Lord, hear our prayers.
Right now, I'm planning to stay in town to CAMPAIGN and VOTE for Chris McDaniel.
NOT going to VOTE absentee.
Posted on 06/04/2014 5:19:56 PM PDT by nickcarraway
After a second-place finish, his advisers huddle to find a strategy that doesn't damage Republicans' chances of winning the seat and taking the Senate.
Establishment Republicans are in a tough spot in Mississippi.
They want Thad Cochran to win the coming runoff, and could spend tons of cash to attack tea-party challenger Chris McDaniel. But they know the sitting senator is more likely to lose, and going after his opponent will only damage the party's ability to beat the Democratic candidate and take over the Senate.
It's an excruciating decision for all of Cochran's supporters, from the National Republican Senatorial Committee to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And even though they're reiterating their support, it already looks like they are ready to scale back, and that means less money and toned-down attacks.
"The Club for Growth and Senate Conservatives Fund will bankrupt themselves just to make their point. The NRSC, the chamber don't have that luxury—they're looking at a Republican majority," one pro-Cochran strategist said.
According to several Republican sources, leaders of pro-Cochran outside groups were meeting Wednesday to discuss strategy going forward after McDaniel narrowly finished in first place in the primary with 49.6 percent of the vote. Sources raised the possibility that Cochran's supporters might shift their focus to other contests now.
American Crossroads, for one, announced Wednesday afternoon that it wouldn't get involved in the contentious runoff. "We have completed our work on Senate primaries this cycle ... this is not our fight," spokesman Paul Lindsay said. Crossroads didn't air ads in the primary, but it donated $120,000 to the pro-Cochran super PAC Mississippi Conservatives, according to Henry Barbour, the nephew of former Gov. Haley Barbour, who runs the group.
Cochran faces disadvantages in the runoff that range from his lethargic campaign effort to the likelihood of a smaller, more-conservative turnout in three weeks and the prohibition on Democratic crossover voters participating in the election.
He had no campaign operation when he announced his reelection bid and was dependent on outside assistance for the race. The Mississippi Conservatives super PAC spent $1.7 million on his behalf, while the NRSC helped staff his operations. He also was boosted by ads from the chamber, which reiterated its support for Cochran in a tweet after the primary's results came in.
Over the next three weeks, the senator might refocus his message on the out-of-state interest groups backing McDaniel, Henry Barbour suggested, rather than remain engaged in personal attacks against his challenger. The primary race took an ugly turn in its final weeks after one of McDaniel's supporters broke into a nursing home to take pictures of Cochran's ailing wife, Rose, who suffers from dementia.
Indeed, another Cochran ally involved with the senator's campaign strategy said that his team won't be bringing up that scandal during the runoff—a sign they realize it could badly damage McDaniel in the general election if he wins the nomination.
"The point of aggressively going after [the nursing home scandal] was to get it national attention. Now there is national attention on that, we've achieved that objective. I think it would be a fools' errand to continue use that for no other reason," the Cochran ally said.
That's a far cry from the aggressive posture coming from the outside conservative groups backing McDaniel. The antitax Club for Growth, which spent $2.5 million boosting his challenge, called on Cochran to withdraw from the race while threatening to continue hammering away at his record if he doesn't.
"He should do the honorable thing and decline to contest the runoff. Should he choose to persist, the Club for Growth PAC and conservatives throughout Mississippi will vigorously pursue this race to its conclusion, and we will look forward to the election of Senator Chris McDaniel," Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said in a statement.
If Cochran loses, he would be the first senator to lose to a primary challenger this year, and would give tea-party activists a much-needed victory after earlier setbacks against targeted incumbents. But Democrats hope that with McDaniel as the Republican nominee, former Democratic Rep. Travis Childers could make the race competitive. Childers, a Blue Dog Democrat, held a solidly Republican House seat from 2008 to 2010, proving his ability to win over conservative voters despite his Democratic affiliation.
"If you are concerned about winning this race, there is no question Thad Cochran will win. There are questions over whether Chris McDaniel can," argued Cochran strategist Stuart Stevens.
I agree. If the rats send a lot of money into MS for Childers, they are chasing fool’s gold and hemmoraging more resources from hagan, Pryor, landrieu and many others.
You are right. It would be absolutely stupid. Almost as bad as them trying to contest the Governor’s race in Texas running a wided eyed liberal. They have already pulled out of that and the effort to turn Texas blue is failing so horribly that it virtually has made no headway at all. They already have a horrible bloody hill to climb this Nov and they could easily lose Hagan, Pryor, and Landrieu. Mississippi is like throwing good money after bad but if they want to do it I’ll enjoy watching them.
Nothing finer than the smell of RINO flopsweat in the morning.....cept it's night....
:-)
Going to disagree with you there. His wife is not capable of leaving the nursing home. They are caring for her, and I don't think that she is "rotting" in the nursing home. I think we need to give him some leeway on this issue.
MS has open primaries, and Democrats took advantage of that to try to throw the GOP nomination to Cochran. Black Democrats overtly campaigned for Cochran, even running ads in black newspapers. http://m.chron.com/news/politics/article/Some-black-Miss-Dems-supported-GOP-s-Cochran-5528545.php If you look at the voting results for black-majority counties in the Delta, it’s clear that quite a few black Democrats voted in the GOP primary, overwhelmingly for Cochran (in particular, check out results from Leflore County; and Jackson’s Hinds County keeps shedding white population, so Cochran’s vote margin can only be explained if black Democrats crossed over). It is clear that Cochran kept McDaniel under 50% thanks to the GOTV effort from black Democrats.
And BTW, Cochran also did surprisingly well in overwhelmingly white, very culturally conservative NE MS, which at the state level is the last bastion of Yellow Dog Democrats in the state (and where a higher percentage of whites vote Democrat for prsident than anywhere else in the state). So I believe that Cochran got quite a few votes from white Democrats as well.
How can you not be disappointed, it was so close and goes to a runoff because of some scrub third candidate and rat crossover as Auh2 points out. We should have gotten the kill shot on Tuesday night.
Sports analogy, you don’t wanna go to overtime when you can win in regulation.
Still the runoff should favor McDaniel, rat crossover should be less of problem there I hope and he has the momentum.
I salute Cochran for being a Republican since before age 30 and helping grow the GOP in the state. But it’s time for him to say goodbye.
Indeed! Wonder if ole Thaddeus will get the memo…….
I believe Thad Cochran will go “full Akin” on this thing. He will not pull the pin. He should of course, but won’t....
YOU ARE MY POSTING HERO for the day. Last night I was thinking that I would just love to ask Haley Babour "hey fat man….WHO is Todd Akin now??????" (great minds you know…..)
Lord, hear our prayers.
Right now, I'm planning to stay in town to CAMPAIGN and VOTE for Chris McDaniel.
NOT going to VOTE absentee.
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