It is part of every election season. You can count on it like the sun coming up in the morning. The Democrats spread anger and fear in the black community over the imaginary Republican desire to “put y’all back in chains”, as Biden put it during the last election season.  

“Those racist Republicans want to keep you from voting. They want to turn back the clock on civil rights. Republicans oppose big government because they hate black people.  You must vote to stop them.” That’s the story they sell. It is a divisive and socially destructive tactic that does great harm to our country. But what it does to the country is a secondary issue for those who sell the lies. The primary goal is to get an angry, motivated voting block to the polls.  

Thad Cochran was defeated by Chris McDaniel in the initial vote for Mississippi Senator but Cochran was not defeated by enough votes to avoid a run-off election. In preparation for the run-off election a decision was made by the Cochran team to tear the ‘race-baiting’ page from the Democrat playbook and to use it against McDaniel. 

Large amounts of money were spent in Democrat districts on phone calls, fliers, and door-to-door pleas to encourage a vote against the racist Republican. A Cochran flier sold the lie that “Tea Party” candidate McDaniel “intends to prevent blacks from voting on Tuesday”. “Mississippi cannot and will not return to a bygone era of intimidating black Mississippians from voting. We must rise up on Tuesday to have our voices heard…”

This is classic, despicable race-baiting being used by a six- term Republican against a fellow Republican who had the nerve to challenge him and to challenge the way things are done in Washington.

Robocalls supporting Cochran targeted black districts with a message trashing the Tea Party and supporting President Obama. The message was essentially that the racist Tea Party was making it very difficult for our “African-American” president. Tea partiers want to oppose our wonderful president and so you need to vote against racists like McDaniel. 

This was a race-based, pro-Obama, anti-Tea Party message paid for by Republicans. Establishment Republicans worked hard for and funded this dishonest campaign.

The deceitful campaign worked. Blacks turned out in sufficient numbers to let the big-government Republican retain power.

This election confirms, as strongly as anything in recent memory, that establishment Republicans are power hungry and corrupt. They are enemies of the Tea Party’s values of limited government and fiscal sanity.