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07.09.2014 2

Do Senate Republicans hate the Tea Party, more than they hate Harry Reid?

Cruz_WarrentoonBy Rick Manning

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has a Mississippi problem.

Their campaign tactics have made their nominee nearly unelectable in the reddest of red states. The Mississippi Senate primary challenger, Chris McDaniel, won the vote amongst Republican voters, and has vowed to challenge the tainted election outcome in court.  Truth is that he very well could succeed.

Whether there is a new election or not, the bad smell left by the establishment Republican class being behind a campaign targeting black Democrat voters by accusing their tea party base of being racist is not recoverable.

Who among the McDaniel supporters are going to be able to turn the other cheek when the “Republican” Senator won by deliberately destroying and mischaracterizing all of their collective characters?

And now that these “inside the Beltway” politicos have been revealed to be nothing more than base loathing for hire operatives, why would any conservative Republican trust them?

It is rumored that the Committee is already feeling the wrath from their small donors who have stopped writing the $25 checks that demonstrate a political party’s vibrancy.  Significantly, some Republican Senators are even questioning the wisdom of funding their own internal political operation, as it becomes increasingly perceived as being a detriment to the overall mission of winning power.

Unless something is done, Republican Senators who are eyeing Committee Chairmanships and ridding themselves of being abused by Harry Reid’s theatrics will also be forced to answer questions about their rolls in the attacks on conservatives.  Squirming under this scrutiny, these red state Senators will also be witnessing the fruits of the NRSC’s scorched earth tactics as they see the majority move one state further away.

To staunch the potential fall-out, Senate Republicans and their political operatives at the NRSC need to understand their situation and change course.

First, they need to save Mississippi, by joining Chris McDaniel in calling for a new election to purge their political culpability in what appears to be a vote buying scandal fueled by their funding ads that played on racial tensions.  When a new election is granted, they should stay out of it.

Additionally, those Republican Senators who funded the NRSC’s Cochran effort need to disavow the effort and stay out of the remaining primaries for the year.

Finally, and most importantly, they need to determine who at the NRSC made the fateful win at all cost decision that has put what should have been the easiest Party takeover of Congressional power since Pelosi and Reid were elected in 2006 in jeopardy, and fire them.

They didn’t have to engage in illegal activity to be dismissed, they should be fired because they jeopardized the big picture objective of taking control of the Senate, out of a misplaced goal to stop the Tea Party from having another seat at the Senate Republican table.

If mainstream Republicans don’t take action and allow Mississippi to continue to fester, it can only be assumed that they hate their activist base more than they hate being out of power.  Hardly a recipe for winning in November or the future.

The author is vice president of public policy and communications for Americans for Limited Government.

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