In Mississippi, Cochran Plays Anti-White Race Card, And Wins. McDaniel Ignores Brat Playbook, And Loses
I was planning on writing a post-mortem on Tom Tancredo’sheartbreaking defeat in the Colorado gubernatorial primary, and had little interest in the Mississippi run-off where incumbent Thad Cochran edged out Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel. I would have written about how the GOP Establishment fought tooth and nail against Tancredo and flooded the campaign with corporate money, but how Establishment candidate Bob Beauprez only defeated him by a small margin (and will almost certainly lose in November).
However, this is nothing new, and frankly the New York Times profile on the GOP Establishment’s war on Tancredo did a pretty good job of outlining the attacks. [A Candidate for Governor Has Both Parties on Alert, By Jack Healy, June 23, 2014]
But as I read more on McDaniel’s loss, I began to think it was actually more indicative of the larger problems with the Tea Party movement and with Conservatism Inc.
There are certainly similarities between the Colorado and Mississippi races. Both Establishment candidates Bob Beauprez and Thad Cochran are decent, but not great, on mass immigration. Tom Tancredo, obviously, is great on immigration, while Chris McDaniel said that Jeff Sessions would be his role model on the issue. (However, neither emphasized the issue in their campaigns—in other words, they did not follow the Brat playbook).
In both cases, the Establishment tried to stoke fears that the insurgent candidates would tar the entire Republican Party as “racist.” . . .
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