Why would PBS devote over six minutes to a midterm election race that looks to be headed towards a blowout? Perhaps it's because examining the Mississippi Senate race on the PBS NewsHour allows the network to dig into the bitter primary battle between Tea Party-backed Chris McDaniel and the victor, incumbent Thad Cochran.
Chris McDaniel
By Ann Coulter | July 23, 2014 | 10:05 PM EDT
When a U.S. president is using the IRS to terrify his political enemies, destroying American health care and opening our southern border to millions of future welfare-collecting, Democratic voters from the Third World, why is a dime's worth of money being wasted on trying to replace the Republican senator from Mississippi with a slightly different Republican?
Honestly, I think these deck chairs look just fine. Maybe we should check on the Titanic's hull, captain.
By Ann Coulter | July 10, 2014 | 2:58 PM EDT
Chris McDaniel, candidate for the U.S. Senate from Mississippi, lost the Republican runoff to incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran last month, and now he is being led down a primrose path to political oblivion. McDaniel's passionate supporters think that a moment of crisis for the country is a good time to treat control of the Senate as if it's a prom queen election.
Hoping for yet a third primary vote, McDaniel's crew is going to prevent him from having any political career, ever again.
By Randy Hall | June 25, 2014 | 10:52 PM EDT
In Tuesday's contentious runoff contest, senator Thad Cochran, a Republican who has represented Mississippi since his first election in 1978, defeated Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel in part because the “open primary” allowed African-American Democrats to cast ballots in the GOP contest.
As a result, John King -- host of CNN's Inside Politics program -- wondered during Wednesday's edition whether Cochran will simply say “Thank you” and forget the votes he received or use the victory as a “turning point” for a larger conversation within the Republican Party about issues like voting rights.
By Matthew Balan | June 25, 2014 | 4:40 PM EDT
On Wednesday's New Day on CNN, The Daily Beast's John Avlon and his wife, Margaret Hoover, gloated over the recent defeats of Tea Party-backed candidates in Republican primaries. Avlon strongly hinted that the grassroots conservatives movement was full of crazy people: "Don't call it the establishment. It's the sanity caucus."
Anchor Kate Bolduan wondered if former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's loss earlier in June was a "one-off." Hoover rattled off a list of prominent conservatives who apparently defeated in the wake of Mississippi Republican Senate candidate Chris McDaniel's defeat on Tuesday: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]
By Laura Flint | June 25, 2014 | 3:30 PM EDT
On the June 24 edition of Hardball With Chris Matthews, the MSNBC anchor invited Adam Brandon of the Tea Party organization FreedomWorks onto the show in an attempt to portray the Tea Party as targeting black voters in the Republican Mississippi primary run-off. Matthews claimed McDaniel’s supporters were citing a “Jim Crow-era law from 1942" to try to stifle votes by African-American voters for Sen. Thad Cochran (R).
Of course the law in question is not racist in construction, but is rather intended to prevent Democrats or Republicans from utilizing crossover strategic voting in another party’s primary. It is obviously unenforceable due to the secrecy of the ballot. However Matthews went out of the way to characterize how the Tea Party is abusing this law as a way to stop Black Democrats from voting, stating that “Mississippi's attorney general” is on edge, and “fears racial profiling...and intimidation tactics might be used to suppress the black vote.” [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
By Quin Hillyer | June 24, 2014 | 5:30 PM EDT
Ronan Farrow opened his MSNBC program Tuesday with these words: "Who can steal Magnolia State voters?" The opening words on the screen behind him were: "Mississippi Mud," followed by a chyron reading "Stealing the Magnolia State." Farrow's reporting quickly emphasized, several times, that the primary was a Republican one, and that it had gotten "nasty."
Several minutes followed, with NBC's Kasie Hunt reporting live from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, detailing the "really hard fought, really nasty" campaign between U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, portrayed on the whole as a doddering figure, and strongly conservative challenger Chris McDaniel, portrayed as an insensitive extremist.
By Brad Wilmouth | April 16, 2014 | 9:15 PM EDT
On the Wednesday, April 16, PoliticsNation on MSNBC, far-left host Al Sharpton berated what he viewed as "extremism" and "intolerant radical views" of Republican candidates for U.S. Senate in Mississippi and North Carolina as he highlighted comments that he considered "offensive," "ugly," and "vile."
Guest Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post went so far as to hyperbolically suggest that the GOP is "going to cease to exist" unless Republican Party leaders who are "aghast at the far-right extremists" do not react against these candidates.
Sharpton began the show: