Thad Cochran's Dirty Dealings in Mississippi
By Gina Miller
RenewAmerica.com
It's been a week since we
witnessed here in Mississippi one of the most
dastardly, corrupt Republican run-off election
schemes we've ever seen. By now, you know much of
the story. 42-year Washington incumbent U.S. Senator
Thad Cochran was almost certain to lose the
Republican primary run-off to conservative
Mississippi State Senator Chris McDaniel. Cochran
had already lost the first primary election to
McDaniel, but sadly, McDaniel was just shy of the 50
percent of the vote needed to secure the win. So,
former Mississippi
Governor Haley Barbour, a close ally of Cochran,
and his
Democrat surrogates, went to work on a
despicable, lying, fear-mongering, "vote buying"
scheme to deceive and entice black Democrats into
crossing over and giving Cochran their votes, many
of which are turning out to be fraudulent. Cochran
was given the Republican nomination "victory" by
Democrats, not Republicans.
Hoping to challenge to the election results, the
McDaniel campaign and volunteers are currently
combing through voter rolls across the state to
identify Democrat voters who illegally cast votes in
the Republican run-off. While we have an open
primary system in Mississippi, it remains illegal to
vote in a primary election under one party and then
turn around and vote in a run-off under a different
party. It's also illegal – although difficult to
enforce until after the fact – to support a
candidate in the primary who you don't intend to
support in the general election.
As of now, they have found
1,500 illegal Democrat votes in one county
alone. There's also the question of potentially
illegal absentee ballots, of which there was a much
greater number in the run-off than the primary. As
reported by Matthew Boyle at
Breitbart's Big Government:
According to data compiled by GOP operative
[Gregg] Phillips, there was a significant spike in
absentee ballots for the runoff over the primary.
Between both the Democratic and Republican primaries
on June 3, there were a total of 18,036 absentee
ballots cast. In the runoff on June 24 – between the
statewide GOP runoff and the low-profile third
congressional district Democrat runoff – there were
19,144 absentee ballots cast.
"When you look at what causes voting behaviors to
radically change, in the absence of a demographic
shift, in the absence of any single point of
departure, in three weeks what could cause such a
shift?" [Catherine] Engelbrecht asked.
"Here's the things that we know: We know that
mail-in absentee ballots were not subject to
Mississippi's new voter identification regulations,"
Engelbrecht stated, adding:
We know that, historically speaking, in the last
several years, there have been numerous people
jailed for absentee ballot harvesting and
falsification of identities using absentee ballots.
And we know of the Breitbart News video showing that
absentees were again being harvested in the runoff
and primary. I would go so far as to say when I
tried to go and look at the absentee ballot
applications this past week at two separate
courthouses, I was not allowed to look at them.
Right now, Engelbrecht says, election officials and
state GOP officials are not being forthcoming with
absentee ballot applications. Her group has publicly
called on Mississippi GOP Chairman Joe Nosef to
refrain from certifying Tuesday's runoff election
until all the absentee ballots and applications are
verified. Nosef hasn't responded to a request from
Breitbart News about whether he'll comply with the
request to verify those votes before certifying the
election. He also has not responded to a request
about a call from McDaniel to intervene and order
state party officials across Mississippi to
cooperate with McDaniel's allies who seek to verify
the election's outcome.
So, we can add obstructionist insult to
election-stealing injury. And, it's not just the
fraudulent votes and ballots and
residents being denied access to view the voter
rolls. There are the lying robo-calls and fliers
distributed in black communities, and also numerous
reports of money being handed out,
"vote buying," as incentive for Democrats to
support Cochran in the run-off.
Yes, we know election laws were broken, but what's
just as bad is that we're seeing a Republican
establishment that is so desperate to hold onto its
power that there is literally no unethical thing it
won't do. We're used to Democrats telling blatant
lies to push their agenda and engaging in shady,
criminal election activity, but we have not often
seen Republicans stoop to such in-your-face dirty
tricks, giving the proverbial middle finger to the
will of their conservative base while viciously and
falsely painting us TEA Partiers as racists to woo
Democrats. It's hellish.
The Republicans in Mississippi voted overwhelmingly
for Chris McDaniel in the run-off election, but Thad
Cochran was chosen by black Democrats (many of whom
voted illegally) who stupidly believed the lies the
Barbour-Cochran Democrat surrogates spread about the
intentions of the TEA Party movement. In the lowest
form of slimy race-baiting, a
flier handed out to black Democrats, falsely
claimed the TEA Party intended to prevent them from
voting in the run-off. It's an absurd, devilish
claim. While no TEA Partier would dream of such a
thing (we're
not New Black Panthers, after all), we were
naturally concerned that there would be illegal
votes cast by Democrats who had already voted in the
Democrat primary. Of course, we were right. Nor are
we naïve enough to believe these "crossover"
Democrats will support Cochran in the general
election – further breaking the law with their
fraudulent votes.
Writing at WorldNetDaily, Leo Hohmann quoted
Chris McDaniel in his appearance on Sean Hannity's
television show:
McDaniel said Cochran used "race-baiting, lies
and distortions," to push out the Democrat vote.
"We've found widespread irregularities of ineligible
voters that should not have been there in the first
place," McDaniel told Hannity. "And they were pushed
there – this is what's shocking, Sean – they were
pushed there by an overt action, an aggressive
action on the part of Sen. Cochran's campaign, that
was filled with race-baiting, lies, distortions. He
literally ran the latter three weeks on food stamps.
He ran on voter suppression and he ran on pork.
Mississippi is a conservative state, and one would
think that our party was a conservative party, but
this proves otherwise."
Mr. Hohmann concluded his WorldNetDaily piece:
Wesley Pruden, another longtime political analyst
and editor emeritus of the Washington Times,
concluded in a June 26 op-ed piece that the victory
in Mississippi could cost the Republican
establishment considerable collateral over the long
run. Pruden saw the handiwork of former Gov. Haley
Barbour all over the campaign to keep Cochran in
Washington.
"K Street won a big one Tuesday night in
Mississippi. ... After [Cochran] ran a close second
in the preferential primary, he was widely regarded
as a dead duck," Pruden wrote. "The men with the
most to lose if the senator lost, led by Haley
Barbour, the former governor and a big-time
Washington lobbyist, went to work."
Whether they acted legally or not, "it was a
breathtaking act of betrayal of the people who
thought Thad Cochran was an honorable man," he
continued. "The black preachers and politicians,
Democrats all, now rightly claim credit for saving
Cochran from the evil tea-party Republicans, and
they're entitled to their reward, such as it may be.
They should bear in mind that the senator is not
likely to show any more loyalty to them than he has
shown to his own party. He will likely disappoint
everyone but the lobbyists who used race and
resentment to aid his escape from oblivion. If he
wants to do the really honorable thing, he would
consider switching parties.
"Betrayal is a dangerous game," Pruden concluded.
"The gains are nearly always for a shorter term than
expected."
Whatever the outcome of this investigation and
possible challenge to the election results by Chris
McDaniel's campaign, and whether or not Chris
decides to run as a third-party write-in candidate
in the general election, Thad Cochran is foolishly
deceiving himself if he believes for a minute that
he will get the votes in November of the thousands
of true conservatives upon whom he callously spit.
We will NEVER vote for him!
© Gina Miller