Mississippi Is Just One Piece Of The GOP's African-American Problem

[doxydad]

The longer the results of the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff remain in any sort of doubt, the more public discussion of the Republican Party’s attitude toward the African-American voters who seem to have played a key role in re-nominating Sen. Thad Cochran becomes a potentially dangerous topic for the party as a whole.

On Monday the Mississippi GOP certified Cochran as the winner, clearing the way for whatever legal action Team McDaniel and its tea party allies choose to pursue. For this challenge to have any chance of success, it will have to involve a very abrasive effort to suggest the widespread enlistment of Democrats (which generally means African-Americans in this racially polarized state) by Cochran represents both “voter fraud” in the legal sense and corruption in the moral sense. This latter theme is important because only the fear that the Cochran win will become a legendary “corrupt bargain” poisoning intra-party relations this November and beyond could motivate Republican officials to take the discretionary measures that Mississippi law seems to demand, given the absence of any legal requirement for a recount or revote even if there’s widespread evidence of what McDaniel’s supporters are delicately calling “irregularities.”


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/mississippi-is-just-one-piece-of-the-gop-s-african-american-problem