Betrayal in Mississippi

Wesley Pruden:

KStreet won a big one Tuesday night in Mississippi. Preserving Thad Cochran in the U.S. Senate, like a specimen in the Museum of Natural History, was important to the Republican establishment and its network of lobbyists, string-pullers and special pleaders who pose as citizens of rectitude and nobility, not like the unwashed in the grass roots who are forever embarrassing the party elites.

But the price of victory over an upstart with the backing of the despised Tea Party is likely to be long-lasting and expensive, and not just in Mississippi.

Chris McDaniel, the upstart, put his finger on that price on election night. “There is nothing strange at all about standing as people of faith for our country that we built, that we believe in,” he said. “But there is something a bit strange, there is something strange about a Republican primary that is decided by liberal Democrats.”

Mr. McDaniel holds no distinction as the perfect candidate, or even as necessarily the best candidate, but what makes him distinctive is that he is the candidate who won the most Republican votes in a Republican primary, and was counted out by those in his party who think they’re entitled to cancel the result. He’s entitled to regard himself as the Republican nominee, if not the candidate on the Republican line on the November ballot. Mr. Cochran and his lobbyist heroes deprived Republicans of their rightful choice in a perfectly legal way, unless it turns out that how they did it was not legal. But legal or not, it was a breathtaking act of betrayal of the people who thought Thad Cochran was an honorable man.
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There is more.

John Fund also says the establishment went too far in their attempt to prop up a doddering candidate.

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... their tactics are likely to leave permanent scars in a civil war with Tea Party forces that are out of all proportion to the importance the establishment placed on saving one 76-year-old senator’s ability to please Washington’s K Street lobbying interests.
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The race baiting will not be forgotten.  It was dishonest and the Republican party should take steps to see that it does not happen again.  The GOP should also look at going to a close primary system to avoid having Democrats select their candidates.  They have turned off their base in a way that is going to hurt them.