Posted by William A. Jacobson
Saturday Night Card Game: If these tactics are needed against Chris McDaniel challenging Thad Cochran, maybe the race is worth a look.
I don’t know much about Chris McDaniel, who is challenging Thad Cochran in the Mississippi Republican Senate primary. I also don’t know much about Thad Cochran.
I haven’t studied the race, or taken a position. I don’t back a challenger just for the sake of backing a challenger.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, however, backs an incumbent just for the sake of backing an incumbent. NRSC is, in Prof. Reynold’s words, “an incumbent-protection club. That’s basically its job.”
Which means backing any Republican Senate incumbent, no matter how bad and no matter how good the challenger. That means Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey; Bob Bennett over Mike Lee, and so on.
Brad Dayspring is the Communications Director and Strategist for NRSC. While his Twitter feed has the obligatory disclaimer that his tweets are his own, he does seem to use his Twitter feed as part of his NRSC mission.
A tweet on April 3 by Dayspring about McDaniel accused McDaniel of “associat[ing] with white nationalists & segregationists” based on a linked story at Talking Points Memo. (H/t The Other McCain)
Brad Dayspring @BDayspring
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Candidates who associate with white nationalists & segregationists events give away #GOP seats to Democrats. http://bit.ly/1scpnwC #MSsen
10:30 AM - 3 Apr 2014
Mississippi Senate Candidate Backs Out Of Keynoting Gun Rally Billed...
State Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-MS), the tea party candidate in the Mississippi Senate race, was listed as the keynote speaker at a gun rights event along with a Confederate memorabilia store owner who...
Talking Points Memo
The TPM story reported that McDaniel backed out of an event after it was revealed — by a local pro-Cochran blog — that one of the vendors displaying at the event was pro-segregation.
That’s it. No allegation that McDaniels himself was pro-segregation, or speaking at a pro-segregation event. Only that there was a vendor at the event.
That’s the sort of guilt by remote association we expect TPM and others to use against Republicans. Robert Stacy McCain, who has an extensive write up on it, correctly states:
The attempt to turn this into a scandal is like saying that if a candidate campaigns at a county fair, he thereby endorses every rip-off carnival game at the fair.
It’s not surprising that NBC picked up on it, which Dayspring also tweeted out, asserting that McDaniel was not vetted:
(more…)
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