Bryan Fischer
That giant sucking sound: conservatives fleeing the GOP's "Big Tent"
By Bryan Fischer
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
When even the Democrats admit the election was stolen, it's time for a re-do.
Sen. Thad Cochran emerged from the June 24 GOP senate primary run-off election against state senator Chris McDaniel with a margin of victory of about 6700 votes. Haley Barbour's machine dangled enough money in front of enough Democrats to get 35,000 of their votes for Cochran.
Now if any of those Democrats voted in the Democratic primary on June 3, they were ineligible to vote in the Cochran-McDaniel run-off.
Thus, if the poll books indicate that somewhere in the neighborhood of 7000 votes were improperly and illegally cast, this election should be headed toward yet another run-off. Maybe this time it will be fair.
According to Breitbart, Claude McInnis, the Hinds County Democratic Party election coordinator, believes there were a whole truckload of fraudulent Democratic votes cast in his county alone.
"I'm going to guess 3,000," he told Breitbart. "It may be more, but I only have access to the Democratic votes, so that's what I'm guessing the difference may be."
Even worse for the Barbour Regime Machine, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, Rickey Cole, is admitting the election likely was stolen from McDaniel. He told Breitbart that "it is very conceivable" that the McDaniel camp "will find a number of irregularities that will reach 6,700 or greater," a number which would call for a new election.
"You don't have to prove who they voted for," said Cole. "You just have to prove there were that many ineligible ballots. That puts the intent of the voting public in doubt, and that's the path by which a court would order a new election."
By the way, Cole strikes me as a pretty shrewd operator. He wanted McDaniel to win this thing all along, thinking McDaniel would be easier for Childers to beat in November. He's now in a position to cause a lot of grief for the GOP by talking about the fraudulent and manipulated nature of the vote, and he's going to enjoy doing it. And he just might wind up with McDaniel as the opponent of choice after all.
Neil Munro of the Daily Caller is reporting this morning that "Volunteers working for tea party challenger Chris McDaniel in Mississippi say they have already found 20 percent of the invalid double-votes they need to cancel Sen. Thad Cochran's business-funded runoff victory."
McDaniel's press aide, Noel Fritsch, says they have confirmed 1,500 hinky votes in Hinds County alone. McDaniel's staff believes that there are problems in no less than 10 counties, and are also reporting that the GOP establishment is doing its best to block their access to the poll books which could prove malfeasance, even though state law explicitly requires that clerks give them such access.
It would certainly behoove Gov. Phil Bryant not to certify this election until all questions of fraudulent ballots have been resolved.
In addition, 19,000 absentee votes were cast in the run-off, and early reports indicated that some notary publics had fraudulently obtained absentee ballots for voters who didn't show up on June 3, Democrats in particular, then filled them out for Cochran and notarized them themselves.
Regardless of how this all turns out – in my judgment, justice clearly dictates a judge should order a new run-off election – the establishment GOP has dealt itself the mother of all black eyes.
Rumors have swirled that, given Cochran's advanced age and declining mental acuity, the larger plot line here was for the Haley Barbour machine to get Cochran re-elected in order to have him step down after a couple of years so that Mississippi's Republican governor could appoint Barbour himself to his senate seat.
If that was indeed the grand plan, it just got blown out of the tub.
By the way, Cochran is not the Democratic darling everybody is trying to pretend he is. The NAACP grades Cochran out with an "F."
The amount of ill will the GOP establishment has generated among grassroots conservatives in Mississippi is off the charts. According to a poll released by Chism Strategies, 50% of Mississippians think less of Haley Barbour than they did before these reprehensible shenanigans began.
According to the same poll, Republican voters are so disgusted that just 22% intend to vote for Cochran in November. Worse for GOP poobahs, 21% intend to vote for the Democrat, Travis Childers. And somewhere between 74% and 79% of these same Republican voters would vote for McDaniel as a third party or write-in candidate. This includes a whole lot of Republicans who pulled the lever for Cochran in the runoff.
This is a clear indication that grassroots conservatives have had it up to their eyelids with being taken for granted, patronized, and now, perhaps worst of all, disenfranchised by their own party.
Even though, bizarrely enough, write-in votes won't be counted in November, as long as both candidates are still alive, many Republicans fully intend to write in McDaniel's name anyway as a form of protest. They're beyond caring that this might boost Childers' chances, in part because they see little difference between Childers and Cochran. Both believe in more taxes and more spending, and Childers is as pro-life as Cochran and opposes gay marriage to boot.
If the unethical and likely fraudulent election result is allowed to stand, I expect that the GOP is going to get a lot of unopened fundraising letters marked "Return to Sender" with "Remember Mississippi" scrawled across the front.
Ruling class Republicans spent $23 million this primary season seeking to decimate and obliterate the Tea Party, and showed in the McDaniel race that they were willing to resort to shameless race-baiting and reprehensible and slanderous lies to obtain their political objectives. The GOP elites may have driven off their base for good.
Ordinary grassroots conservatives will bolt the party in droves; that giant sucking sound will be the sound of conservatives heading for the exits of the GOP's laughably misnamed "Big Tent." It's not in fact big enough for either Chris McDaniel or his supporters.
The GOP establishment will wind up with a lot of money and no people. They'll be all chiefs and no Indians, all generals and no infantry.
This run-off election should permanently put to rest the conceit that the black vote is suppressed in the South. The folks that were disenfranchised in this election were grassroots conservatives. And unless GOP leadership apologizes to Mississippi Republicans and calls for a thorough investigation of voter irregularity, those grassroots conservatives may be gone for good.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
June 30, 2014
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
When even the Democrats admit the election was stolen, it's time for a re-do.
Sen. Thad Cochran emerged from the June 24 GOP senate primary run-off election against state senator Chris McDaniel with a margin of victory of about 6700 votes. Haley Barbour's machine dangled enough money in front of enough Democrats to get 35,000 of their votes for Cochran.
Now if any of those Democrats voted in the Democratic primary on June 3, they were ineligible to vote in the Cochran-McDaniel run-off.
Thus, if the poll books indicate that somewhere in the neighborhood of 7000 votes were improperly and illegally cast, this election should be headed toward yet another run-off. Maybe this time it will be fair.
According to Breitbart, Claude McInnis, the Hinds County Democratic Party election coordinator, believes there were a whole truckload of fraudulent Democratic votes cast in his county alone.
"I'm going to guess 3,000," he told Breitbart. "It may be more, but I only have access to the Democratic votes, so that's what I'm guessing the difference may be."
Even worse for the Barbour Regime Machine, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, Rickey Cole, is admitting the election likely was stolen from McDaniel. He told Breitbart that "it is very conceivable" that the McDaniel camp "will find a number of irregularities that will reach 6,700 or greater," a number which would call for a new election.
"You don't have to prove who they voted for," said Cole. "You just have to prove there were that many ineligible ballots. That puts the intent of the voting public in doubt, and that's the path by which a court would order a new election."
By the way, Cole strikes me as a pretty shrewd operator. He wanted McDaniel to win this thing all along, thinking McDaniel would be easier for Childers to beat in November. He's now in a position to cause a lot of grief for the GOP by talking about the fraudulent and manipulated nature of the vote, and he's going to enjoy doing it. And he just might wind up with McDaniel as the opponent of choice after all.
Neil Munro of the Daily Caller is reporting this morning that "Volunteers working for tea party challenger Chris McDaniel in Mississippi say they have already found 20 percent of the invalid double-votes they need to cancel Sen. Thad Cochran's business-funded runoff victory."
McDaniel's press aide, Noel Fritsch, says they have confirmed 1,500 hinky votes in Hinds County alone. McDaniel's staff believes that there are problems in no less than 10 counties, and are also reporting that the GOP establishment is doing its best to block their access to the poll books which could prove malfeasance, even though state law explicitly requires that clerks give them such access.
It would certainly behoove Gov. Phil Bryant not to certify this election until all questions of fraudulent ballots have been resolved.
In addition, 19,000 absentee votes were cast in the run-off, and early reports indicated that some notary publics had fraudulently obtained absentee ballots for voters who didn't show up on June 3, Democrats in particular, then filled them out for Cochran and notarized them themselves.
Regardless of how this all turns out – in my judgment, justice clearly dictates a judge should order a new run-off election – the establishment GOP has dealt itself the mother of all black eyes.
Rumors have swirled that, given Cochran's advanced age and declining mental acuity, the larger plot line here was for the Haley Barbour machine to get Cochran re-elected in order to have him step down after a couple of years so that Mississippi's Republican governor could appoint Barbour himself to his senate seat.
If that was indeed the grand plan, it just got blown out of the tub.
By the way, Cochran is not the Democratic darling everybody is trying to pretend he is. The NAACP grades Cochran out with an "F."
The amount of ill will the GOP establishment has generated among grassroots conservatives in Mississippi is off the charts. According to a poll released by Chism Strategies, 50% of Mississippians think less of Haley Barbour than they did before these reprehensible shenanigans began.
According to the same poll, Republican voters are so disgusted that just 22% intend to vote for Cochran in November. Worse for GOP poobahs, 21% intend to vote for the Democrat, Travis Childers. And somewhere between 74% and 79% of these same Republican voters would vote for McDaniel as a third party or write-in candidate. This includes a whole lot of Republicans who pulled the lever for Cochran in the runoff.
This is a clear indication that grassroots conservatives have had it up to their eyelids with being taken for granted, patronized, and now, perhaps worst of all, disenfranchised by their own party.
Even though, bizarrely enough, write-in votes won't be counted in November, as long as both candidates are still alive, many Republicans fully intend to write in McDaniel's name anyway as a form of protest. They're beyond caring that this might boost Childers' chances, in part because they see little difference between Childers and Cochran. Both believe in more taxes and more spending, and Childers is as pro-life as Cochran and opposes gay marriage to boot.
If the unethical and likely fraudulent election result is allowed to stand, I expect that the GOP is going to get a lot of unopened fundraising letters marked "Return to Sender" with "Remember Mississippi" scrawled across the front.
Ruling class Republicans spent $23 million this primary season seeking to decimate and obliterate the Tea Party, and showed in the McDaniel race that they were willing to resort to shameless race-baiting and reprehensible and slanderous lies to obtain their political objectives. The GOP elites may have driven off their base for good.
Ordinary grassroots conservatives will bolt the party in droves; that giant sucking sound will be the sound of conservatives heading for the exits of the GOP's laughably misnamed "Big Tent." It's not in fact big enough for either Chris McDaniel or his supporters.
The GOP establishment will wind up with a lot of money and no people. They'll be all chiefs and no Indians, all generals and no infantry.
This run-off election should permanently put to rest the conceit that the black vote is suppressed in the South. The folks that were disenfranchised in this election were grassroots conservatives. And unless GOP leadership apologizes to Mississippi Republicans and calls for a thorough investigation of voter irregularity, those grassroots conservatives may be gone for good.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
