The Mississippi mud

Here’s the problem with being a conservative Republican. It’s a little bit like an adage we heard during the Long War against terrorism – we have to be successful 100% of the time or else there is no success.

This brings me to the situation in Mississippi, where Chris McDaniel had an apparent victory snatched from him because those who would nominally be Democrats decided to vote for the establishment Republican incumbent, 76-year-old Thad Cochran. Cochran has spent nearly half his life in the United States Senate, but lost the initial primary by 0.5% to McDaniel. In many states (including Maryland) that would have been the end, but Mississippi election rules demand a runoff when no candidate attains a majority and Cochran won the rematch with thousands of black voters switching allegiance to support Cochran. One member of the Congressional Black Caucus has already said “we have expectations” for Cochran – but promised to campaign for his Democratic opponent.

A friend and supporter of mine sent this e-mail, saying it made her “angry and confused,” and asked me for comment. First of all, it’s another reason why I’ve stopped giving to party organizations and simply give to individual candidates.

But it’s also another illustration of what Angelo Codevilla calls the “ruling class” spending thousands to maintain its grip on power – perhaps it’s the one bipartisan effort in our nation’s capital right now. He wrote a fine piece on this very situation, and thanks to the folks at Blue Ridge Forum for pointing it out.

Now I will cheerfully tell you I’m not the be-all and end-all of political experts – after all, if I were I think I may have been able to pull off the most recent election. But it seems to me that the overall lack of growth in the Republican Party on a national scale isn’t because they’re too conservative, but because they aren’t conservative enough. Most people who leave the party don’t switch to the Democratic column but to independent or unaffiliated status.

So there was an election in Mississippi where the chances were really good the Republicans would retain the seat. If you asked conservatives around the country who they thought would be the better Senator, I would guess the vast majority would say Chris McDaniel – if for no other reason than to oust a 36-year Washington incumbent. You would probably get the same response in Mississippi, which is why the Cochran side had to appeal to Democrats to maintain their hold on the seat, smearing the TEA Party along the way. (Never mind that the TEA Party is one key reason Senate Republicans are even sniffing the chance for a majority this year.)

More than ever, after this McDaniel debacle the clamor will rise for a third party. Obviously Democrats would love this because it would guarantee perpetual power for them, even if they’re not a majority of the voting public. As we see time and time again, Democrats stick together regardless of who wins their primaries. Here in Maryland, the Doug Gansler and Heather Mizeur supporters won’t take their ball and go home like disaffected Republicans do – they will pull the “D” lever right down the line beginning with Anthony Brown. He may not be their preferred candidate, but as long as the goodies keep flowing they really don’t care.

Having said all that, though, I think the rumors of the TEA Party’s demise are a little overblown; however, it is developing its own ruling class. That’s the problem, because when it was just about activism we were at our most effective.

One thing I’m not hearing much about in the Mississippi race – granted, I’m not on the ground there so take from it what you will – is any GOTV effort on McDaniel’s part. There was a lot of money spent on political ads, but perhaps the most effective spending was that done on the robocalls and flyers which whipped up the black vote. That spending gave the most benefit to Cochran – yet no one wants to take credit for it! Wonder why?

Some years ago, Republicans were pilloried for an ill-advised robocall here in Maryland to benefit one of their own, despite the fact it was the doing of a former Democratic chief of staff and rough-and-tumble operative. Hopefully the Mississippi media will be as curious about the origins of that Cochran robocall as Maryland’s was about the Ehrlich one, and justice will be served as it was with the Ehrlich robocall.

I suppose the lesson our side has to learn is that you can never take anything for granted except for one fact: those in power will stop at nothing to keep it. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Update: And now we get the prospect of vote buying – by Republicans. We can joke all we want about Democrats securing votes from the graveyard, but thanks to the lust for power by the Beltway establishment, our hands are forever sullied as well.

A renewal of action?

Last night I went back through and redid an old post, an event for which there is a backstory.

For about two or three years I employed a service called Photoshop Express as a repository for photos I used on monoblogue. But about this time last year the Photoshop Express site went away and while I still could get to the photos every single link I had to it became a dead one. If I had lots of time and patience perhaps I could go back and rework the links but in the interim I found a different service and repaired a select few of these posts (usually ones I link to semi-frequently) so I could restore them to their original glory.

The one I fixed last night was this one, which I wanted to use as an example of where a group of motivated people descended on Washington because I was part of the group. It’s a definite blast from the past since we did this back in 2009, but it was a useful comparison to a manufacturer summit I wrote on for American Certified.

But looking through that album of pictures reminded me of the days when those of us who would be considered “TEA Party” seemed to be much more activist than we are now. Sure, some would chalk the change up to a more sophisticated approach, but when dismal failures like Operation American Spring become the norm one has to ask if people are resigned to their fate. Or maybe they’re just trying to scrape by and survive.

With the events in Mississippi revolving around the Chris McDaniel – Thad Cochran runoff, it’s obvious there are some people who are terrified of the huddled masses. Yet while McDaniel isn’t conceding the race, it’s worthy to note no one is out yet protesting the election like, say, union activists harassing Scott Walker and the Wisconsin legislature. (I have many more thoughts on the Mississippi situation I’ll share in a future post.)

At least there’s a political race that has a pulse, though. Look at the pathetic turnout for Tuesday’s primary, where I can give you a good example of this.

As it was in 2010, there were 13 Republican candidates for our Central Committee. In every case – except perhaps the 13th and last position where the difference is small at the moment – either those of us who chose to run again garnered fewer votes than we did four years ago or the person who finished in that position did worse than the last time (i.e. our first place finisher was a newcomer while 2010’s first place finisher chose not to run again. The difference there was a whopping 1,192 votes.) Those who ran both times lost anywhere from 291 to 653 votes, based on the unofficial 2014 results. Put another way, our winner this time would have finished seventh in 2010.

Obviously some will blame the change in primary date, but I think there’s that same resignation and malaise at work in this case, too. After all, compared to 2010 we had a much more competitive governor’s race and a significant portion of our county had two General Assembly races which were quite spirited.

I’m not quite sure what we can rally around anymore. As it turned out, the original “Emergency House Call” rally didn’t matter because we got Obamacare anyway. It’s a little like the philosophy which guided the Long War in that we almost have to be effective 100% of the time to elicit significant change – yes, we got our Dave Brat but it’s sort of countered by the Beltway insiders not losing Thad Cochran – in the meantime, more regulations are promulgated by unelected bureaucrats and a President left unchecked by an impotent Congress. As we slide closer and closer to a yet-to-be-defined abyss, the ideas of the Founders slip out of our grasp.

Sometimes I think ballots will be replaced by bullets, and that’s not something most of us want. But it’s happened before, and history has a nasty habit of eventually repeating itself.