That Ole Brat Magic Just Failed To Materialize In Mississippi Last Night-- Or Maybe It Was Defeated By Some Ole Black Magic

Karma's a bitch, y'all

Stunning upset last night as Thad Cochran's team managed to inspire enough African American Democrats to come to the polls to defeat bigoted teabagger Chris McDaniel by just over 6,000 votes. Turnout for the runoff was higher than it was in the primary last month-- around 10% higher and almost all the increase was in African-American precincts. I wonder if anyone will ever explain to Cochran what happened and why. If they do, there's always a chance he feels a sense of obligation to moderate his positions the way Lisa Murkowsky did after the Tea Party humiliated her by getting walking freak show Joe Miller the Alaska GOP nomination. She came back and beat him as a write-in candidate with some Democratic help and has been way more moderate ever since, often helping Democrats with tough votes in the Senate. I doubt Cochran will do much of that, but someone could make the argument to him... if he's sentient at all.

When PPP polled Mississippi in 2011, Cochran had a 74/14 approval with Republicans, very similar to Lisa Murkowsky's and Mike Castle's before they were smeared to the gills by deranged teabaggers and defeated in GOP primaries. In any case, Republicans squandered something like $17 million in a primary in Mississippi between two right-wing extremists as far from the mainstream as a politician can possibly get. There are probably no votes where it would matter if Chris McDaniel or Thad Cochran was Mississippi's senator.

Alexander Burns predicted in Politico yesterday that the Senate runoff, which "has torn open long-developing divisions within the GOP power structure," was only the beginning on a bloody civil war inside the Mississippi Republican Party.

The six-term senator and his allies, led by former Gov. Haley Barbour and an army of entrenched figures in Washington and the state capital, have maintained a tight grip on political power in Mississippi since it became a Republican state in the first place.

McDaniel’s campaign has challenged that edifice of party orthodoxy. A confrontational conservative who made a name for himself as a sharp-elbowed member of the Legislature, McDaniel has been surrounded in his race by a throng of ideological fellow travelers in the state Senate. They ride on his campaign bus and speak at his rallies. Like McDaniel, they have campaigned against the establishment in Jackson and enjoy support of the tea party-- and they may set their sights on higher office as early as next year.

Win or lose this week, conservatives here predict that Mississippi’s state elections in 2015 will bring another reckoning for the party. The reality that McDaniel has come so close to unseating Cochran may herald a larger-scale shift in culture for a state where seniority has long been king.

Burns, a senior Beltway reporter, should know better than to refer to McDaniel and his coterie of sociopaths as "conservatives." Cochran is a conservative by any plausible definition. If they differ on policy, McDaniel is far to the right of him. Out of a possible score of 100, ProgressivePunch has Cochran's lifetime crucial vote score at 3.63. It would be more accurate to refer to McDaniel and his followers as "reactionaries" or, more controversially, as "fascists," or-- if one wanted to be less provocative-- neo-fascists or proto-fascists. If this whole kerfuffle is really even about ideology. Isn't it more about personal ambition and the ugly identity politics of the far right of the spectrum?

The ruptures within the Mississippi GOP are as cultural as they are ideological; they have as much to do with tone and temperament as they do with substantive divisions over policy. McDaniel has attacked his opponents-- and the Barbours specifically-- for representing Mississippians who are “relatively wealthy or elite in status,” while losing touch with the priorities of voters in places like his Jones County home.

McDaniel’s campaign manager is a fellow member of the conservative caucus, state Sen. Melanie Sojourner; several other legislators have traveled with McDaniel on his campaign bus, including Watson, Smith and state Sen. Angela Hill. On the night of the June 3 primary election, Watson addressed McDaniel’s victory rally and hailed the candidate as a leader who will “stand up to guys like Haley Barbour.”

And McDaniel’s voters are openly incensed at the candidate’s treatment at the hands of party leaders. Madison retiree Bobbie Jean Mullins, a former county bookkeeper who supports McDaniel, described the Cochran-backing Bryant as a “very good Christian man, but I would have appreciated him more had he said, ‘May the best man win,’ instead of coming out for Thad Cochran.”

As for Haley Barbour, Mullins said: “I’d like to kick his tail.”

…Republican National Committeeman Henry Barbour, who has faced tea party criticism for heading up a pro-Cochran super PAC, said he doesn’t see the in-state support for an insurrection in 2015. “If somebody wants to take on somebody in a state race, they’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. They’re going to have to raise the money,” said Barbour, the former governor’s nephew. “I don’t know that any of [McDaniel’s allies] have demonstrated an ability to do that.”

Those could have been Eric Cantor's last words too.

Before the votes were tallied yesterday, Alexandra Jaffe was threatened with teeth extraction if she didn't write an article for The Hill that began with "If Chris McDaniel on Tuesday knocks off Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), national Democrats will have a rare offensive opportunity in the Deep South." That's incorrect. Yes, it was nasty and divisive and, yes, there are wounds. But wound a state that rarely lets Democrats break into the 40s in statewide races going to vote for a sleazy Blue Dog? "If Cochran is ousted," she wrote, "as multiple polls predict, national Republicans will also be in a tough spot and forced to decide whether they’ll embrace a controversial nominee they’ve spent months trashing." That's conventional wisdom at its worst. I'm sure members of the Barbour family would possibly have refused to vote for McDaniel, but most Mississippi voters would have no problem embracing him and his extremism whatsoever. Presumably Childers won't even try too hard now. At least the DSCC won't flush a bunch of money down the toilet there.

Even wronger: "'If Chris McDaniel is able to win, he will breathe life into several more primaries coming up,' said David Bossie, president of Citizens United. His group backed McDaniel, but now it’s eyeing upcoming Senate primaries in Tennessee and Kansas with a new hope against other longtime incumbents." We'll never know what might have been but the last public polling in Tennessee showed Lamar Alexander beating teabagger Joe Carr 47-7% and the last public polling in Kansas had Pat Roberts up over teababgger Milton Wolf 49-23%.

Caveat: McDaniel hasn't conceded and will demand a recount and will continue whining about African-Americans voting in the White Party Primary. This could still get pretty ugly with lawsuits and investigations and recriminations. What a shame! And there's already moaning from the Palin wing of the GOP about a third party. Yes, what a shame!