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" Credit where it&amp;#039;s due -- Alexander Burns of Tiger Beat On The Potomac has a good piece today on the fascinating -- and criminally undercovered -- Republican Senate primary in Mississippi (Goddamn) between incumbent Thad Cochran, who&amp;#039;s been in Congress for four decades, and a Tea Party extremist loon named Chris McDaniel, who seems to be running for vice-president of the Confederate States of America. &amp;quot;If we&amp;#039;re able to defeat Thad Cochran in this primary race - he&amp;#039;s been there 41 years - do you know the shock waves it&amp;#039;ll send through the system?&amp;quot; McDaniel asked a hushed audience of more than 100 in a cavernous atrium at the University of Mississippi on Thursday. &amp;quot;We have to shake the establishment.&amp;quot; McDaniel&amp;#039;s bid to topple Cochran has stirred intense passions here in the Deep South state that has prized longevity in its politicians for generations, relying on the pipeline of federal dollars that only senior appropriators like Cochran can ensure. The state has elected only five senators since World War II; since 1978, Cochran has been one of them. (Yeah, yeah, I know. How many &amp;quot;more than 100&amp;quot;? And I know that auditorium. If it&amp;#039;s not a lot more than 100. McDaniel echoed like a Ricola commercial. We continue.) McDaniel&amp;#039;s also a fake, but you knew that anyway. When McDaniel tells crowds that a victory for him would terrify the establishment, he&amp;#039;s not exaggerating - at least as far as Mississippi Republicans are concerned. When an Ole Miss student challenged McDaniel&amp;#039;s past description of Mississippi as a &amp;quot;welfare state,&amp;quot; McDaniel stood by that characterization. Electing him would mean discarding Cochran, the presumptive next chairman of the Appropriations Committee in a potentially Republican Senate, for an outsider vowing no special deliveries for his constituents. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not going to do anything for you,&amp;quot; McDaniel said on campus. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m going to get the government off your back, then I&amp;#039;m gonna let you do it for yourself.&amp;quot; About an hour later and less than a mile away, speaking in the same fluid, confident patter, he hedged that statement. McDaniel said he was not prepared to take a position on either the federal farm bill or the Cochran-backed effort to fight rate hikes in flood insurance - two local issues for which assertive federal action is plainly popular.&amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t very well send 1,000 government promises to people and then pull the rug out from under them the next day. The people of the coast have come to depend upon that, to a certain extent,&amp;quot; McDaniel said on the flood insurance issue. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s not to say that, at some point, we don&amp;#039;t need some spending reform down there.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s not a hedge. That&amp;#039;s Edward Fking Scissorhands right there. And McDaniel repeatedly ducked questions about whether he would have voted for a Hurricane Katrina relief bill of urgent importance to Mississippi that McDaniel also described as laden with pork. &amp;quot;I would have to see the details of it. I really would,&amp;quot; McDaniel said. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s not an easy vote to cast.&amp;quot; Pressed on the 2005 Katrina bill specifically, he conceded: &amp;quot;I probably would have supported it, but I don&amp;#039;t know enough about it. That&amp;#039;s just it.&amp;quot; McDaniel added that &amp;quot;some of the money [in the Katrina bill] was misspent,&amp;quot; arguing that when it comes to government spending: &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s one thing to provide immediate storm relief and to protect people&amp;#039;s lives and property, it&amp;#039;s quite another to benefit campaign supporters.&amp;quot; The state legislator declined to back up the implication that storm money was used in a corrupt fashion. Asked whether there was a specific instance of government abuse he had in mind, McDaniel responded: &amp;quot;Not that I can say.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I think the people of the coast understand that some of the money was misspent,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not alleging that Sen. Cochran misspent it.&amp;quot; A campaign spokesman reached out the morning after the interview to &amp;quot;clarify that Chris would&amp;#039;ve been a yes vote on the disaster bill.&amp;quot; ANNNNNND, HE STICKS THE LANDING! But there is one thing in the story that makes me completely crazy. The other day, I mentioned how frustrated I was that no Democrat in Alabama was willing to take on the God&amp;#039;s work of explaining to the state -- and to the country -- what a nasty, racist piece of work is Senator Jefferson Davis Beauregard Sessions. Here, we have a veteran Republican incumbent being beaten up from the Delta to Biloxi by an opportunistic crackpot, and there still is no Democratic candidate on the other side. C&amp;#039;mon, people. At least go out and have some fun. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a20353/politico-mississippi-senate-primary-021914/>