Team GOP's Strategy To Save Thad Cochran: Get Democrats To Turnout In GOP Runoff

I get the object of elections is to win and as it's not figure skating so there are no style points for how you accomplish that. But after listening to Team GOP spend years whining about how how tea party insurgents are hurting "the cause" by focusing on primaries rather than Democrats, this needs to be called out.

On the ropes in a primary runoff, incumbent Republican Sen. Thad Cochran is trying to pull in independents, moderates — even Democrats — to "expand the electorate" in his last stand against challenger Chris McDaniel, whose tea party base appears galvanized and ready to vote again.

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"A larger electorate is to Thad's advantage," said former Gov. Haley Barbour, a Cochran supporter and former Republican National Committee chairman. "The McDaniel people did a very good job of turning out their vote … I give this as an example of expanding the electorate: School people — teachers, administrators, bus drivers, parents, parents of special-ed students, will be much more motivated to go vote if they know one candidate, McDaniel, wants to do away with $800 million in federal support for education, while Senator Cochran has always supported it."

So if you're dependent on a never ending flow of government cash and/or are a public union worker, the GOP wants you to know that Thad Cochran is your man.

And if you're a lobbyist whose livelihood depends on pliable Senators taking money from one group of people and giving it to another (for a small handling fee, of course), Thad Cochran really is your man (in multiple senses of the term)

Mississippi's election rules say if you voted in the GOP primary or didn't vote at all in the original primary you can vote in the runoff. If you voted in the Democratic primary last week, you're ineligible to vote in the runoff.

The idea that the electorate was insufficiently broad last week is interesting considering there were actually more votes cast in this year's Senate primary than in the state's 2012 presidential primary.

So when Team GOP says the electorate needs to expand, they mean, "get more people who like their government money to vote".

Now that establishment Republicans have shown their true colors, again, just spare me the lectures about party unity and focusing on Democrats.

posted by DrewM. at 11:16 AM

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