A dispirited Erick Erickson looked at the results in Mississippi and grew introspective:
I continue to oppose a third party. I’m just not sure what the Republican Party really stands for any more other than telling Obama no and telling our own corporate interests yes. That’s not much of a platform.
I have to agree. It wasn’t much of a platform when Mitt Romney ran on telling Obama no and telling our corporate interests yes. But what really has Erick Erickson upset is how Senator Thad Cochran beat state Sen. Chris McDaniel.
A Republican Party campaigning on making the Senate “conservative,” used
black peopleliberal Democrats to preserve an incumbent Republican and defeat a conservative. The actual conservatives are the outsiders with the GOP establishment doing all it could to preserve its power at the expense of its principles…Mississippi is a crystalizing election in that sense. Cochran is, for all intents and purposes, a marionette. His strings are pulled by staffers and lobbyists. They drop him onto the stage of the Senate and pull up a string to raise his hand. These puppeteers are so invested in keeping their gravy train going that they will, while claiming to be Republicans, flood a Republican primary with
black peopleObama voters to ensure their gravy train continues.
Just to be clear, this isn’t about the rules; it’s about the black people.
And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with that. They won fair and square. They changed who the electorate was, which was allowed under the rules.
But this becomes a longer term problem for the Republican Party. Its core activists hate its leadership more and more.
The federal government gives more than twice as much money annually to Mississippi than it collects in taxes and fees. You can call that a gravy train if you want, but running for office on a platform of cutting off your constituents’ gravy train is bizarre. The truth is, the kind of fiscally austere conservatism advocated by the Tea Party simply isn’t in the interests of Mississippians.
But the conservative movement has become a one-size-fits-all ideology, ironically, where every population is fed the same anti-federal government rhetoric regardless of their particular relationship to the federal government. Given the state’s history, it’s understandable that people there are wary of the long arm of Washington DC, but the fiscal part of that relationship has been tremendously beneficial to the Magnolia State, and their senators understand this. That doesn’t make them corrupt, or any more corrupt than senators from other states who look out for their own interests.
With a population that is 37% black, Mississippi has by far the biggest black population percentage-wise in the country. In order for Republicans to win there, they need whites to vote for them in overwhelming numbers, which means that the GOP has every incentive to racialize politics and insist that the Democrats are the party exclusively for blacks. This prevents them (because they’ve already alienated blacks so badly) from pursuing the only alternative to racial politics, which is more moderate policies that can appeal to blacks.
But Cochran showed last night that a Republican can get blacks to go to the polls for them if they show them some respect, ask for their vote, and at least offer something that might interest them, like protecting their voting rights. Republicans can win that way, but not inflexible Movement Conservatives. For them, pandering to blacks is the biggest sin of all.
So, what we learned last night is that the Mississippi Republican Party is basically split 50-50 on what’s more important to them: being the anti-black party or keeping those federal dollars coming.
I do think you are wrong on the racial angle. I know this sort of person and they are racists, but they reserve special hate for white “N___ lovers”.
The rant makes perfect sense from his ideological perspective without it being based on racism.
In short, yes he is a racist, no that’s not why the rant.
It makes sense without reference to racism until you realize that he’s incensed that Cochran asked blacks (liberal Democrats, Obama voters) to vote for him.
He didn’t complain that this wasn’t in the spirit of a Republican primary and he didn’t complain about the rules. He didn’t even complain about the unenforceable law that says people who vote in primaries have to commit to voting for the party in the general. He admitted that Cochran won fair and square and broke no rules.
His sin, however, was to violate the party’s principles by pandering to blacks.
Remember, too, that in Mississippi, the white Democrats aren’t exactly liberal. And even the black Democrats are more religious and conservative than the national average.
What Erickson would probably say in his defense is that the principles involved aren’t supposed to be anti-black. But his own language and behavior belie that argument.
Connect the dots:
To make an appeal to African-Americans is in itself a violation of the party’s principles, according to Erickson.
I was amused to read Erick, Son Of Erick’s sustained description of Republican base voters as a bunch of people running around with knives, frantically trying to cut down anyone who they perceive as providing government services to The Wrong People.
He may want to take it easy on that marionette metaphor, however. Many of us see that GOP base voters are marionettes on strings held by billionaires and their corporations. I wonder what
Erick is a very poor writer. His tears are delicious, however.
I, OTOH, am an OK writer and a flawed editor. LOL
Can I just say how self-important that post sounds and especially how it starts off? “I was elected to office once you know…”
Absolutely correct! And their ability to get working class and lower middle class voters to vote against their own economic interest never ceases to amaze me. Not when their appeal is racist,I can understand that, but when their appeal is voodoo economics like pushing austerity in response to joblessness.
Racism is voodoo economics. Because in their pea-brains if blacks achieve any financial gains, whites lose.
True, but I meant things like “minimum wage is bad for you”, patently absurd.
Is code for “if ‘the man’ has to pay the blahs more, he gonna have to pay the whites less.” And “the blahs are worth less and that’s why ‘the man’ should be able to pay them less.” And, “the blahs are irresponsible with additional income and the whites save and invest.” And, etc.
Most of the minimum wage workers around here are white. No surprise since our black demographic is around 10%. Thirty to forty percent Hispanic so maybe if you say brown instead of black, but really only white managers and professionals make much more than the minimum wage. We do, but we are an anomaly because we are union workers but most non-government people are not.
yes and calling people names is a great way to win them over as well
Please share your brilliant strategy for “winning over” the tea-party and/or racist voting constituencies?
And I’m sorry if I offended any and all readers here that are within those constituencies. That number would be zero. Unless some are misrepresenting themselves; if so, they are dishonest pea-brains.
The number of McDaniel voters who will ever vote for a Dem is also zero. Unless a few vote for Childers out of pure spite, ha-ha.
This helps explain why it is actually kind of important that Cochran win.
Fascinating and impressive.
Wait, wait, help me out here….
If both parties are essentially the same — the perma-gov, I believe I’ve heard it called — then any possible difference between two parts of one party must itself itself negligible.
But we’re supposed to be interested the difference anyways?
If one wants to believe in the “logic” behind the permagov argument, I suppose it does not matter. A lot of anarchists and anarchist wannabes talked like that back when I was in college back in the pre-Internet days. Found it best to simply ignore them. However, if one wants to accept the possibility that one party has been essentially overtaken by far-right elements (our society’s latent fascist elements are no longer quite so latent) and the other although generally lousy has not, then whatever differences exist between those parties end up being of importance.
Depends on who you talk to and what you are asking about. Is there much difference between Cochran and Childers? Not a whole lot except for tactical shifts. Cochran (R) and Childers (D) represent two flavors of establishment politics in Mississippi. No matter who wins, the realtors are happy, the construction companies are happy, most small business owners are happy, and the large business executives who run the state are ecstatic. What ever the movers and shakers of the Mississippi state chamber of commerce want likely will get done. That’s the Mississippi branch of the permagov.
McDaniel turned out to be a culture warrior from the right who sought to take statewide office (US Senate) and a tactical instrument for Tea Party takeover of state politics (Sort of Mississippi’s version of Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or Ron Johnson or Mike Lee). The Mississippi chamber mavens likely are not happy with how that has affected businesses in those states. Radical Randian rhetoric is OK until the policy is implemented and starts biting local businesses.
So yes, the difference in interesting in how it preserves the local permagov. Likewise the maneuvering in New York to co-opt the Working Families Party while still letting the Republicans run the legislature. McDaniel was just not good for business.
The African-American participation in the primary just took advantage of the fact that Cochran’s establishment support and McDaniel’s Tea Party, gun nut, and religious support was equally divided.
Not quite. Let’s say (to simplify the math) that Cochran won with 50%, and he did so by getting 10 percent of his votes from black Democrats. So in 20 votes, Cochran gets only 9 from self-identified Republicans. McDaniel gets 10, a 53% majority. The more blacks that vote for Cochran, the higher a percentage of actual Republicans voting for McDaniel.
If Cochran barely won by drawing significant interparty votes from black Democrats, it follows that for a solid majority of Mississippi voters who identify as Republicans, being the anti-black party is more important. And they’ll especially despise Cochran for being a white guy who’s a “n***-lover.”
So what does McDaniel do now? Run as a third party (tea bagger)? Or does he join true conservatives at the Heritage? Or does he start a PAC and do the straight grift?
I expect #3 will be the chosen path for our barely reconstructed Confederate. A return to radio will likely be a good launch for McDonald’s PAC. The conservative base really digs its martyrs for The Cause.
The moment McDaniel says clearly what he stands for, he’s a goner. He’s going to keep doing the culture war shuffle and try not to let that gray uniform and epaulettes show. He can sell his shtick in parts of Mississippi, but the whole state will not buy it. And he can now monetize his shtick like other losing Republicans have.
They finally get black folks to vote for a Republican and what happens? More complaining! Sheesh.
I frequently wonder why the remaining old-school Republicans don’t accuse the Teabaggers of being the RINO’s?
Thad Cochrane is an old-school Republican – as was Dick Luger.
And sure, they both did everything to try to stop President Obama, but not to the extent that these new sociopathic Nihilists are trying to damage the country where they live – all because of some conservative ideology, ostensibly based on some deranged interpretation of Christianity.
African-Americans are the swing vote in Mississippi once again. Childers take note. The more that the two party candidates contend for African-American voters, the more Tea Party people are likely to stay home.
I’m expecting any day for Thad Cochran to sound like the spirit of Bedford Forrest brought back to life.
Or Childers will. Given, Childers’s undercutting of the Obama legislative agenda, none of his base is solid. His conundrum is which demographics in his base does he want to push or how to craft a fusion base that can win.
This could get very interesting or it could with enough money degenerate into same old, same old.
In the primary, McDaniels appealed to the transplanted Tennessee Teabaggers who live in Northwest Mississippi, now a “big suburb” of Memphis. These voters are different from the typical Mississippian, who votes for the Establishment guy, no matter what. Also, the surrounding counties of Jackson, MS now have Teabaggers and are wealthier counties like Northwest Mississippi. I believe the Mississippi Gulf Coast was still loyal to Thad. They had a Democratic U.S. Congressman (Gene Taylor), until the Fall 2010 wave election. Back in the late 1990’s, I lived in Mississippi for 4 years (Oxford, which is an island) and my husband has had family there for decades. Still, I was a little surprised by McDaniel’s strong showing.
So NW Mississippi and suburban Jackson are beginning to look demographically like the suburban rings around Atlanta and Charlotte. Think Smyrna and Kennesaw GA for example. And the Gulf Coast remembers the federal aid that Thad Cochran helped bring in after Katrina, running the gauntlet of the incompetence of his own party’s President. That makes a lot of sense. Do the precinct-level vote totals bear that out?
Let’s just say that Thad gets returned to the Senate for his seventh term. He gets there because he survived a tough primary challenge due to Democratic cross-over votes. At least, that will be the perception.
So what does that mean?
Will Cochran remember the people who saved his seat? Will he be a pebble in the shoe of the Republican caucus, and try to make the government work again? Or, now that he can breathe once more and has his future set, will he completely forget the coalition of voters, and once again march in lock-step with his Republican colleagues, grinding government to a halt, disenfranchising significant swaths of voters, and denying the benefits of government to all but those who can pay to play?
Because if Cochran’s memory fails him, I don’t see anything Democrats might call an accomplishment.
I was listening to the local Black talk radio station. They were discussing the election in Mississippi. Folks called in with relatives down there, and they were like, do you know that Mississippi gets FORTY-FIVE PERCENT of its state budget from FEDERAL MONIES.
Cochran is responsible for a lot of that…the other guy said he would cut it out.
Black folks voted their economic interests.
As usual, the White Working Class was willing to vote against their economic interests
I’ll just leave this here.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/report-mississippi-tea-party-challenger-voted-in-democratic-el
ections-in-2003
Well, isn’t that special. Shoots the legs out from under his complaint that some Democrats may have voted for Cochran.
A real and in-depth analysis of what happened in the primary and run-off would be interesting. Just not getting why the turn-out was so high in both.