Scratch a sore loser and you'll often find a frustrated bully.
Chris McDaniel is now trying to bully his way into the nomination that he lost to Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) in June; and he will probably lose any hope of salvaging his political career, if he hasn't already done so. Yesterday was the deadline for McDaniel's lawyers to file a challenge to his runoff election results and file they did (see the scribd below).
Strictly on the legal merits of his challenge, McDaniel doesn't have a snowball's chance . . . Philip Bump of The Washington Post explains why, better than I ever could:
There are two arguments that advocates of Chris McDaniel are using to suggest that the results of Tuesday's Republican Senate run-off election in Mississippi should be overturned. First, they argue that voters who voted in the Democratic primary and the Republican run-off should be eliminated from the total. And, second, they argue that Mississippi law prevents someone from voting in a party primary who won't support the general election candidate.
Neither argument will work. In the first case, there are almost certainly not enough Democratic primary/GOP runoff ballots to make up the nearly 7,000-vote gap between McDaniel and incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran. And in the second case, McDaniel backers are chucking very large rocks in very fragile glass houses. You know who may not support the party's candidate in November? A gentleman named Chris McDaniel.
Let's dig into each of these issues . . .
The rest of Bump's article is brief and easy to understand, you won't regret taking the time to read it.
more below the fold >>
But, aside from the legalities, McDaniel's case illustrates how easily our national political discourse can go off the rails.
The Mississippi Republican primary for US Senate nominations has been a clown-show from the get-go. Even Ann Coulter thinks so.
Before the votes were even counted the Cochran-McDaniel race was billed as the nastiest primary in America. From the O'Keefe-ian break-in at Rose Cochran's nursing home to the overheated language of McDaniel's legal challenge, this primary race is an instructive example of extremism run amok in our political process.
Things got so bad that Evan Alvarez, chairman of the Mississippi Federation of College Republicans, resigned his post and changed his party affiliation to Democrat.
After the election was decided, things only got worse. McDaniel offered a "bounty" of $1000.00, on his campaign website to anyone who brought forward "evidence leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in voter fraud . . . "
That page also afforded all comers the opportunity to donate to McDaniel's defunct campaign, although, I'm not sure what they can do with those funds, legally? Perhaps McDaniel's campaign manager can come up with a creative solution like the one she used to explain a missing campaign finance filing: a tornado ate my financial records.
Lo and behold, the "bounty" move turned out an army of volunteers determined to turn Mississippi upside down and shake out its pockets, county by county, to find instances of voter fraud. And find them they did -- to include hardened vote-fixers Mitch Tyner and his wife. Mitch happens to be McDaniel's attorney. Maybe he knows something we don't . . . ?
The whole McDaniel mess is just one of those things that would be hilarious if it weren't so damn pathetic.
I think Mississippi and the country dodged a bullet with this one, my fellow Americans -- think about it, do we really want someone who counts Charles C. Johnson among his operatives sitting in our Senate making our laws?
McDaniel Primary Challenge 14-0814