Free Republic

A conservative outside group whose efforts Sen. Ted Cruz backed has called for defunding the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Cruz, an NRSC vice chairman and Texas Republican, has not rebuked the effort. This weekend, Senate Conservatives Fund launched a campaign calling on conservatives to pledge not to give any money to the NRSC in the aftermath of last week’s runoff in the Mississippi Senate race. As is typical, the NRSC backed Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, while the SCF and other outside groups backed his failed challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel. “The Senate Republican establishment betrayed the grassroots and recruited Democrats...

According to the work of Charles C. Johnson and Joel S. Gilbert, what we thought was just a racist campaign to get people out to vote in the Cochran vs McDaniel Mississippi Senate race was the tip of the iceberg. It now appears to be a vote buying scandal right out of the office of Thad Cochran himself: Reverend Stevie Fielder, associate pastor at historic First Union Missionary Baptist Church and former official at Meridian’s redevelopment agency, says he delivered “hundreds or even thousands,” of blacks to the polls after being offered money and being assured by a Cochran campaign...

Because “friends and foes” view President Barak Obama’s America as weak, people should donate to the Republican National Committee, says U.S. Sen. John McCain. McCain On Monday, the RNC sent out a mass email to supporters containing a letter from the Republican senator from Arizona, in which he blasted the president. “President Obama’s policies continue to cost millions of Americans jobs and access to health care,” McCain says in the email. “When the world needs American leadership, our President fails to lead. As a result, friends and foes alike are coming to see America as weak, unreliable and lacking credibility....

One week after traveling to Mississippi to do his utmost to help Senator Thad Cochran (R) beat Tea Party rival Chris McDaniel, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) talked about the strengths he saw in Cochran's approach to campaigning. According to AZ Central, McCain dismissed criticism over the tactics the Republican Establishment used to get black Democrats to cross over and vote for Cochran. Said McCain, "There are some people complaining that African-American voters voted. [But] I thought one of the major priorities of the Republican Party was to get all minority and ethnic voters out to vote for Republicans." He described...

The Tea Party, the popular political movement that grew from widespread public concern over the growth of government, died on Tuesday, June 24, in Mississippi. During its short life, the Tea Party grew from a passionate patchwork quilt of grass-roots efforts to become an important and effective political force capable of altering elections and influencing national, state and local policies. It died a fractured, ineffective confederacy of discordant coteries that bore little resemblance to its original incarnation. (snip) For a time, it appeared possible that the Tea Party would redefine, or perhaps even replace, the Republican Party. Until, that is,...

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that it’s not the tactics themselves that bother them as much as the attention those tactics are receiving from conservative voters. Says Red State’s Leon Wolf, “If any of these bastards want to avoid the fallout they should go on the record.”

         Update from Mississippi Patriots, I am sorry it has taken me so long to give you an update, but things in Mississippi have been fluid and there is a lot to dig through. What we know right now is nefarious campaign tactics, employed by incumbent Senator Thad Cochran's campaign, were undeniably responsible for Cochran's victory Tuesday night. This includes using race-baiting that encourages liberal Democrats to swing a Republican Primary election- but that's just the start of it. As our friend Chris McDaniel has said, "There is nothing they won't do to hold onto power." It's true....

When asked how Perry could have succeeded in not switching the books—since he and other Democrats refused to cooperate with his request on the grounds that they believed it was illegal—McInnis replied that he worked with Sen. Cochran’s sister-in-law—the election commissioner in Hinds County—to get the job done. “Connie Cochran is the election commissioner,” McInnis said.

Or maybe we should call it the ‘Barbour machine’. According to NRO and the FEC, Haley Barbour’s nephew paid a couple of ‘get out the vote’ groups in Atlanta, via his SuperPAC, for ‘phone services’. These local groups are affiliated with a black pastor who is also a Democratic staffer and political strategist and it seems she may have been the key to getting out the black vote for Cochran: She is, from all appearances, something of a renaissance woman: She is not only the pastor of Atlanta’s Emmanuel Baptist Church but also a former president of the Atlanta school...

After the skin-crawling exploitation of black voters in Mississippi, the GOP’s current leadership wing gives a second demonstration, this time in Virginia, of just how committed they are to “a big tent,” or to the GOP’s vitality in general. The Senate majority matters, the House majority matters. But this party’s leadership is infested with the same disregard for Washington’s intended purpose as any Clintonian. Third parties fail. But what cost does remaining aligned with this generation of GOP leadership take from the cause of liberty and transparency? Recall, last week Eric Cantor said: “Of course I’ll vote for David Brat...

Chris McDaniel, the Republican candidate in last Tuesday’s GOP primary that fell just shy of defeating long-time incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), reacted to the outcome. McDaniel laid out his Republican credentials and questioned why his state’s Republican Party had gone to such lengths to for Cochran. “It was shocking,” McDaniel said. “I’m a two-term state senator. I’ve been a Republican since I was 13-years old. I’ve paid my dues. I’ve gone door to door. I’ve given money. I considered these men and woman to be my friends and colleagues. But desperation and the quest for power pushed them somewhat...

How far did the establishment GOP forces backing Senator Thad Cochran go in Mississippi this week? Too far, and their tactics are likely to leave permanent scars in a civil war with Tea Party forces that are out of all proportion to the importance the establishment placed on saving one 76-year-old senator’s ability to please Washington’s K Street lobbying interests. “This is a win for the establishment, but it’s a win with an asterisk, because it’s so tainted that it might be one of those things where they’re going to be sorry they ever won the runoff in Mississippi,” Craig...

The Chris McDaniel campaign has identified multiple Mississippi counties in which enough improper ballots have been cast that a legal challenge to the outcome of the election is warranted.

National Republican leaders are toasting primary season as a smashing success over activist conservatives that has put the hard right on the ropes and given the Washington GOP the slate of candidates it wanted for 2014. Those victories, however, have come at a staggering cost — and Republicans are painfully aware of the price of putting down an intraparty insurrection. Establishment-aligned groups have already spent some $23 million on independent expenditures propping up favored House and Senate candidates in contentious primaries, according to a POLITICO review of Federal Election Commission records. By comparison, Republican nominees raised and spent that amount...

Chris McDaniel, onthe blatantly unethical and illegal tactics employed by Thad Cochran and Haley Barbour in the Mississippi GOP runoff Tuesday… “McDaniel: I am a two-term state senator, I have fought for this party my entire life, I’ve given money…I’ve done everything they’ve asked me to do– and last night, they pulled over 35,000 Democrats into a Republican primary to defeat me…we feel betrayed. … Hannity: Do you foresee any circumstance under which you would support this guy? Because I don’t think I could do it. McDaniel: I prayed about it last night…my core principle is gonna have a hard...

The electoral shenanigans employed by the victorious Cochran campaign in the Mississippi Republican runoff were too much for even GOP establishment spokesman Sean Hannity– who urged listeners not to reward Thad Cochran’s “disgusting” tactics by voting for him in the general election…

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a potential 2016 presidential contender, declined to support tea party critics of Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran's efforts to mobilize non-GOP voters to win the Republican nomination."I'm for more people voting, not less people voting," Paul told reporters Wednesday.Paul, an original tea party icon for his 2010 GOP primary win over the establishment, has worked assiduously the past year on broadening his party's appeal to minority voters, including negotiating with Democrats on efforts to rewrite the Voting Rights Act.Cochran's vote total grew by almost 40,000 votes from the initial June 3 primary to Tuesday's runoff against state...

It turns out the Republican Party can mobilize minority voters after all — by despicably playing the race card against its own base. In a kamikaze move that could’ve been sponsored by the Hemlock Society, a ruling class desperate for a Pyrrhic victory decided it was better to save fossilizing Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran than preserve whatever scintilla of party unity remains. It’s one thing to disagree with your base. It’s entirely another thing to use the most slanderous assaults on their character from their opponents for your own benefit. [.....] Numbers never lie. The GOP establishment mobilized Democrats to...

Politico Defiant Chris McDaniel declines to concede in speech to supporters By ANNA PALMER | 6/25/14 12:24 AM EDT HATTIESBURG, MISS. — A defiant Chris McDaniel walked up to the podium at his election night headquarters here after the Republican runoff was called for his opponent Sen. Thad Cochran — and then he didn't concede. "We had a dream and the dream is still with us," said McDaniel to an increasingly vocal crowd, telling them that the fight is not over. "Today the conservative movement took a backseat to liberal Democrats in Mississippi." Cochran's strategy Tuesday was to expand...

Perhaps it was an echo of Obama's 2009 declaration to the GOP, "I won," or Stalin's observation that, "It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes." Tonight's runoff between Chris McDaniel and has left me a little discouraged, but more than just a little bit angry. I read a tweet from the NYT that history was made tonight when an elderly white Republican in Mississippi was bailed out by crossover votes from Black Democrats. Indeed, that is exactly what happenned. Cochran won by roughly 7,000 vote. Hinds county, which includes the capital city...