The Other McCain

TUPELO, Mississippi
About 40 supporters showed up at 8 a.m. to greet Chris McDaniel at Chick-fil-A here in one of the final stops of the conservative challenger’s campaign before Tuesday’s Republican primary.

“If we can unseat a 42-year incumbent, it will send shock waves through this country,” McDaniel told his supporters, encouraging them to “push like you’ve never pushed before” to drive turnout. And make no mistake: Turnout will decide the fate of that “42-year incumbent,” Sen. Thad Cochran. The latest polls show the race neck-and-neck, but the most important number is that no poll shows Cochran over 45% and, as every political professional knows, incumbents under 50% usually lose.

The fact that Chris McDaniel may be on the verge of victory in Mississippi is enormously frustrating to liberal Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, who can’t understand why the Cochran campaign couldn’t use the Weirdest Political Scandal Ever™ to sink McDaniel:

In short, Cochran’s team really should have been able to use this to bury McDaniel. And somehow they haven’t. Amazingly, McDaniel seems to have suffered little if any damage from it. The internals of the GOP poll clearly show that the reaction to the incident has been negative and that, when asked, people say it’s made them less likely to support McDaniel. But it just doesn’t seem to show through in the topline numbers.
Maybe Cochran’s time is just up. Perhaps the most telling number in the survey is “Do you support the goals and ideals of the Tea Party?” 55% say yes, 21% say no. That’s a very good number for McDaniel to work with.

Indeed, if a majority of Tuesday’s primary voters support the Tea Party, then McDaniel should win. After McDaniel’s event here at Chick-fil-A, Ali Akbar and I had a long talk with Tupelo Tea Party leader Grant Sowell. Like other McDaniel supporters, Sowell views the scandal — wherein a pro-McDaniel blogger sneaked into a nursing home to get video of Cochran’s invalid wife — as an unfortunate distraction from the real issues of the campaign. But speaking of real issues, there was (and is) a genuine scandal which the misguided bumbling blogger Clayton Kelly was trying to document, i.e.: Cochran’s relationship with his executive assistant Kay Webber.

No reporter in the mainstream media — either in Mississippi or nationally — will touch this story, although it seems to be something of an open secret that Cochran and Webber are living together in D.C., while Cochran’s wife vegetates in a nursing home. Matthew Boyle has reported that Webber accompanied Cochran on 33 foreign trips, so that we have the shameless spectacle of a married Republican senator abandoning his invalid wife and traveling the world with his reputed girlfriend.

And that, my friends, is a real scandal.

So if Josh Marshall or anyone else wonders why the Cochran campaign was unable to use the Clayton Kelly escapade to destroy McDaniel, the answer is: They couldn’t, because any serious reporting on the story would raise questions about Cochran’s rumored relationship with Webber. However, if somehow Cochran survives in Tuesday’s primary, then and only then would the mainstream media take a serious interest in that story. But I digress . . .

The real story is what Chris McDaniel said this morning to his supporters here at Chick-fil-A: “The most conservative state in the country needs the most conservative senator in the country” — and by any measure, Thad Cochran falls short of that goal.

Rejected Cochran campaign slogan: "Re-Elect Kay Webber's Boyfriend."

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) June 2, 2014

'McDaniel’s Challenge': He hopes to keep up the energy and drive turnout on Tuesday. http://t.co/KesO8V2cWF

— National Review (@NRO) June 2, 2014

Hanging out with @senatormcdaniel. So proud to have come full circle w/ the #teaparty here. Years of work. #mssen pic.twitter.com/FQ16ayluUJ

— Ali A. Akbar (@ali) June 2, 2014

“@MSConDaily: Senator Chris McDaniel Signs Anti-Amnesty Pledge http://t.co/Q7rpdpqxE0 #MSSen #McDaniel4MS #tcot #immigration #amnesty”

— KLD (@crazygranny56) June 2, 2014

One more day before Mississippi has a chance to replace Thad Cochran with a real conservative – Chris McDaniel! @CMForUSSenate #MSSEN

— Josh Withrow (@JGWithrow) June 2, 2014

Voters have been bombarded with a barrage of TV ads and, as usual in this kind of “nationalized” election — where big money and big media have swooped down on the state — most people are tired of the negativity and mudslinging and they’re just ready for it to be over.

Some of the naysayers in the comments on last night’s post were skeptical of McDaniel’s chances, but this election will hinge on turnout, and if Republican voters in Mississippi take their civic duty seriously, all the media spin and GOP Establishment money won’t be enough to save Thad Cochran. Pray for a McDaniel victory.

PREVIOUSLY:

• May 26: ROAD TRIP!
• May 27: Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson Will Speak at Republican Leadership Conference
• May 28: #RLC2014 Ready to Rock
• May 29: #RLC2014 Cooking With Gas!
• May 30: #RLC2014 N’Awlins, Y’all
• June 1: Craig McCulloch Is the Real Deal
• June 1: Mississippi Update: Chris McDaniel Campaign Fights GOP Establishment

HATTIESBURG, Mississippi
The final push of the Tea Party-backed fight to defeat Sen. Thad Cochran in the Republican primary brought big names to Mississippi this weekend in support of conservative challenger Chris McDaniel. Sarah Palin came to campaign for him Friday:

Had a great time today in the lovely Magnolia State rallying to elect Chris McDaniel to the U.S. Senate. It was wonderful meeting Chris’ beautiful family — and a special thank you to Chris’ son Cambridge for the gorgeous magnolia . . .
This Mississippi senate race is a clear case of We the People vs. the permanent political class in D.C. Many fellow conservatives like my friend Mark Levin have endorsed Chris because this is a crucial race for conservatives who know “the status quo has got to go” if we’re to get America on the right track. Chris is running for the right reasons with a positive conservative reform agenda to solve the problems facing our country. His priorities for government’s role in our lives are right on! Chris KNOWS we have to fight to put government back on our side, and he’s willing to fight for America as Mississippi’s new U.S. Senator!
The Mississippi primary is June 3rd, and the good people of the Magnolia State have the opportunity to remind America that we can and will restore our exceptional nation by electing conservative reformers like Chris McDaniel!
You can read more about Chris and support his campaign here: www.mcdaniel2014.com
– Sarah Palin

Matthew Boyle reports “a raucous audience of thousands” turned out for the Palin rally, where McDaniel took aim at the incumbent:

“Conservatives look at me for a moment, Republicans look at me for a moment: Name one fight that Sen. Thad Cochran has led against Barack Obama,” McDaniel said.
“Zero!” the crowd shouted, almost in unison. “None!” a woman near the front of the auditorium yelled.
McDaniel—feeding off the energy of the crowd—continued: “Sen. Mike Lee, he stands and fights for Utah. Sen. Rand Paul stands to fight for Kentucky. Sen. Ted Cruz stands to fight for Texas. Even a Governor from Alaska fights for us. It’s time for a son of Mississippi to stand and fight for us. I tell you, when Sen. Ted Cruz stood there that night and he laid his soul on the line for this government and for this country, we applauded him. When others joined him, Mike Lee and Rand Paul, we knew we had friends in Washington, D.C., finally. Reinforcements are coming.”
The thousands-strong crowd jumped to their feet to give McDaniel a standing ovation that lasted at least five seconds.
“Now it’s not that Sen. Cochran is a bad person,” McDaniel continued, cutting through the standing ovation. “I respect Sen. Cochran. I even like him, despite the attack ads. . . .”

Oh, yes: Attack ads — the Republican establishment is spending big money to smear Chris McDaniel, because destroying conservatives is what the Republican establishment is all about nowadays. Fortunately, conservatives are not easily deceived. The latest poll shows McDaniel with a narrow lead over the incumbent — 46%-44% — and Rick Santorum campaigned Saturday for McDaniel:

From the “sideline,” Rick Santorum had been keeping an eye on the U.S. Senate race in Mississippi and felt like State Sen. Chris McDaniel’s battle with six-term Sen. Thad Cochran looked like a fair fight.
“Then something happened here in the last few weeks that diverted attention away from that,” the 2012 presidential candidate said Saturday at a McDaniel rally in Diamondhead. “And when I saw that, I said you know what, they’re hiding the ball here. They’re hiding the ball and trying to make this race not about what’s important for our country and the next six years for the state of Mississippi, but they’re trying to make this about something else that has nothing to do with the two candidates.”
At that point, Santorum said he decided to jump in and back McDaniel with the primary just a few days out.

Yeah, the weirdest scandal in political history — caused by a blogger! — was an embarrassing distraction, but conservatives in Mississippi are still focused on “what’s important for our country,” and defeating Thad Cochran on Tuesday is the first step. How desperate is the incumbent? He’s running ads “explicitly calling on Democrats to cross party lines and vote in the GOP primary for Cochran.”

It’s time to beat these Establishment bastards. Beat the hell out of them. Tell ’em there is a limit beyond which we will not be pushed.

Got to be up early in the morning for a 4-hour drive to Tupelo.

PREVIOUSLY:

• May 26: ROAD TRIP!
• May 27: Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson Will Speak at Republican Leadership Conference
• May 28: #RLC2014 Ready to Rock
• May 29: #RLC2014 Cooking With Gas!
• May 30: #RLC2014 N’Awlins, Y’all
• June 1: Craig McCulloch Is the Real Deal