Thad Cochran’s victory shows voting rights well protected (Yes, he went there)

The Boston Globe ^ | June 29, 2014 | Jeff Jacoby

[2ndDivisionVet]

Tea Party insurgent Chris McDaniel came tantalizingly close to knocking off Senator Thad Cochran in Mississippi’s Republican primary runoff last week, but a surge in black voter turnout saved the six-term incumbent’s bacon. Cochran’s election to a seventh term in November now seems a foregone conclusion, and boy, are a lot of conservatives mad.

“There is something a bit unusual about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats,” McDaniel fumed on election night, slamming Cochran and the GOP establishment for “once again reaching across the aisle [and] abandoning the conservative movement.”

But whatever else the election outcome meant, Cochran’s “reaching across the aisle” made his victory a noteworthy instance of something that supposedly doesn’t and can’t happen in Mississippi even today: A white GOP politician sought support among Democrats, and particularly black Democrats. And far from being politically powerless, they tipped the election.

Under Mississippi’s open-primary rules, anyone who hadn’t already voted in the Democratic primary could vote in the Republican runoff. The Cochran camp openly solicited crossover support, as John Hayward wrote in Human Events, “through a combination of race-baiting attacks on McDaniel, and touting his [Cochran’s] ability to make government larger and bring home more goodies from Washington.” National Review called it a “Two-Faced Victory”: In majority-black neighborhoods, Cochran’s ads and mailers played up his support for historically black colleges and food stamps. In predominantly white districts, other pamphlets highlighted his support for the National Rifle Association and his opposition to abortion and Obamacare.....

[cynwoody]

Mississippi (and no doubt other states') voting rights obviously need to be fixed.

Nobody who is not already registered in a party should be allowed to vote in the party's primary. And, should there be a runoff, nobody who didn't vote in the primary should be eligible to vote in the runoff.

[CharlesWayneCT]

The point he may NOT have been making is that the black voters seem to have no problem with voter ID laws, nor were they really in any way deterred from showing up to vote by the “Tea Party”.

Apparently, blacks can and do freely vote in elections in states where we have voter ID laws.

[cynwoody]

I think what Jacoby is saying, is that blacks were “oppressed” at all. They showed IDs and were able to vote. Granted, they voted for the RINO, but ironically they killed the voter ID hysteria from the Left.

That's accurate.

Jacoby has been the Boston Globe's resident conservative for many years. The illustration makes him look much younger than he actually is.

[livius]

“Voting rights” has always been another way of saying “cheating rights” for the left. It means the laws are either openly violated, ignored or taken advantage of in such a way that the leftist wins, and that the leftists have a right to do this. Anything to the contrary disenfranchises them, don’t you know?

[duffee]

I interpret jacoby is saying that these democrats got out and voted to reach across the aisle and join with republicans so we can all get along and that this is a good thing. While we know many of them and their leaders were paid to turnout, they were incensed by unfounded racial charges now the naacp and bennie thompson are demanding major federal spending as well as Voter ID being rescinded as further payment. These 40 thousand democrats will be back with their party in November and laughing about the turmoil and destruction in the republican party. The blame however is not with the democrats, it is with the RNSC, RNC, Mississippi and national gop, the Cochran campaign and thad’s handlers, the barbours and joe nosef the chairman of the Mississippi republican party.