keep your job, amIright?
*spit*
Cochran & team national Rethug! demonstrate that they too believe all ethics are situational…
update 2: According to Chris McDaniels, among Republicans he won the GOP primary run off by 25000 votes — a GOP landslide, particularly against an incumbent who’s been in DC for 42 years.
And we have realists counseling us to just put it behind us and go win the Senate.
Yeah. Fuck them.
Seems to me that on practical grounds McDaniel supporters (whether from the last vote or newly self-discovered supporters who may have voted in ignorance for Cochran but may prefer McDaniel as they discover their disgust the the measures the GOP has used) ought to aim first at seeing to it Cochran doesn’t return to the Senate and, aiming higher, that McDaniel wins the Miss. Senate seat. Muscle up shoulder to shoulder and win the goddamn thing. It’s a ‘practical’ goal.
I concur with sdferr,
If McDaniel’s margin was that great than the hell with the national committee, he should run as “conservative” and let the chips fall where they may.
I would like Dana to explain at what point the GOP loses his loyalty.
The GOP was formed when the whigs joined the dems in supporting slavery and the abolitionists found themselves without a party.
If you’re actually a conservative, do you not see that you are likewise without a party?
It may help to bear in mind Alinsky rule #1:
* RULE 1: “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. “Have-Nots” must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)
There is that honor system thing again.
I’m at work now, but I’ll give a more detailed reply after I get home this evening.
Man, you can just feel the nervous anticipation as we await Dana’s brilliant masterpiece.
#gop puma news
Scorched Earth: Eric Cantor’s Staff, Supporters Drain Cash From Virginia GOP, Dave Brat
Make sure you have an answer to this in your reply.
And another one.
OK, home from work now.
Our honored host wrote:
There was a rather famous football coach who once said, on his way to five NFL championships, “Winning isn’t everything; winning is the only thing.” In the end, Chris McDaniel could not persuade a majority of the voters to vote for him, and he lost. It can be argued that, well, they weren’t all good Republican voters, and maybe that’s true, but, come November, Mr McDaniel would have had to have won a majority of all of the voters . . . or lose the seat to the Democrat.
And that, it seems to me, is what many of my conservative friends seem to want to see happen: since their guy didn’t win, well, fornicate it, the Democrat might as well win, ought to win, just to show the guy who played real hardball, who played damned rough, that we don’t like him, don’t like him at all. And in the meantime, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the man who controls the agenda, is sitting back and smiling, looking at people like our host and saying, “Yeah, you go, guy!”
Would I have preferred a victory by state Senator McDaniel? Certainly I would have, but it didn’t happen, and we’re stuck with Senator Cochran as the nominee. (Who knows? He’s 76 years old, and he might just drop dead next month.) And the goal is, the goal has to be taking control of the Senate, to stymie the last of President Obama’s last two years in office. Throwing a hissy fit because Thad Cochran and Mitch McConnell defeated two TEA Party challengers, and telling everybody that you’re through with the Republican Party does nothing to help achieve that goal, and actually hinders that goal.
Of course, this fair site has done it’s share of supporting people who were hardly conservatives, but were a bit more conservative than others; look at Dan Collins’ article in which he stated that he’d support Joe Lieberman for President, and even our host told us that we were fortunate to have Senator Lieberman in the Senate after he defeated Ned Lamont. When it comes to being willing to take the half of a loaf that we can get, Protein Wisdom is right there, popping the slices in the toaster!
The conservative movement is expanding, and if it didn’t unseat Mitch McConnell and Thad Cochran, Eric Cantor will now have his opportunity to get a plum K Street lobbying job and David Dewhurst will soon be looking for work. Last cycle, we got Ted Cruz and Rand Paul.
Thing is, if you love Senator Cruz and his fiery conservatism, you have to remember one very sobering fact: Senator Cruz is a minority party back-bencher. If you want people like Senator Cruz to have more power rather than less, you have to want him in the majority. Saying that Thad Cochran ought to be abandoned, because he didn’t play nice in his victory over Chris McDaniel doesn’t help get Ted Cruz in the majority.
The Tea Party candidates have had some successes in primaries, but those successes haven’t always translated into general election wins. A lot of conservatives cheered when Richard Mourdock defeated Senator Richard Lugar in the primaries; our host supported Mr Mourdock. But, in the end, we wound up with a formerly safe Republican seat in the hands of a Democrat, even though Indiana was carried by Mitt Romney in that same election. If Mr McDaniel takes the high road, concedes, and tries to help Senator Cochran, we’ll still have the Mississippi Senate seat; if y’all get your way, and Mr McDaniel tries to muddy this up and fight and fight, you just might see that Senate seat go to the Democrat.
>In the end, Chris McDaniel
could not persuade a majority of the voters to vote for himdid not go to black demonrats, money in hand, and call another republican racist and buy their votes, and he lost<Dicentra asked:
Nope, not at all. I see that I am without a perfect party, but that the only other choice is a nearly-socialist party.
To me, the fate of the Libertarian Party is instructive. If you go to their website, and look at the list of Libertarian Party members in elective offices, you’ll see a huge list of dog catchers and assistant registrars and the like, but not a single congressman, not a single governor, not anyone with any authority above the local level.
Ron Paul chose to work his Libertarian goals through the Republican Party . . . and he got elected. His son has done the same thing. And if the Tea Party really resembles anyone, it’s the Libertarians more than the GOP. The Tea Party is trying to work its way through the GOP, something that the constantly petty infighters in the oh-so-pure Libertarian Party won’t lower themselves to do, and the Tea Party has actually won some, some! elections. As the years pass, they’ll win more.
Our system of single-member districts puts real pressure in favor of a two-party system, and that makes it exceedingly difficult for a third party to gain any traction. And in places where third and fourth and fifth parties do have electoral success possibilities, we see places like Israel, where minor parties based on some narrow issues win a few seats in the Knesset, just enough where the plurality party has to agree to cockeyed coalitions to form a government. I don’t see that as a better option.
>maybe that’s true, but, come November, Mr
McDanielcochran would have had to have won a majority of all of the voters . . . or lose the seat to the Democrat. <abuse the republican base will make that happen
Mr McDaniel would have had to have won a majority of all of the voters . . . or lose the seat to the Democrat.
And in deep Red Mississippi, we all know that could never have happened. (It might have actually not happened, with Cochran beseeching Democrat voters to get out there and defeat his fellow Republican. But we’re discussing impossibilities, right? No way would a Republican have worked to get Democrats to vote for the less conservative candidate over “those racist Teabaggers”, right?)
Considering the fact that McDaniel actually won a majority of Republicans voting, and that Cochran only won because of the cross-over appeals by the man looking to save his seat by any means necessary, and that he knew those cross-over voters were not going to be voting for him come November, his best bet at this point is to insist that all the good l’il GOSheeple should just shut up and pull that ‘R’ lever in November, and here’s you, parroting those talking points, right on schedule.
Well done. I’m sure you will appreciate it when those disenfranchised conservatives decide to sit out, not having a dog in the fight any more. Because Cochran also has to win a majority of voters, and he has just pissed off a clear majority of those who might have voted for him.
> And the goal is, the goal has to be taking control of the Senate, to stymie the last of President Obama’s last two years in office. <
why? baracky don't give 2 sh*ts about the constitutional order of this country. either impeach the bastard or shut the hell up about "stymie" the baracky
It’s so cute you think renominating Cochran makes that happen.
> If you want people like Senator Cruz to have more power rather than less, you have to want him in the majority. <
that's the problem i want cruz with power; mitch mcconnel not so much
>we wound up with a formerly safe Republican seat in the hands of a Democrat, even though Indiana was carried by Mitt Romney in that same election. <
yea because lugar wasn't a team r player. mercowsky in ak same shit different election.
> and that makes it exceedingly difficult for a third party to gain any traction. <
lisa the mercowsky says no to that
If you want people like Senator Cruz to have more power rather than less, you have to want him in the majority.
huh, I’d thought the soft-voiced rational Sen. Cruz would actually be better off without the senior Sen. from Texas returned, since the senior Sen. from Texas would just as soon see Sen. Cruz ousted from his seat as quickly as can be and replaced with a more malleable hunk of establishment clay. But hey, we mustn’t mention that, since the senior Sen. from Texas is a firm insider and cozys up quite nicely with the McConnell crowd of establicans, y’know, the crowd which is always on the lookout for ways to undermine and muzzle the reasonable if unyielding Sen. Cruz.
>and that makes it exceedingly difficult for a third party to gain any traction. <
so let's experiment in kentucky, and mississippi with a 3rd party or write in in november. same with boner in oh-8
Mr McGehee wrote:
You’ve missed it completely. What makes it happen is conservatives voting for Republican primary winners, whether their preferred candidate won the nomination or not.
>What makes it happen is conservatives voting for Republican primary winners, whether their preferred candidate won the nomination or not.<
hi lisa mercowsky, dick lugar, allen spector, mike castle!!11!!
What makes it happen is conservatives voting for Republican primary winners, whether their preferred candidate won the nomination or not.
Why wouldn’t making more moderate Republicans vote for the candidate an actual majority of Republicans actually wanted work just as well?
Oh, right, that wouldn’t be practical.
*spit*
Oh, and how about making all those cross-over Democrats vote for the candidate they voted for in this primary, IAW Mississippi law? Or do you think they will end up voting almost lockstep (circa 98%) for the Dem anyway, Cochran’s machinations to the contrary be damned?
Call me crazy, but I like my congress critters to have integrity.
Cochran violated the very spirit of conservatism.
He’s pro-open borders, too. I hope that’s okay with his constituents.
newroutrer wrote:
OK, do that, and wind up with Senatrix Alison Grimes (D-KY), Senator Travis Childers (D-MS) and Representative Tom Poetter (D-OH). Can you tell me how this helps conservatives specifically, or this country in general?
Perhaps you might ask Al Gore about the effect of third party candidates. George Bush won Florida by 537 votes, while Ralph Nader took 97,488 votes.
Timewaster wrote:
It would be very practical . . . if Chris McDaniel had won the primary. He didn’t.
Timewaster also wrote:
It’d certainly be nice if they did, but you can’t make them. Our voters enjoy the right to a secret ballot, remember?
Of course, there are places where your votes are not secret, and where you can be “required” to vote a certain way, but I’m not sure that you’d like living in any of them.
Dumbna wrote:
>OK, do that, and wind up with Senatrix Alison Grimes (D-KY), Senator Travis Childers (D-MS) and Representative Tom Poetter (D-OH). Can you tell me how this helps conservatives specifically, or this country in general?<
in oh-8 the demonrat won't win in you look up the who the voters are. the other 2 you need less than 50.1% or greater than 34% to win
Dumbna continued to bleat:
Yeah, who needs to follow the law, right? (You missed that part up above, but who needs facts when you have an Establishment to protect?)
>if Chris McDaniel had won the primary. He didn’t.<
he won june 3 primary. with REPUBLICAN voters. the demented old man's handler pressed on
Plunge Router wrote:
Arlen Specter lost his primary race, after he switched to the Democratic Party, and Pat Toomey, a conservative Republican won the general election. But what Mr Toomey did was, after his defeat by Mr Specter in the 204 primary, keep his name in the public eye, and support conservative causes, without tying to sabotage Senator Specter in the 2004 general election.
Richard Mourdock beat Richard Lugar in the Republican primary, but wasn’t a ready-for-prime-time player and Christine O’Donnell was such a weirdo that even our host had problems with her, though he did say she was a better choice than the Democrat.
In 2004, I voted for Mr Toomey in the primary, and for Jim Clymer, the Constitution Party candidate in the general election. I did that to send a message that I was dissatisfied with Senator Specter, but only because Mr Specter was so far ahead of Joe Hoeffel, the Democrat, that it was a safe vote; if it had been close, I’d have voted for Mr Specter. 220,056 other Pennsylvanians did the same thing, and Mr Clymer was the top third party vote getter in the country in 2004, but he still had slightly less than 4% of the vote.
Drumwaster wrote:
The law in Mississippi is for open primaries, and a 50%+1 requirement for nomination, or face a run-off. Those were the rules, whether you like them or not, and Chris McDaniel decided to enter the race, knowing those rules. Crying now about what the rules are in a contest he voluntarily entered doesn’t strike me as particularly bold or honorable or noble.
Mr McDaniel is a state Senator; perhaps he can press for a change in those rules.
Jeez. All this name-calling.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting some new blood in the Senate. Thanks to similar shenanigans (interstate robocalls, &c) my state now has Jim Lankford on the ballot.
Yeesh. God has called him to serve, he said. Ai yi yi.
Uncle Dana’s been on the Republican plantation for so long he can’t imagine not living on it.
Is only about money not the real costs.
newrouter wrote:
No, he was the plurality winner in a contest which required a majority to win. It was nice, and a great head start for the run-off election he knew he faced, and to which he agreed when he entered the race, but it wasn’t winning as the law defined winning.
It’s kind of amusing that so many people here are saying that Mr McDaniel shouldn’t quit, but here you’ve criticized Mr Cochran for not being a quitter.
In Dana’s world, how you get there doesn’t matter.
Hell, getting there doesn’t matter.
Just as long as it looks like you’re heading in the general direction of wherever the fuck there is that’s good enough.
>after his defeat by Mr Specter in the 20(0)4 primary,Richard Mourdock beat Richard Lugar in the Republican primary, but wasn’t a ready-for-prime-time player<
did lugar publicaly endorse murdoch after his defeat? yea i thought so. and how about mercowsky in ak. you kindof ignore that establishment clown.
The law in Mississippi is for open primaries
That may very well be true, but there is a law that covers such circumstances. I will quote the relevant Mississippi election law to you (again), and you can tell me how it is legal for Democrats – who have no intention of voting for the Republican in the general election – to vote in a GOP primary. Or how it is legal for one of the candidates to entice voters to commit violations of that law, and benefit from those violations. Be specific.
MS Code 23-15-575: “No person shall be eligible to participate in any primary election unless he intends to support the nominations made in which he participates.”
In case you think I am making it up, you can research for yourself (http://bit.ly/1jSsoLO ), or click on the link I provided in my earlier comment. Take your time.
leigh wrote:
Oh, that’s absolutely right, and I’d love to see some new blood in the Senate . . . as long as it’s not Democratic blood.
I wish that Mr McDaniel had won the primary, but he didn’t.
It’s been tried. Doesn’t work.
It’s reasonably plain Ernst that not only is not getting there inconsequential, ordinary attempts at serious persuasion aren’t considered useful either.
>but here you’ve criticized Mr Cochran for not being a quitter.<
i criticize mr. cochran's handlers for abusing an obviously demented old man. you clowns will hold on to power at all costs.
Those were the rules, whether you like them or not, and Chris McDaniel decided to enter the race, knowing those rules
And Cochran chose to violate those rules (not to mention the felonious activity by his staffers), and you think he should be rewarded for those violations because “we don’t want the Dems to run the Senate”.
> as long as it’s not Democratic blood.<
why? you guys like big fed gov't. see karl rove's gwb.
According to Stabs like Lugar. Well, according to me a man running for an 8th term in the Senate is overripe for prime time and needs to be defeated — even, as in Indiana, if it means the Democrat gets elected.
Does anyone remember a time the Dems didn’t run the Senate? Maybe during Reconstruction?
I mean sure, there have been Republican majorities, but the Dems have shown that with Alinsky in their corner they don’t need numbers.
Just as it’s already been pointed out.
Drumwaster, I’m very much aware of that law, and I’m also aware that it is wholly meaningless. You cannot ask a voter to declare for which candidate he will vote, either at the present election or a future one, and you cannot force him to show you his ballot, unless you are talking about the Pyongyang polling places. Nor, even if someone did say, “Yes, I’m going to vote for Drumwaster in November,” stop him from changing his mind by the time November comes along.
Let me be very clear about this: no law can compel you to vote, or not vote, for any specific candidate or party and be constitutional.
But, I’ll ask you: since you have mentioned this silly law, several times now, if you were the Governor of Mississippi, how would you enforce it? You must have some idea!
McDaniel voters should have more self-respect than to vote for Thad Cochran
they should just stay home and make pancakes that day
i been wondering about these ones but i keep forgetting to buy coconut oil and the other coconut stuff
>if you were the Governor of Mississippi, how would you enforce it? You must have some idea! <
if i was secretary of state i'd make sure that dem voters who voted on june 3
and then voted on june 23 republican primary run off were excluded from the final june 23 vote
Mr McGehee asked:
Yes. From 1981 to 1987, the Republicans had the majority, as they did from 1995 until mid 2001, and then again from 2003 until the beginning of 2007. The GOP also controlled the Senate from 1947 to 1949 and 1955 to 1957. Here’s a handy chart. However, since 1933, even in the years in which the Republicans did have the majority, they were always small ones.
1947-49, 1953-55
Arguably 1981-1987
But those don’t really count because prior to 1995, conservatism was an “irritable mental gesture” restricted to the White House, and then only because that old charmer Reagan knew how to make all those easily led small minds feel good about their bigotry and hatred.
>they should just stay home and make pancakes that day <
nah write in mcdaniels. do the mercowsky!!11!!
Dana, you’re defending the behavior of Cochran’s campaign only in vague generalities.
You sneer about “Throwing a hissy fit because Thad Cochran and Mitch McConnell defeated two TEA Party challengers,” but you damn well know that the objection isn’t primarily THAT the incumbent Cochran successfully beat a primary challenge, but HOW he did so.
“In the end, Chris McDaniel could not persuade a majority of the voters to vote for him, and he lost.”
He persuaded a majority of REPUBLICANS in the REPUBLICAN primary runoff, and you’re trying (and failing) to obscure the fact that Cochran’s campaign reached out to Dems and did so BOTH by smearing conservatives as racist AND by smearing conservatism as cruel.
It’s funny: you’re trying to defend the indefensible, but you can’t even bring yourself to describe it honestly.
“If Mr McDaniel takes the high road, concedes, and tries to help Senator Cochran, we’ll still have the Mississippi Senate seat; if y’all get your way, and Mr McDaniel tries to muddy this up and fight and fight, you just might see that Senate seat go to the Democrat.”
Why the hell should any of us take that “high road” after this, especially when you’re praising Cochran’s hardball tactics? There’s nothing particularly noble about enabling the party leadership’s slander of us and our ideals: that’s no high road, it’s a road to serfdom.
Drumwaster, I’m very much aware of that law, and I’m also aware that it is wholly meaningless.
Well, gollygeewhillikers, why would they have it if it is meaningless? It’s not like they intended for it to be so blatantly violated, is it?
Nor, even if someone did say, “Yes, I’m going to vote for Drumwaster in November,” stop him from changing his mind by the time November comes along.
If someone has only ever voted Democrat, been a member of the Democrat party for years, and donated only to Democrat candidates (all of which can be learned from publicly available sources), it can be conclusively presumed that they have no intention of supporting a Republican in the general election, and their attempt to vote in a GOP primary – while still a member of the Democrat party (which data is listed right next to their name in the precinct listings) – could be forestalled prior to the attempt, or voided after the election is held. The motive is clear, especially given the (illegal) robocalls, the slanderous claims of “racism” by Cochran, and the felonious actions by Cochran staffers, and if a judge were to cause all votes by Democrats to be voided in this GOP run-off, would you still support Cochran, or would you throw that glittering wit you displayed (koff) behind the candidate who actually won a majority of Republican votes?
Sean Trende had some post Lindsay Graham analysis that just needs to be here:
No more. Not another fucking inch.
> Republicans did have the majority, they were always small ones <
being demonratlite will do dat
newrouter wrote:
They should have been prevented from voting in the run-off, something which should have been easy enough to do, but once they had voted, you couldn’t exclude their votes because there is no way to identify their votes, unless they are in separate provisional ballot envelopes.
The difference between de jure and de facto.
The GOP didn’t control the Senate from ’03 to ’07. Harry Reid did. Just like he does now.
And Mitch McConnell let him.
Just like he does now.
But, I’ll ask you: since you have mentioned this silly law, several times now, if you were the Governor of Mississippi, how would you enforce it? You must have some idea!
If, as I mentioned above, the voter has been a member of the Democrat party for years, has never donated either time or money to any Republican or any conservative causes, and has never before voted in any GOP primary, it can be conclusively presumed that they have no intention of actually supporting the eventual Republican candidate, and their vote can be voided, since they would not be eligible. Or, if the Election precinct worker can see that the voter is a Democrat (which information would be listed right net to their name on the precinct voter rolls) trying to cross over and vote in a GOP primary, they can be prevented from voting in the first place.
You seem to think that enforcing a law is impossible…
From my exchange with Dana over at TOM:
PS: Di’s two comments are well-worth a read – fire in prose:
http://theothermccain.com/2014/06/25/gop-establishment-turns-out-democrat-voters-to-defeat-conservative-candidate/#comment-1454841880
and
http://theothermccain.com/2014/06/25/gop-establishment-turns-out-democrat-voters-to-defeat-conservative-candidate/#comment-1454835454
Exactly. In the Senate majorities don’t matter anymore. They never really did because of the rules of collegiality that — once upon a time — both parties observed. Now, majorities don’t matter for a very different reason: because the Democrats use Alinsky against the Republicans, and the Republicans use Alinsky on each other.
Like in Mississippi last Tuesday.
Drumwaster asked:
I’ve already said I’d support the primary winner, and I would have supported Mr McDaniel if he had won the primary.
But your question is pure fantasy. It is at least slightly possible that the whole election could be thrown out, and a second runoff scheduled, but since you cannot assign specific votes to specific voters, there’s no way to throw out the votes of ineligible voters. We can speculate on a blog that most of those votes went to Senator Cochran, but the law can’t do that.
But by all means, let’s put the Republican party’s REAL will to the test, and hold another run-off… void the first, because of the massive enticement to voter fraud by one candidate, and hold a closed primary, where only actual party members can vote for that party’s candidate, and see how Cochran fares.
You’ll immediately shy away from this solution, because you don’t want the truth, only the predetermined outcome of the Establishment controlling the voters, rather than the other way around.
It’s worth pointing out that Cochran could have taken the high road and bowed out after losing the first round. The manner in which he went about securing that second round majority –i.e. adopting Democrat tactics in order to attract democrat voters– places and fissure in the Mississippi G.O.P in his hands, not McDaniels’s.
If Cochran loses that Republican seat in Mississippi to the Democrats. It will be because he failed to attract enough voters to garner a majority.
But then ol’ Thad strikes me as the kind of guy who’d rather lose with honor and dignity than win with the support of racist tea party types. So it’s all good.
>They should have been prevented from voting in the run-off, something which should have been easy enough to do, but once they had voted, you couldn’t exclude their votes because there is no way to identify their votes, <
dude you be stretching. if they are ineligible to vote they are tossed regardless of their vote.
Drumwaster wrote:
Sorry, wrong answer. No one can legally presume what someone else’s vote will be. You can do that on a blog, but no official can do it under the authority of the law.
> there’s no way to throw out the votes of ineligible voters. <
dem voters on june 3 dem vote can't vote on june 23 rep vote. it is not that hard unless you want it.
The only thing I’d add to that is that supermajorities used to matter a great deal. After all, that’s how the minority leader became the de facto leader of the Senate.
And why wasn’t it done? Any chance the cause might have been something corrupt in the GOP that we outlaws understand must be ended before electing Republicans to another Senate majority will make the difference you’re claiming it will make?
>No one can legally presume what someone else’s vote will be. <
mindlessly swinging
"dem voters on june 3 dem vote can't vote on june 23 rep vote. it is not that hard unless you want it. "
Drumwaster wrote:
What I’ll actually do is point out that that would be against the law. There might be some way in which the whole run-off election could be tossed out, and a new one held, but under the law, anyone who had not voted in the Democratic primary could vote in the new run-off.
No one can legally presume what someone else’s vote will be. – See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=54166#comment-1090245
Political party membership is all that would be needed. Someone who cannot even be bothered to file a new registration (it’s free, after all – doesn’t even require a stamp) in order to vote in the other party primary CAN be presumed to not be interested in supporting that candidate in the general election. They can be prevented from voting quite easily. “Sorry, the available evidence causes me to suspect that by voting in this primary, you would be in violation of Mississippi election law, and because of the oath I took, I cannot permit you to cast a ballot. You can cast a provisional ballot, which will be tracked and counted separately, but the law is quite clear in this regard.”
Fucking lawyers are always so consistently useless. It’s a thing.
Let me put in right here that, as far as the consequences of Mississippi’s election laws, Dana is correct. However the stupidity of the law does not earn Cochran and his handlers the right to demand that Mississippi Republicans deliberately cheated of their preferred nominee must vote for Cochran in November.
Which, I would point out, is what the stupid law would require.
Clearly if it’s unenforceable against McDaniel’s supporters, as we would all agree it must be, then it’s unenforceable across the board.
There is nothing gained by continuing this line of argument.
>who had not voted in the Democratic primary could vote in the new run-off. <
MS Tea Party claims at least 800 illegal votes in Hinds Co. alone
alfrancken would find those votes
What I’ll actually do is point out that that would be against the law
Sounds like “shying away” to me…
Of course, the laws you want to enforce, and the laws you think are “meaningless”, say a lot about you. None of it good. (And since I gave a specific legal referent as to exactly which law was being violated, I invite you to point out exactly which law would be violated by my solution. Be specific.)
Drum, in many states — and I believe Mississippi is one of them — voter registration doesn’t include party affiliation. To change parties in such states requires only that the voter decide “From now on I’m voting for the other party instead of this pile of shit.”
As long as we all realize that the minutiae of Mississippi election law isn’t the main issue.
Most of us do. But notice where Dana is concentrating his attention.
Or refusing to come to grips with the elemental questions, I’d put it. Heck, can’t even begin to attempt to come to agreement on those, hence the whole damned enterprise is doomed to fail as a matter of persuasion.
>the minutiae of Mississippi election law<
finding out which dems voted june 3 and june 24 ain't hard
You expect a racist looking to suppress black votes and take away food stamps to take the high road?
I think you just gave the game away. Not that you hadn’t already, but to borrow from Mitch Hedberg, “I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.”
I just re-read this comment and want to bump it with a link because it’s a lot more on-point than most of Dana’s recent commentary.
in the mail box
> We’re fast approaching historic mid-term elections – a day that will determine who controls the United States Senate. All the facts are clear – we can defeat the Democrats, but only if we keep up with them financially.
This means meeting (or exceeding) our fundraising goals this month.
But we could really use your help to get there.
We only have four days left until we hit our next major fundraising deadline.
Thankfully, Senator Rob Portman is generously offering to triple-match every donation made now until the end of June. It’s a great deal– for every dollar you donate, $4 go towards electing Republicans to the Senate.
Working together, we will build a conservative Senate that will put our country back on the right track!
Contribute $25, $50, or even $100 or more to help Republicans win this November!
Onward to Victory,
Senator Mitch McConnel<
okey dokey mitchy
Doing something about it after the fact in a secret-ballot election, however…
As even Dana has stipulated, those voters should not have been given a ballot for the Senate runoff. The constructive question is why were they given those ballots, and what can be done to the election officials who did it?
I think maybe thwarting their efforts to steal the nomination by refusing to vote for their guy in November, might be a start.
. . . the right track!
Such sweet [empty] sentiment.
we need more mercowsky now! write in !!11!! 2014
but but ubaldo?
but but ubaldo?
Didn’t make Ken Harrelson cry: that was Ken’s own guy uncorking a wp.
>Doing something about it after the fact in a secret-ballot election<
it doesn't matter who they voted for. those votes are illegal. if there are 7000 illegal votes new run off election.
indeed the walking around money suggests “professional demonrats”
Dana —
Answer this one question: if it meant the GOP took control of the Senate, would you let Haley Barbour bang you in the ass? If not, why not?
Don’t you know “illegal” is a raaaaacist word???
If the officials who allowed those 7000 illegal votes to be cast aren’t removed from their posts before the re-vote, nothing changes.
it might be fun to call in the un about “free and fair elections” in ms? i say no
>If the officials who allowed those 7000 illegal votes to be cast aren’t removed from their posts before the re-vote, nothing changes. <
go mercowsky!!11!!
the lisa has shown the way
Where did Dana go?
And his avatar? Is that Edward Longshanks?
>“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” – George Orwell<
hi dana
Longshanks was all about taking away the Scots’ freedom. Mel Gibson told me so.
go along to get along dana
>What I’ll actually do is point out that that would be against the law. There might be some way in which the whole run-off election could be tossed out, and a new one held, but under the law, anyone who had not voted in the Democratic primary could vote in the new run-off.<
so let us remove those illegal voters from the june 23 primary. oh dear rule of law shit.
Dana is a good pickle y’all don’t have to be so mean sometimes people just have different ways of thinkin bout stuff
my way of thinkin bout all this is
it’s just corruption plain and simple
like what happened with the perverted supreme whore court
and with all the government agencies
and with the public school and the piggy piggy cops
America is a deeply corrupt nation.
Deeply. Corrupt.
and now we have proof 100% positive the Republican Party is as corrupt as any of them
it’s very sad but what’s a lil pikachu to do?
But anyways Dana = good pickle
>But anyways Dana = good pickle<
not kosher says the agnostic
What are pickles good for?
Biting in half.
The base has already demonstrated that they will not turn out for lousy R candidates who look too much like Democrats. It will be even worse for those types this time as even more of us are done with that than ever.
The GOP boosters are using a play book that is long out of date.
Mississippi Tea Party Finds At Least 800 Illegal Votes (so far) In Hinds County Alone… McDaniels Tells Sean Hannity More Than 1,000 illegal votes found in first day of review…
The GOP boosters are using a playbook written for them by Democrats.
the dana likes the slow boat to tyranny. probably on a nro cruise .
the lisa mercowsky has set the precedent. don’t like the results go write in. play by gop rules.
let us do do write ins : oh-8 boner, ky mcconnell and ms cochran
attack the beast
Honestly, Dana reminds me of my father, who not only cannot fathom why conservatives stayed home in 2012, but cannot accept that their decision to do so is entirely Romney’s fault for failing to persuade them to the polls.
It’s made for some awkward political conversations.
What I’m driving at is that the good pickle’s different way of thinking is distinctly pre-Obama.
Good pickles generally ensure a proper piccalilli.
They think they know but then they lie and believe their own lies. There a lot of betrayal coming in the years ahead. Expect it. For many, many it will come as a surprise in the dark of night.
burn in hell news
(Via Fire And Mitchell) How convenient. Connie Cochran, the sister-in-law of corrupt progressive Republican Thad Cochran just so happens to be on the MIssissppi election commision. Connie Cochran is from District 4 of Hinds County, which saw the biggest jump in black Democrat votes in favor of Cochran. Isn’t that amazing? (link)
Fernandez: What do you mean ‘we’, kemo sabe?
Even if Mush McConnell’s regime weren’t corrupt, Cochran personally is. But the fact he’d been in the Senate since 1972 could have told us that.
i wish ubaldo could throw a pitch as cleanly as fernandez
well, one’s a spaz and the other isn’t, so the contest is a bit lopsided.
Steely Dan – Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972) – Full Album
Did Dana answer my question about what they’d have to do to lose his loyalty?
Thought not.
Dana so fully, entirely, and completely misrepresents our motives and mindset that there’s little use arguing with him. He can’t let go of the idea that we’re just mad that things didn’t go our way, that we’re effing purists who refuse to take half a loaf instead of no loaf at all, and that our petty obsession with “principle” over results will keep us on the fringes forever.
That’s one of the worst interpretations of Jeff’s post — and every other conservative that is hopping mad over Establican treachery — that I have ever read. It’s as if it were 1993 again and all we had to do was make sure Newt had his majority so that we could shame Pantsless Clinton into welfare reform.
Here are some of Dana’s other erroneous assumptions:
1) He thinks our fury is over the fact we lost, not over the fact that the Establicans violated every principle of decency imaginable. We’re disappointed that Lindsay Graham won, for example, but we’re not “throwing a hissy fit” over that. Notice? When we lose fair and square, we react with disappointment, not righteous indignation.
IOW, we’re not pissed that we lost to “tougher players”; we’re pissed that the other team won by chloroforming the QB on the sly.
Principled people freak out over treachery, not over being beaten fair & square. Why don’t you know that?
2) Dana assumes that Cruz is powerless because he’s in the minority & hasn’t been there long. Dana doesn’t seem to understand that the fastest way to become “hated” or unpopular in DC is to not be a team player. Do you know what being a team player in DC means, Dana? It means being on the take. It means allowing yourself to be co-opted so that you won’t rat out the others who are gorging themselves at the public trough.
Cruz & Lee are hated because they are honest men in the presence of sycophantic crapweasels.
3) Dana doesn’t realize that principled people don’t take kindly to double standards. The Establicans were so loath to accept McDaniels as a colleage — EVEN THOUGH HE’S A PERFECTLY GOOD REPUBLICAN — that they suborned voter fraud to curb-stomp him. As others have enumerated, when Establicans lose a primary, they don’t gracefully accept defeat — they fight it.
Have you heard, Dana, that Hatch is going to move heaven and earth to get rid of Mike Lee? Why is that, do you suppose? Is Lee not voting properly? Why isn’t Hatch OK with Any Red Butt in that seat?
Perhaps you can explain why we’re enjoined by all the “pragmatists” to gracefully accept defeat, but they themselves do no such thing. Can you explain why we should be OK with that?
4) The worst of Dana’s assumptions is that winning back the Senate will thwart Obama’s agenda. Are you really that inattentive, Dana? Do you see the GOP attempting to derail Obama’s agenda even at a rhetorical level? Boehner has all kinds of arrows in his quivver to push back against Obama’s lawlessness, but instead of using even one — or merely threatening to — he concocts this bullshit lawsuit.
I’ma repeat that Sean Trende observation that Pablo posted earlier, and I want Dana to read it VERY CAREFULLY:
Dana, would you mind explaining to me why you want more of this and worse? Is it OK with you that a goodly portion of us refuse to call this shit sandwich “half a loaf”?
You can certainly call the abolitionists “purists” given their uncompromising position, but they also happened to be 100% right. Sometimes you’re not dealing with half a loaf but half a BABY. Other times a compromise consists of building a bridge halfway across a river — each party got half of what it wanted but the result is worse than useless.
I really don’t understand people who cling to their normalcy bias like grim death. What gives with not being able to adapt to changing reality? Why can’t you see that the GOP doesn’t even TRY to move the country rightward anymore?
IT’S NOT 1993, YA FOOL! WAKE THE HELL UP!
Or get out of our way. Don’t make me no never mind.
Tuco’s rival, the man with no name, had a name. His name was Joe Monco.
Or “Joe” Monco, if you want to be scrupulous like that.
Even if Mush McConnell’s regime weren’t corrupt, Cochran personally is. But the fact he’d been in the Senate since 1972 could have told us that.
The salient contrasts in the character of the two — McDaniel and Cochran — i.e. one can speak in whole sentences, the other can’t; one has a healthy man’s energy, the other doesn’t; one can process new information, the other can’t; one has manifest principles, the other couldn’t spell principle, and so on endlessly, was damned near completely buried by the avalanche of bullshit pouring down from D.C.
Pity.
y’all don’t have to be so mean sometimes people just have different ways of thinkin bout stuff
It’s not that he thinks about stuff differently; it’s that he so completely misreads our position ON THIS BLOG.
No forgiveness for that. Sorry.
“dicentra says June 26, 2014 at 10:12 pm”
harrumph
The only salient contrast, sdferr, is that one is a Friend of Mitch and the other isn’t/
Steely Dan Dirty Work 1972
DANA!
WHY DID THE ENTIRE GOP ESTABLISHMENT GET BEHIND COCHRAN INSTEAD OF MCDANIELS? WHY DIDN’T AT LEAST SOME OF THEM SUPPORT A PERFECTLY GOOD REPUBLICAN FOR THAT SEAT?
Damned right I’m yelling. Dana took off and can’t hear me from wherever he went.
I suspect that one escaped just about nobody Ernst.
>WHY DID THE ENTIRE GOP ESTABLISHMENT<
there might be a problem there!!11!!
Cochran isn’t important in and of himself. His “friends” [R] & [D] don’t care about him at all. He is just a means to hang onto a Senate seat for the establishment [R] and a means to both have a debt callable when needed and driving a stake through their true enemy for the [D].
If Thad makes it through to win in the general then shortly after he will retire so another, younger, establishment [R] can be appointed to his seat. He is just the current placeholder and had to be defended against the outsider upstart BAMN so as to have the seat for the future establishment [R].
just living up my moniker sdferr.
Here, I’ll do it again:
BECAUSE!
All the more reason to vote for the Democrat then.
I’m not altogether prepared to characterize the good pickle’s utterances as the product of thought. To me, thought involves taking in information and examining it in the context of a broad understanding of relevant facts and carefully constructed principles.
Granted, this disqualifies 90% of what people (myself included) say, but everyone knows 90% of everything is crap.
Mr Goldstein asked:
I’m trying to stop getting sodomized by Harry Reid being Majority Leader, something which most of your commenters appear not to mind, since they’d rather have the Democrat win at this point.
Of course, the Democratic nominee, Representative Travis Childers, isn’t that bad a guy. Often called a “blue dog” Democrat, he’s about as conservative a Democrat as you’ll find in office. Of course, he voted for the abysmal stimulus program and for various welfare programs, but, hey! he voted against Obaminablecare!
So, how would he really be different from Senator Cochran, if he wins? Well, Mr Cochran would be a bit more conservative, but the big, big difference is the fact that Mr Childers will vote to keep Harry Reid setting the Senate agenda.
As for those who asked where I went, I went to bed early. It’s 4:41 on the East Coast now, and I’m back at work.
Way to dodge the question asked.
Color me shocked.
Except, y’know, NOT.
Dicentra, Senator Cochran has been in he Senate for a long, long time, and he’s made a lot of friends. Why are you surprised that his friends supported him?
Dicentra wrote:
Get out of your way? It seems to me that your way is losing! You lost concerning Matt Bevins and you lost concerning Chris McDaniel, and now your response is that you’re going to hold your breath until red states turn blue, thinking that’ll somehow teach the GOP a lesson.
Well, maybe it will, maybe it will, but by the time that lesson has been learned, we’ll have French-type socialism throughout our government, with no chance of recovery.
You want me to get out of the way of you losing? Brilliant, just plain brilliant.
“dicentra says June 26, 2014 at 10:12 pm”
Sometimes dicentra posts so I don’t have to.
Other parties continue to miss the point, of course.
Thanks for the kind words, McGehee: as a mostly-quiet long-time lurker, I think that means a lot, coming from you.
I think you and Dan unfortunately may be right that the votes cast may be water under the bridge. Even if we can prove that X number of runoff voters cast ballots illegally, we can only assume what was on those ballots, so we couldn’t just subtract that number from Cochran’s total.
But presumably we can have the results invalidated: otherwise, MS election law has a gaping hole that prevents prospective election fraud but is impotent in doing anything about it after the fact.
—
McGehee asks what can be done and writes, “I think maybe thwarting their efforts to steal the nomination by refusing to vote for their guy in November, might be a start.”
Dana points out that doing so might keep Harry Reid in power as Senate Majority Leader.
Thanks to the tactics of Cochran’s team, tactics that were arguably legal but definitely dishonorable, conservatives are now facing a genuine dilemma, a situation where both responses lead to bad outcomes.
1) If conservatives refuse to support Cochran (or actively oppose him, preferably with a write-in campaign for McDaniel), we risk the MS Senate seat being won by a Democrat, which may determine which party controls the Senate for the next two years.
2) BUT if conservatives bite the bullet and ensure Cochran’s victory, we are rewarding him for smearing our ideals as cruel and smearing us personally as racist.
Dana has yet to be completely frank about what it is Cochran did, and so I’m not going to hold my breath for him(?) to acknowledge the real costs of BOTH of these choices, and not just the choice he doesn’t like.
If we do not punish Cochran for these outrageous tactics, the establishment will use them again and again having learned that they’re effective and cost-free — or, at least, cost-free so long as they can argue that the other party is worse, which will remain true for the foreseeable future.
Dana’s looking at the short-term benefits of dragging Cochran’s corpse across the finish line — a better chance at a Senate majority — without acknowledging the long-term costs: conservatives would become literal enablers of the GOP’s slander of us and our cause, and the GOP would have yet another reason never to work effectively against the ratcheting of the Left’s radical statism.
Jeff’s question is exactly the right one to ask: if that cost isn’t too high for a GOP Senate majority, what cost is? At what point does it become morally permissible and an outright duty to punish the GOP for their treachery, IF NOT NOW?
“Dana,” not “Dan.”
Lawrence wrote:
I agree that there are costs involved in Senator Cochran’s tactics; there are costs involved with everything. Senator Cochran and his campaign staff thought that trolling for Democratic voters was their best chance for winning a runoff election that they thought they’d otherwise lose, and it looks like they were right about that. But, in the end, they did exactly what they set out to do: win the election.
Politics is not some genteel contest, not anymore. It’s a bitter, winner-takes-all street fight, and Senator Cochran won that street fight. State Senator McDaniel got into this race, knowing the rules — namely, that there really aren’t any — and then whined when he got hit in the mouth. If he thought that Mr Cochran was tough, just imagine what he’d have faced from Travis Childers and the Democrats if he had won. The Democrats would have poured money into Missisippi, seeing an opportunity.
Of course, if Republicans don’t close ranks now, behind Senator Cochran, they might do that anyway.
Republicans are welcome to support their putative savior Thad Cochran. Why on earth would non-Republicans be so obliged?
At what point does it become morally permissible and an outright duty to punish the GOP for their treachery, IF NOT NOW?
I feel no duty or obligation to punish the GOP. That’s the GOP’s business, if I may make the facile metaphor of a family tending to its own internal discipline. That the GOP chooses to starkly alienate some great portion of its own former supporters isn’t my choice, and hence not my business to see to.
I have other interests. Namely, altering the political status quo ante in the nation, a status quo ante in which the Republicans are burdened with a significant causal role. Choices, they’ve made ’em. And isn’t it interesting that in a “winner-takes-all” game, the Republicans are faced with their choices having got themselves a serious possibility of an impending loss? But surely not, for the Republicans, we are told, are wise.
Dana, Cochran’s team didn’t just troll for Democrat voters, they did so by betraying his own party’s base and stated beliefs, by smearing the former as racists and smearing the latter as cruel.
THAT is what you haven’t acknowledge, even with your latest comment.
And you don’t even paint both sides with the same brush of playing hardball.
Cochran’s side did what it thought necessary to win, and you describe them as ably winning a “a bitter, winner-takes-all street fight.” By contesting the results, Cochran’s side is ALSO doing what it thinks necessary to win, but you sneer about how they’re “whining” about being punched in the mouth.
And now you speculate that a McDaniel win would have attracted more Dem money to Mississippi, the logic of your argument being that GOP voters should NEVER challenge an incumbent Republican, lest our opponents “see an opportunity.”
Tell us again how you would have preferred McDaniel, how you “wish that Mr McDaniel had won the primary.”
sdferr, I see your point, and there are two ways to frame the situation. Either the GOP really is the appropriate vehicle for advancing the principles of constitutional conservatism, or it isn’t. In the former view, conservatives ought to punish the GOP leadership for their treacherous behavior; in the latter view, we ought to abandon a party that has abandoned us.
Either way, there’s no real argument that conservatives in MS ought to pull the lever for Cochran — and if McDaniel runs a write-in campaign, I think the issue ought to be nationalized, by demanding supposedly conservative politicians and pundits to support that campaign, lest we conclude (quite rationally) that they don’t draw the line at campaigns that depend upon statist race-baiting.
I don’t hear him whining. I see him winding up to throw more blows. You’ll note that the game ain’t over yet.
And food stamps. Don’t forget the food stamps.
sdferr, I see your point, and there are two ways to frame the situation. Either the GOP really is the appropriate vehicle for advancing the principles of constitutional conservatism, or it isn’t. In the former view, conservatives ought to punish the GOP leadership for their treacherous behavior; in the latter view, we ought to abandon a party that has abandoned us.
This strikes me as a reasonable presentation of the choice individuals must face. How individuals identify themselves will necessarily enter in there.
As to the question raised whether the Republican party has ‘abandoned’ us, it seems to me that this characterization doesn’t quite capture the act in its fullness. But I think need only allude to the implications.
Over time I have presented views here which firmly place me in the camp regarding the GOP as no party for myself. So I will seek a new party in an act of independence as I understand that term, which both articulates the political principles I find worthy of support as well as faithfully adheres to those once declared. In the muddling interim which necessarily proceeds, it is possible to identify individual candidates who exhibit some portion of the contours of those principles I seek, and so may find possible to support on an ad hoc, if sketchy, basis.
Evenso, on the whole, I cannot fail to notice the self-destructive trend in the general behavior of the GOP, and do not doubt that many others notice much the same. Perhaps we ought not proclaim a doom upon such a creature, but equally, we ought not believe a rosy future for it either.
C’mon, protein people!
Hop aboard the GOP’s big pontoon boat and let Romney McCain skipper you to the Promised Pond!!
It’ll be *burble*
When the PARTY hammers you with a shillelagh, to then remain in the PARTY is to take the shillelagh from the PARTY’S hands and hammer yourself. Steadfastness is all.
For those who thought that Senator Cochran should have just withdrawn after state Senator McDaniel came in first, but with not quite 50%, in the first round of the primary, I’d point out that David Dewhurst came in first in he first round of the 2012 Republican primary in Texas, by a wide margin. Should Ted Cruz have dropped out then?
Oh, on a side note.
Sorry, anglers.
No fishing.
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
We havin’ fun yet?
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
Ahhhhhhh, that’s better!
Maybe this should have been on this thread.
Definitely, Pablo: I was using “statist” as extreme shorthand for invoking food stamps and pork and unconstitutional federal funding and the rest.
Sdferr, one could make a comparison between the uneasy situation of political conservatives in the GOP and a similar situation that theological conservatives face in increasingly heretical mainline denominations, to which I (thankfully) have never belonged.
There are huge differences, of course — there should not be as much compromise in church denominations as in a large political party, and there doesn’t need to be in our free society — but the GOP leadership reminds me A LOT of the radical and even heretical leadership that’s trying to hijack Christian churches. In both cases, they’re subverting the organization against the sometimes vocal opposition of the rank-and-file, not only acting against its traditional beliefs but often reshaping the bureaucracy to hinder opposition.
At least at the moment, the GOP’s official platform is actually pretty conservative, and as long as that’s the case, conservatives can argue that we oppose a treacherous leadership on behalf of the party’s stated beliefs. We can, in good faith, contest that leadership and try to wrest from it party control.
In the meantime, we can also be frank in balking at Erick Erickson’s naive notion that we ought to fight for the conservative in the primary but support whoever secures the nomination: if it’s clear that the nominee isn’t actually committed to the GOP platform viz. the Constitution and the rule of law (immigration), then the nominee has gone rogue, and the base has both the right AND the obligation to oppose that nominee for the sake of the platform.
If the fight for the GOP is too uphill even with having the stated platform on our side, then we should bite the bullet in terms of organization and short-term losses and form a third party, but even then we can point to that platform as principles to which the GOP claims allegiance: the third party would be the honest constitutionalists, versus the honest statist Democrats and the dishonest statist Republicans.
The modern GOP!: Doin’ the Job on Americans the ClownDisaster is too Lazy to Do.
They should probably name this the Cochran-Cantor-Reasonable-Commonsense-Politics amendment.
Ahnope, fish ain’t biting today.
On the plus side, we can all go skating when Pond freezes over.
Dana wrote:
For those who thought that Senator Cochran should have just withdrawn after state Senator McDaniel came in first, but with not quite 50%, in the first round of the primary, I’d point out that David Dewhurst came in first in he first round of the 2012 Republican primary in Texas, by a wide margin. Should Ted Cruz have dropped out then?
Funny, I don’t remember Dewhursts campaign trolling for Democrat votes and basically calling Cruz and his supporters racists. Also, their were 4 other candidates swimming in that Texas primary pool.
Why won’t you answer Dicentras very eloquent take down of your position?
Taylor Boody tracker action — Bach, P&F in G, BWV 550
Schubert in Yokohama
In the meantime:
More at the link.
An obvious question is: is it possible that Mr Mayfield’s actions cost Mr McDaniel some votes?
If Senator Cochran’s actions weren’t as pure as the wind-driven snow, perhaps not everything that was done for Mr McDaniel escaped the gutter as well.
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
It just feels so good!
If only “the McDaniel campaign knew about the video when it came out, and sent out a wide call to aides and volunteers to find the person who posted it and get them to take it down.”
Oh, that’s right, it did, and yet there’s no comparable denunciation from Cochran’s campaign and supporters for the race-baiting and the smears about food stamps.
Funny how you’re trying to put the worst possible spin on McDaniel’s campaign, Dana.
Tell us again how you wish Mr McDaniel had won.
In the meantime, NOBODY is insisting on tactics that are “pure as the wind-driven snow.”
What we’re objecting to is betraying the party’s base and beliefs, by smearing the former as racists and smearing the latter as cruel.
For fuck’s sake, drop the talking points and try dealing with our actual complaints.
even america’s failshit Red Cross is corrupt
you can be charged with a conspiracy to photograph someone without their permission?
seriously?
fuck me
you americans are just too precious
Dana,
McDaniel had more votes in the runoff than he did in the primary. So much for the theory that some TP operative killed himself. Hey, maybe it was another Vince Foster for that matter.
That aside, enough strawmen. Please answer the questions asked of you.
This is the problem with the TEAM! mindset. Sure, unlike Harry Reid, McConnell will wear a condom. And use plenty of lube. And if you’re a good team player, he might even give you a reach around.
But he’s going to buy you breakfast in the morning with your money.
And you’re still getting assfucked.
But if it makes you feel better, go ahead and keep telling yourself that there’s no alternative to taking it in the ass.
If Cochran had won the runoff without appealing for Democrat votes and slandering conservatives, I wouldn’t like the outcome but I’d have an excuse for telling myself it was legitimate.
And no, Dana, not everything legal is legitimate. If we didn’t have people trying to make them correspond perfectly we wouldn’t have other people — including good pickles — getting them mixed up.
Dana —
I asked you a direct question and you dodged it. If it means taking back the senate, would you let Haley Barbour bang you in the ass? If not, why not?
Sodomized is sodomized. In fact I imagine getting ass-fucked by someone who claims to be your friend, and expects you to thank him for it, is probably worse.
*pwloop*
Ick.
Not even with zono’s dick.
Lawrence wrote:
Your “actual complaints” are nothing more than state Senator McDaniel lost. It doesn’t matter how much you think it wasn’t right, that Senator Cochran appealed to crossover Democratic voters, that Mr McDaniel should have won in the first round, that Senator Cochran should have been a gentleman and just quit after the first round, the only thing that matters is that he won, and there’s nothing that you can do to change that.
Our esteemed host wrote:
Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Mr Goldstein, I’m not stupid enough to fall for stupid questions, and you ought to know it by now.
But, then again, since you think it’s somehow an appropriate question, if there was a judge who told you that he’d overturn this election and give it to Mr McDaniel, if only you’d let him sodomize you — and he’d promise to wear a rubber! — would you let him? If you think that’s a stupid question, well it’s no dumber than yours.
“Bach, P&F in G, BWV 550”
It’s got a good beat and you can swim to it.
I give it a ninety-burble.
Say, Dana is very wise, and because very wise chooses to beat himself with the PARTY’S club. No one will have the moral standing to intervene in this matter, I think, but must leave it to his volition.
Dodging the question YET AGAIN.
Color me surprised.
Except, y’know, NOT
Nope, no troll here, he’s an honest-to-goodness Moby.
Dana:
In presuming to tell us that we’re lying (or deluding ourselves) about why we’re outraged, you’re STILL not able to repeat our stated complaints. It wasn’t just that “Senator Cochran appealed to crossover Democratic voters,” it’s that he did so in a primary, in an evidently successful attempt to overwhelm the party’s actual base, and he did so BY SMEARING THE PARTY’S BASE AND ITS STATED BELIEFS.
You can’t defend that, and you’re doing everything you can to avoid having to try.
By the way, that fishing pole you carry in your avatar is unhelpful.
Of course Dana would let Haley Barbour bang him in the ass. And that’s because he can’t –or won’t– imagine an alternative where he doesn’t get banged in the ass.
And that brings up Lawrence’s point above:
Dana will tell you that it’s better to be ass-banged by a friend than a foe. Well, I don’t want to be ass-banged. Ass-bangery is not the act of a friend. So it seems to me it’s better to assert the dignity inherent to one’s integrity by opposing your would be ass-banger than it is to acqueisce to ass-banging by pretending that your friend is still your friend in the uncertain hope that his violation of both your dignity and integrity is likely to be less rapey overall than what your foe has in mind.
Finally, it’s become increasingly obvious since ’06 that Establicans like rape almost as much as Democrats.
So much for basic html skills too. But that’s not the point right now.
The point is how you get there matters.
Seems like I’ve heard that before.
A little “I won” goes a long way toward healing the wounds of a [bamn] political contest, don’t you think?
Views from elsewhere.
I may not be able to change the primary result, but that doesn’t mean I have to acquiesce to the outcome. I get to repudiate the result of the primary come general election time. I could vote for the honest Democrat instead of the dishonest democrat who won the Republican primary by calling on Democrats to vote for him as the more acceptable (to Democrats) Republican nominee. I could write in McDaniels. I could vote third party. I could stay home and drink twelve year old scotch and smoke cigars all day instead of voting.
And whatever I decide to do, I can sleep contentedly, secure in the knowledge that how I vote (or don’t vote) will be Thad Cochrane’s fault for failing to persuade me to vote for him.
Of course, I’d first have to move to Mississippi….
Herr Schreiber wrote:
Well, there is that alternative! And who knows? Maybe the judge will accept your “he needed killin'” defense, it being Mississippi and all, but, if he doesn’t, perhaps you’ll console yourself with the knowledge that the ass-banging — this apparently being the term de jour on Protein Wisdom — you’re taking in prison was for the good of the country!
It’s not clear to me whether that means we agree that how you get there matters, or if you’re still on a winning is the only thing that matters kick.
Well, I don’t want to be ass-banged. Ass-bangery is not the act of a friend.
I see you’ve been talking to my gf…
<glances in, shrugs, moves on>
Stomped, people.
Deal.
Dana, at what point does the GOP lose your loyalty?
Dicentra, Senator Cochran has been in he Senate for a long, long time, and he’s made a lot of friends. Why are you surprised that his friends supported him?
And here you further reveal yourself as a dishonest participant in this conversation. You know damned good and well that mere “friendship” doesn’t happen inside the Beltway. All DC relationships are fraught with favoritism and cronyism and mutual backscratching. They don’t merely “like” him; they know he plays ball, which is to say he won’t attempt to reform DC, nor will he rat out their corruption and in fact will fully participate in it.
Given that Orrin Hatch has decided to take out Mike Lee BAMN in favor of someone as-yet unknown, please explain where “friendship” comes into play here and why a perfectly good Republican such as Mike Lee needs to be bounced out of the Senate by the entrenched Orrin Hatch, Karl Rove, et al.
You’ve utterly and completely fail to acknowledge how deep and festering is the corruption in the system, which means that you’re not terribly troubled by it, nor do you see it as a clear and present danger to the Republic.
You’re a lawyer?
Boy, that profession warps a lot of minds. Or it attracts the warp-minded.
Either way, amoral commentary such as yours has done a fair job of hollowing out the foundation of the Republic.
It’s not clear to me whether that means we agree that ‘how you get there matters,’ or if you’re still on a ‘winning is the only thing that matters’ kick.
As we’ve experienced before on this blog, lawyers are maddeningly inflexible in their thinking when it comes to absorbing the PW PoV.
Care for a sports metaphor? We used to root for Team Red until we noticed that their “fumbles” were actually hand-offs to the other team, that they would stand 20 yards away from the end zone and run out the clock instead of trying to score, that instead of sacking Team Blue’s QB, they’d high-five him when he completed a pass, and that they were tackling the lone Red jersey who made for the end zone with the ball.
Why the hell are you still in the stands with that red foam finger?
“As we’ve experienced before on this blog, lawyers are maddeningly inflexible in their thinking when it comes to absorbing the PW PoV.”
Not all of us.
Whig vs. #OUTLAW – The Current Battle
There’s been quite the discussion going on in the Comments section of a post published by Jeff Goldstein on Thursday on the ‘vitory’ of Thad Cochran in the Run-Off Primary held this past Tuesday in Mississippi. Dana Pico, a frequent c…
“Your “actual complaints” are nothing more than state Senator McDaniel lost. ”
No they aren’t. You even used scare quotes in your “clarification”. You say it doesn’t matter, but obviously it does or you would not be focusing on everything BUT what the complaints are about.
If Dana bothered to read for comprehension he’d know it isn’t true — so either he’s a dishonest interlocutor because he’s not reading, or he’s a dishonest interlocutor because he is reading, but arguing as if he isn’t.
Fairly routine Stab debating tactic.
A common rhetorical we hear is, “Look at [large city] that’s been run by Democrats for decades, look at the poor who keep voting Democrat. Why do they vote D cycle after cycle when nothing changes?”
We’re told we need to vote for Team R, even if the current Chosen One is a certified Establican, one of Our Betters, because to do anything is nothing other than wanting the Team D player to win. Well, we’ve been voting for Team R for a few less decades now than the people in [large city]. I like to think we’re quicker learners.
Nothing’s changing. It’s getting worse. I refuse to help perpetuate the cycle, Dana. And no amount of cheerleading, guilt-tripping, or chicanery from you or your Establican friends will convice me otherwise. No more. No farther. Not one dime. Not one vote. Not from me.
…because to do anything *else*…
Vote Cthulhu. Why vote for the lesser of two evils?
I will give $1000 to the first candidate to make their official campaign motto, “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn”
Heh.
I wouldn’t let McDaniels bang me in the ass to get the seat, no. But then, he didn’t try to bang me in the ass in the first place.
So your rejoinder is not analogous, and your answer is implied: pants down, face kissing the sacred ground upon which Mr Barbour skidded over to line you up for the money shot.
Congrats.
If Harry Reid gets to control the Senate because the GOP establishment decided to call the very conservatives and TEA Partiers who gave the House power in 2010 racists who support a dangerous, constitutionalist position, they have no one to blame but themselves if the people they ran against — and who represent the real will of MS REPUBLICANS in the REPUBLICAN PRIMARY — don’t vote for them when it matters.
You call it savvy politics. Well, that only works if we comply. And a lot of us won’t. Not anymore, and especially not after what happened in Mississippi.
I’m not a battered wife. You might accept a good beating if at the end of the day hubby brings home some food, but me, I’m an autonomous actor.
You’ve dodged every question and refused to accept what everyone here has told you: the problem isn’t that McDaniel lost (and we’ll see if even that is the case); the problem is with what it took to defeat him, which was to call McDaniel supporters racists looking to suppress the black vote and kick all the darkies off their food stamps.
That’s revolting. That you’re here defending it is revolting. And by the transitive property of equality, that makes YOU revolting.
I’d spit on you, but I don’t really want to waste the phlegm.
BINGO!
Yet, from the distant horizon we still hear:
* Bonk * * Bonk * * Bonk *
* Bonk * * Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk * * Bonk * * Bonk * * Bonk *
They lurvs their beatins, yes they does.
Why vote for the lesser of two evils?
As the saying goes, “When you vote for the lesser of two evils, you are guaranteed to not only get evil, but also less.”
Me? I want more from our employee-representatives than “losing more slowly”.
If you’re interested:
Dana made an appearance in my Comments section…
http://thecampofthesaints.org/2014/06/27/whig-vs-outlaw-the-current-battle/#comment-99377
And I responded here:
http://thecampofthesaints.org/2014/06/27/whig-vs-outlaw-the-current-battle/#comment-99413
‘Suffer Not Yourselves To Be Betrayed With A Kiss’
Time and time again, we have sought a peaceful, but forceful, redress of our grievances, but have been rebuffed without the decency of a respectful hearing [or, often, any hearing] by the Left In America — this was not unexpected, as they are Ideologue…
Our esteemed host wrote:
Aren’t you, therefore, encouraging Mississippi Republicans to beak the law? Drumwaster, among others, cited the law:
When you (plural) complain that not all of the additional voters will obey that law, and vote for Senator Cochran in November, you are also saying, inter alia, that all of those Republicans who went to the pols to vote for state Senator McDaniel are obligated, by their choice to participate in the primary, to vote for Senator Cochran in November.
Of course, most of the participants here aren’t Mississippi voters . . .
Dana, the larger point I believe you may be missing is that if the laws are being broken by the very persons who are supposed to be in charge of enforcement, what is to compel the people to follow the same laws?
I’m of the mind that this is by design rather than happenstance.
It is a fine characteristic of the establishment GOP to know well how to beak the law, dipping their probosces continually in the flowing stream of public transactions and moneys for to enlarge their private purposes. Former Gov. Barbour, for instance, leaps to mind as such a one in laying down a ‘pardon’ chit on which he has now collected.
It does not seem, on the other hand, as to breaking the law, that Jeff’s argument (in contrast to Drumwaster) attaches to a merely hortatory (short version: “Be honest, voters! We trust you!”), decidedly toothless law, apparently aimed at establishing a kind of ethical yardstick for the conduct of primary voting — though in the breach Sen. Cochran and his allies reveal something of themselves when they actively chose to spurn the direction of that law, doing so openly, and even, in the aftermath, triumphantly (short version: “We’re dishonest! Trust us!”).
Mississippians, we have to reckon, have evidently always been able to disregard the admonitions of that law without fear of punishment or correction for the doing of it, and who knows, may have done so in the past (though no comparable outstanding examples of the current phenomenon have been elicited to date that I’ve seen).
Isn’t it a peach that the law would, under the clubster’s interpretation, command an honest support of creatures revealed by their own hands to be dishonest and unworthy of support? Ah well, bad laws are written now and then: hence the need for a change in political actors on occasion, who can identify bad law and work to make the necessary corrections.
Say, why not make a campaign clubster? Call it the “Write no Hortatory Law” campaign.
Has Dana been this silly for the last couple of days, or is his descent into inanity just now on final approach?
Inquiring minds would be only mildly inconvenienced by knowing.
It’s amazing that Dana seems to be requiring the Republicans to obey the law, but gives the Democrats who pushed his favored Stab candidate across the finish line a pass on that same law, almost as though he were an outright hypocrite on the issue, just so long as the guy with an ‘R’ after his name wins. (Unless it’s one of those racist, hateful, take-away-food-stamps-from-the-darkies Teabagger types, of course…)
Which reminds me, how does Dana sync that attitude with what the Stabs are doing to the winning candidate in VA-07 (draining the capital resources from his coffers, almost as though they want him to lose)? Oh, wait, that’s right, it’s a Teabagger that won, so fuck him, right, Dumbna?
Get thee behind me Libertarian favorite!
Thad now owes some people big debts, Henry Barbour expects his appointment to that seat soon. And others are awaiting their pounds of sagging drool covered flesh too.
It’s in situations like this, McGehee, that one’s true nature often comes to the fore.
DREAM TEAM: The Leaders of the Second American Revolution
Let’s see…
Cochran called the McDaniel and the majority of Republican voters in Mississippi racist, knuckledraggers in order to win the primary.
Dana thinks we’re pissed because Cochran won.
Dana thinks we should just take the beating from hubby and keep making him breakfast because after all, we shouldn’t have made him mad at us. Its our fault really, after all.
So Dana thinks because its our fault that we’re all racisty, racists and that we love a good cross burnin’ that we should simply show up to vote for the GOP candidate… who joined with our political enemies to slander us in order to be on the ballot -> all so we could continue to put makeup to conceal our black eyes and make him breakfast. After all, we wouldn’t want the neighbors to know that our life isn’t idyllic.
That about sums up his position, folks.
[q]Yet, from the distant horizon we still hear:
* Bonk * * Bonk * * Bonk *
* Bonk * * Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk *
* Bonk * * Bonk * * Bonk * * Bonk *
They lurvs their beatins, yes they does.[/q]
You literally had me snorting beer out of my nose just now.