Thad Cochran Enshrined In The G.O.P. Hall Of Shame

Even though the Republican party owes much their recent electoral success to the T.E.A. Party and other conservative groups—giving them control of the House of Representatives since 2010—they have decided that they no longer need or want them to be a part of moving America forward, going as far as to essentially declare war against them. These RINO WIMPS (Republicans In Name Only who are Washington Insiders Masquarading as Public Servants) have made it known that there will be no room for principled politicians in Washington, particularly when they upset the apple cart of the Republican establishment.

It should be noted here: we aren’t talking about a simple difference of methodology between incumbents and a few upstarts. If a member of the insider’s club believes he or she is the man or woman for the job, it’s obviously right to run for office, just as a T.E.A. Party member or other conservative has the same right. But when the party leadership decides that they should pick the winners and losers, instead of letting the voters do that, we are no longer looking at free and fair elections. Instead, we are talking about an attitude of entitlement and arrogance from the party powerful that serves only to protect their self-interests at the expense of the country.

Enter Thad Cochran, who has been in Washington since 1972—an argument for term limits if there ever was one. After failing to beat Chris McDaniel—but getting close enough to trigger a runoff—in the Republican primary three weeks ago, Cochran abandoned his principles to save his job. Already enjoying the support of the godfather of the Republican party in Mississippi, Haley Barbour—who has no problem using mafia-styled politics such as his attempt to label McDaniel a racist—the rest of the establishment machine rode in like the calvary to rescue his fledgling campaign, including:

• Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg (wants to see the Constitution changed to kill the 2nd Amendment)
• Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign manager Stuart Stevens (Romney is actively fighting the “wild right” as he likes to call them)
• Chamber of Commerce (support amnesty for illegals and blame conservatives for holding it up)
• Karl Rove’s American Crossroads (Crossroads is expressly at war with the T.E.A. Party)
• Former Rep. Steven LaTourette’s group (Main Street Partnership – a group dedicated to defeating “extreme right” candidates and electing members of both parties to fill “the middle”)
• Sen. John McCain (Hall of Shame member who has attacked Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee from the Senate floor and once referred to conservatives as “Tea Party Hobbits“)
• Sen. Mitch McConnell (Hall of Shame member who has pledged to “crush” groups who oppose the establishment)

Of course, McDaniel had outside support as well, so the problem isn’t with Cochran’s contributors, it’s what they stand for and the lengths they were willing to go to win. And it’s this last point that sealed the deal for Cochran’s enshrinement. If the establishment were able to win it for Cochran by switching Republican votes that had previously voted for McDaniel, that would be an acceptable outcome—discouraging, but acceptable.

With the numbers against them, Cochran and Co. resorted to nefarious tactics to win the REPUBLICAN primary. They would “expand the electorate” by buying votes from black Democrats and union members. And it worked for him – sort of. It worked in the sense that Cochran got 35,000 crossover votes in a race he won by 6,400, but it meant that the candidate who received the majority of Republican votes . . . lost the Republican primary. As we see in this commentary from The Hayride, this could come at great price:

Cochran was able to effectively steal the race away from the wishes of a majority of Mississippi’s Republicans. The question is whether he’ll escape punishment from them in November, when a Democrat challenger in the name of former congressman Travis Childers awaits. He’s going to have to turn out a whole lot of McDaniel voters, which is going to depend on McDaniel’s endorsement of him.

The Hayride had more to say in a second commentary:

Buying Democrat votes to thwart the will of Republicans in a Republican primary gets you, at best, a Pyrrhic victory. Some 49 percent of the GOP primary vote, which is a majority of the actual Republican vote, is now alienated from the Republican nominee. The Republican Party in Mississippi is now broken as a result, and Thad Cochran, Haley Barbour and the rest of the whiskey-swilling good ol’ boy set broke it.

For being just another corrupt, reprehensible Washington insider who refuses to live by the principles he claimed to possess; for stealing an election by getting Democrats to vote in a Republican primary; for buying the votes of minorities with food stamps and “walking around money” ; and for resorting to Haley Barbour’s mafia-styled politics by smearing Tea Partiers as racists, we enshrine our latest inductee in to the Gutless On Principle Hall of Shame . . . Senator Thad Cochran.

 

Disclaimer: The Republican party establishment does not necessarily agree with our choice for the G.O.P. Hall of Shame award. My opinions are my own, and I’ve got lots of them. All opinions expressed are 100% “right” and any similarity to actual opinions, living or dead, is purely coincidental.