Chris McDaniel: I was “betrayed” by GOP establishment

Folks, what happened last night is utterly destructive, not just to conservatism that's obviously feared in Washington, but to the core of the Republican Party itself...this changes everything.

MFP: Chris McDaniel, sounding genuinely hurt by the unethical and illegal tactics employed by Thad Cochran and Haley Barbour in the Mississippi GOP runoff Tuesday…

McDaniel: I am a two-term state senator, I have fought for this party my entire life, I’ve given money…I’ve done everything they’ve asked me to do– and last night, they pulled over 35,000 Democrats into a Republican primary to defeat me…we feel betrayed.

…

Hannity: Do you foresee any circumstance under which you would support this guy? Because I don’t think I could do it.

McDaniel: I prayed about it last night…my core principle is gonna have a hard time even looking at politics again.

…

Hannity: You sound like you got punched in the gut. You sound like you’ve been betrayed.

McDaniel: Sean, I was…I have fought for these people. These are my colleagues. They are my friends…I don’t understand!

But Ted Cruz has bigger fish to fry...

“I certainly congratulate my colleague, Thad,” Cruz said on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, pointing out that the Republican establishment poured millions into the Mississippi race and only won by a thin margin. Cruz reminded the hosts that he did not endorse a candidate in the Mississippi primary, as he promised to stay out of incumbent Senate races.

As does Rand…

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a potential 2016 presidential contender, declined to support tea party critics of Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran’s efforts to mobilize non-GOP voters to win the Republican nomination.

“I’m for more people voting, not less people voting,” Paul told reporters Wednesday.

Whether Cruz or Paul should or shouldn't have gotten involved in the Mississippi Republican runoff isn't really the issue, but what either statesmen should definitely be able to identify by now is the outrageous racial LIES and outright FRAUD that occurred last night by their own party to secure an incumbent. Further disappointment. (UPDATE: Cruz tells Levin on 7/7 that "What happened in Mississippi was appalling," that what the DC machine did was 'unprincipled' and 'wrong,' and that the Mississippi race needs to be "vigorously investigated and anyone involved in criminal conduct should be prosecuted.")

ADDENDUM I: When even Sean Hannity is disgusted enough to disuade conservatives in Mississippi from rewarding Cochran with a seventh term, that tells you how obvious it is that we need to THROW THESE BUMS OUT!

MFP: The electoral shenanigans employed by the victorious Cochran campaign in the Mississippi Republican runoff were too much for even GOP establishment spokesman Sean Hannity– who urged listeners not to reward Thad Cochran’s “disgusting” tactics by voting for him in the general election…

To literally encourage people to join into this primary scheme is so despicable…if I was in Mississippi, I would not, and could not in good conscience, vote for Thad Cochran after the way this campaign was run.

…

I know many of you are gonna say, ‘but Hannity, that means we put the seat at risk for a Democrat’.

Well what is Thad Cochran? He ran as a Democrat. He ran as somebody who hates the Tea Party. He ran as somebody who hates conservatives…I would not support this man!

ADDENDUM II: On Thursday, Karl Rove wrote an WSJ op-ed, bragging about the Cochran strategy, without any mention of the racial chicanery. Utter silence. Jeffrey Lord calls him out...

AmericanSpectator: This is amazing.

[Yesterday] morning in the Wall Street Journal, former Bush aide Karl Rove writes a column [saying] Cochran won because of “a strategy” that “aimed to…bring out Mississippians, including Democrats, who had not voted in either party's primary and thus could vote in the runoff.” If that’s all this were, the Cochran victory might go down better. But, of course, that’s not all that went on here.

Incredibly, Karl Rove has ignored the blatantly obvious chicanery that is the subject of discussion across the conservative media. To wit, as mentioned in my column nearby, the “strategy” to get Democrats to vote for Cochran was not some uplifting, Reagan-style vision of a city on a hill. Bush-style compassionate conservatism this was not. The bald fact here is that fliers and robocalls appealing to the worst racist instincts imaginable were used to push Cochran over the top. Put another way, these campaign materials targeted conservative Republicans with the absolute worst line of leftist bilge: that the Republican Party is racist.

And what does Mr. Rove have to say about this? Is there a condemnation? A demand for an investigation by the GOP as to who paid for this? Who authorized it?

Mr. Rove, shamefully, says nothing.

Not good. Not good at all.

There's also another problem in there that Rove blatantly misstates (as does most of the lib media, Dems and RINO operatives collectively). It's extremely likely that Democrats DID vote in the Democratic Party's primary (over 75,000 of them) and then illegally crossed over to skew the Republican runoff.