Mississippi GOP Refuses to Hear Chris McDaniel’s Challenge Monday, Tea Party-backed Mississippi U.S. Senate candidate Chris McDaniel filed a formal challenge to the June 24 runoff results, which showed 36-year incumbent Thad Cochran with a narrow lead after courting Democrat votes using race-baiting tactics and a possible illegal vote-buying scheme. The Mississippi Republican Party announced Wednesday night that it will not hear McDaniel’s challenge, as reported by The Clarion-Ledger, using the excuse that they don’t have enough time to consider the evidence. McDaniel’s attorney, Mitch Tyner, in responding to the announcement said: “Chris McDaniel is very disappointed he will not have the opportunity to present his election challenge before the State Executive Committee, especially in light of the fact that we delivered a physical copy of the challenge to all 52 members of the committee. The party was the perfect venue in which to hear the challenge since it was responsible for the election, but we will move forward with a judicial review as provided for under Mississippi code.” In a scathing open letter to RNC Chairman Reince Priebus dated July 23, and published in the Washington Times, radio talk show host and author Steve Deace called on Priebus to get involved: Immediately after the shocking result, stories of the GOP establishment using Obama/Alinsky race-baiting tactics against their own base began to emerge. As I detailed here in The Washington Times last month, just in case Reince, you and your staff missed that one, too. Oh, I get it, those claiming Democrat money was used to smear Mr. McDaniel with race-baiting propaganda are all “kooks” and “spoiled sports.” So I guess that means former Reagan White House political director Jeffrey Lord, talk-radio titans Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, Erick Erickson at Red State, and writers for National Review and Breitbart (among others) are now “kooks” and “spoiled sports” as well. My, what a tremendous “big tent” we have. On Wednesday, Ed Martin, the Missouri GOP Chair, announced that he will move for the Republican Party to censure Henry Barbour, son of longtime Mississippi establishment heavyweight Haley Barbour, over race-baiting ads paid for by Barbour and his PAC in the Mississippi race. Martin said in his announcement in Mississippi Conservative Daily: There are many reasons that the Barbour ads — and those like it — are so wrong. First, they play on the historical fears that some black people have of a time when they were prevented from voting (I should note, by Democrats). Second, they distort history, ignoring the role Republicans played on civil rights and the deep connection of the Democratic Party to the Klan, including a Supreme Court Justice appointed by FDR and a Senate Majority Leader that started out as a Klan recruiter. Democrats wish those stories would stay buried — the use of racism as a club in campaigns is too powerful for them to be bothered by the truth. Now, in Mississippi, Henry Barbour just gave them a bigger club. Imagine Democratic ads run across the country in October that accuse Republicans of vote suppression, with full-throated defense of their use by Democrats who claim they got the idea from Mississippi Republican Henry Barbour. What defense would we have? Seven Republican senators donated large amounts to Barbour’s PAC. Does that mean they agree with Barbour that the Tea Party is involved in voter suppression? Are they prepared to answer that on Sunday morning shows when a giddy media demands they agree or disagree with Barbour’s message? What will we say? That Barbour was wrong, but we didn’t want to rock the boat because the he was a powerful fundraiser? At Monday’s press conference announcing the formal challenge, Chris McDaniel accused the Cochran campaign of “moving more than 40,000 Democrats into the Republican primary.” “And in so doing, mistakes were made. Some of those weren’t even mistakes. Some of it was very intentional,” he said. “What we’re going to show is a pattern of conduct on the part of a number of people that demonstrate the problem with this election.” “The evidence is clear,” McDaniel said on Monday, while stating that both the facts and the law was on his side. Mitch Tyner, McDaniel’s attorney said at Monday’s press conference that in post-election polling, 71% of the Democrats that crossed-over admitted that they wouldn’t consider voting for a Republican in the general election. “We’re not asking for a new election. We’re simply asking that the Republican Party actually recognize the person who won the runoff election,” Tyner said in his closing remarks on Monday.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 23:53:35 +0000
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