6/30/14, "The Ruling Class Went Down to Mississippi," Angelo M. Codevilla
---------------------------------
11/16/14, "EXCLUSIVE: Six Tory MPs to defect to Ukip if it wins Rochester and Strood by-election," UK Express, Caroline Wheeler
"UP to half a dozen Tory MPs are planning to defect to Ukip if their party loses Thursday’s by-election."
"Insiders claim Basildon and Billericay MP John Baron is the most likely to cross the floor.
Five
others could also make the switch in the coming weeks, according to
sources. Last night Mr Baron refused to rule out joining Ukip and would
refer only to earlier comments he made on BBC’s Newsnight last month.
When
he was asked on the programme whether he would defect, he replied: “You
should never say never in politics.” However, he added: “My very strong
preference is to stay within the Conservative Party.”
Ukip
is on course for victory in the Kent constituency of Rochester and
Strood on Thursday. One opinion poll gave the party a 12-point lead.
Last
night Mark Reckless, the former Tory MP who sparked the by-election by
defecting to Ukip, told the Sunday Express that victory could result in a
realignment of British politics of the sort not witnessed since the
collapse of the Liberal Party in 1922.
He said:
“I don’t know what the result will be next Thursday and obviously I will
be fighting for every vote but if Ukip can win here then Ukip can win
across the country.
“I don’t know whether it is
an earthquake or a tsunami but we are seeing the potential realignment
of our political system and it is conceivable that, as the political
system changed in the 1920s with Labour replacing the Liberals, we may
see a similar change over the next decade.”
Mr Reckless said
that Ukip is now able to attract the same level of support from Labour
as it does from the Tories, echoing the findings of last week’s opinion
poll which found that 40 per cent of those who voted Labour in 2010 were
now backing Ukip.
He said: “We are getting
almost the same degree of support from ex-Labour voters as we are from
ex-Conservative voters but at least as striking is the support from
people who did not vote in the last general election and who have not
voted for a generation.
“I am getting support from a number of new voters who have never voted before who are in their 70s.
“I
have had two people find me on Twitter, one lady who said she will
never vote for anyone unless she knows them and she has got to know me
and will support me, and another who said he never thought there was any
point in voting until he saw what Ukip were saying as the agents of
change and to break up the cosy cartel the other parties have had for
too long.
“There are many Labour voters who
would never have considered voting for me because I was a Tory. Now I am
Ukip they are willing to vote for me to represent them.
“The Tory label was holding me back. I feel now I have been set free.”
Ukip’s
first MP Douglas Carswell, who won last month’s Clacton by-election,
said he saw first-hand the support for Ukip among former Labour
supporters as he joined Mr Reckless on the campaign trail last week.
He
said: “I was in a traditional Labour ward and what really struck me and
was reminiscent of my Clacton experience was that people that I just
wouldn’t have even considered worth talking to to try and get them to
vote for me are now willing to vote because the old party grounds are so
contaminated in the eyes of the voters.
“In
that traditional Labour ward there were a huge number of ex-Labour
voters, who never in a million years would vote Conservative and who
have given up on Labour, will now vote for Ukip.
“At times it took a while for me to walk down the street because there were so many people coming up to me.
“If
things go the way I hope they will in Rochester on Thursday, then I
think it is further evidence that Ukip are the first party in
generations that have sussed out how to unlock the first-past-the-post
system. The implications of that are huge.
“Clacton
was seen as a very Ukip-friendly seat. Political gurus have looked at
the numbers and have said Rochester is the 270th most Ukip- friendly
seat. If we can do what the polls suggest we might do next Thursday,
there are 269 other seats upstream of that which could be unlocked too.
“That is the potential, although nothing in life is ever certain.”
Despite
Labour being under threat from Ukip, they have turned their big guns on
David Cameron, accusing him of resorting to “desperate measures” to
defeat Ukip at the by-election.
Rochester and
Strood’s Labour Party candidate Naushabah Khan made the claim in
response to last week’s appeal by the Prime Minister to supporters of Ed
Miliband to vote Tory to keep out Ukip.
In
a highly unusual move, Mr Cameron urged Labour, Liberal Democrat and
even Green supporters to give their votes to the Tory candidate Kelly
Tolhurst to prevent a “Ukip boost and all the uncertainty and
instability that leads to”.
His demand followed
an opinion poll commissioned by the former Tory party treasurer Lord
Ashcroft, which put Ukip on 44 per cent, the Conservatives on 32, Labour
on 17 and the Lib Dems on only two per cent. Ms Khan told the Sunday
Express: “Cameron is increasingly resorting to desperate measures to try
and pull in Conservative support.
“For us it is
about getting people to go out there and vote with their heart and vote
for what they believe in and in this election we think the only party
that is talking about the real issues is Labour.
“I
think there is an element of frustration with what this Government has
done and people want to express that frustration and they are fed up.
“For
some of them voting Ukip might be a way for them to do that but
actually, when we are out knocking on doors, we are finding our support
is still there and there are a lot of people who do want to support us.”" via Free Rep.
==========================
==========================
Added: What it cost the Ruling Class to beat us in the 2014 GOP Mississippi Primary and Runoff:
Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran campaign spending chart, OpenSecrets.org:
Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran campaign spending chart, OpenSecrets.org:
A country in which voters can't be heard is a Third World country.
.
Dr. Codevilla's recap of the 2014 Mississippi GOP primary including NY Times quoting a black Democrat paid to organize for Republican Cochran:
6/30/14, "The Ruling Class Went Down to Mississippi," Angelo M. Codevilla, Liberty Law site
In the Mississippi primary, Republican establishmentarians from around the country solicited votes from Democrats to defeat the insurgent challenge to Senator Thad Cochran. Their arguments were the same ones used by the bipartisan ruling class that has ruled America for a generation:
The role of government is to generate benefits for its clients,
and those who object are bad people.
They paid many Democrat voters (nearly all black) so called “walking around money” for their votes, and have refused in many counties to let McDaniel aides examine the voter roles to see whether these voters were eligible to cast ballots.
The retail corruption is much less remarkable than the acquiescence therein of the establishment’s leadership – such as Karl Rove and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. This is very remarkable. Rove’s super-PAC, “Conservative Victory Project,” which played a leading role in recruiting Democrats for Cochran,
exists explicitly to defeat insurgent Republicans everywhere.
The Journal’s editorial page, whose editorials and featured columnists mobilized opinion against the Mississippi insurgency, had done the same throughout this and previous years’ primaries. Rove’s post election commentary glossed over the vote-buying as if it had not happened, while the Journal’s Jason Riley endorsed it cynically as “minority outreach.”
To Republican and independent voters who are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, the conflict between the pretenses and the actions of such as Rove and of the Journal added insult to injury. The Journal, for example, never loses an opportunity to declare itself the mortal enemy of “crony capitalism” as it decries the direction in which America has been headed, while the word “conservative” as part of the title of Rove’s super-PAC intentionally evokes the complex of sentiments of voters angry at the ruling class’s characterization of them as, well, the litany: “racist, greedy, stupid,” etc.
Indeed, the Republican Party’s very identity, the one, sole, argument it makes to persuade voters to vote Republican rather than Democrat,
is that it will take the country
in a direction different from the one in which it has been going.
But, in the Mississippi primary, the Republican Establishment’s campaign was by and for crony capitalism, and employed the classic themes by which the ruling class has beaten down the rest of America.
To Mississippians white and black, the establishment’s message was: All this Tea Party talk about dangerous deficits and the need to cut spending is a threat to responsible officials’ capacity to bring you the jobs and federal assistance on which your prosperity depends. Orchestrating that message was Haley Barbour, former governor of Mississippi, former national chairman of the Republican Party,
and arguably Washington’s biggest lobbyist.
Day to day operations were run by Stuart Stevens, formerly chief strategist in Mitt Romney’s 2012 national campaign, along with Henry and Austin Barbour, Haley’s nephews. There could be few better
personifications of crony capitalism.
To the blacks, who, according to The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight.com provided some forty thousand votes, the message was:
Don’t be intimidated by the Tea Party. . . . Mississippi cannot and will not return to the bygone era of intimidating black Mississippians from voting. We must rise up on Tuesday and have our voices heard on who will represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate. VOTE THAD COCHRAN.The Times reported the effect: Roger Smith, a black Democrat who said he was being paid to organize for Mr. Cochran, said, ‘I don’t know too much about [Cochran’s opponent] McDaniel other than what McDaniel is saying:
that he’s Tea Party, he’s against Obama, he don’t like black people.”
In short, those who oppose the way things are done in America are racists.
You ought to hate them as they hate you.
Why do such things? Cui bono? Clearly such behavior by the Republican establishment has nothing to do with the role it claims for itself of opposition to the direction on which America has been taken in recent decades,
never mind with anything “conservative.”
It has everything to do with maintaining its status,
and that of its clients, within the ruling class.
The Mississippi primary confirmed yet again that, if America is to go in a direction other than the one of which some three fourths of American disapprove, it is compelled to do so with a vehicle other than the Republican Party."
----------------------------
"Angelo M. Codevilla professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University. He served as a U.S. Senate Staff member dealing with oversight of the intelligence services. His new book Peace Among Ourselves and With All Nations was published by Hoover Institution Press." Photo above from Liberty Law site.
============================
Added: From NY Times article linked in Codevilla piece, NY liberal billionaire Mike Bloomberg gave as much as $500,000 to support the GOP Establishment candidate in the 2014 Mississippi GOP primary:
6/24/14, "Cochran Holds Off Tea Party Challenger in Mississippi," NY Times, Jonathan Weisman
"Also sure to inflame the right: a center-right super PAC, Defending Main Street, which contributed over $150,000 to Mr. Cochran during the runoff, received $250,000 from Michael Bloomberg in the same period, according to a source close to the former New York City mayor.
Mr. Bloomberg also contributed $250,000 to Mr Cochran’s super PAC, Mississippi Conservatives, before the primary....
It was an extraordinary end to a wild campaign, with a Republican
standing up for the rights of black Democrats,
and with Tea Party groups from the North,
especially the Senate Conservatives Fund, crying foul."...
========================
Karl Rove's "Conservative Victory Project" mentioned in Dr. Codevilla's article was financed at least in part by Rove's American Crossroads PAC:
"Conservative Victory Project," 2014 donors:
American Crossroads, $18,685, OpenSecrets.org
-------------------
"Conservative Victory Project," 2014 Expenditures:"
"Top Vendors/Recipient, American Crossroads"
"$17,160," Accountants, compliance, legal services, misc.
=========================
In his 6/26/14 Wall St. Journal article Mr. Rove says he made three donations to the 2014 Mississippi GOP primary: one to the Cochran campaign, one to Mississippi Conservatives (Cochran's PAC) via Rove's super PAC American Crossroads, and one to the Mississippi GOP primary runoff. American Crossroads PAC also donated to Rove's "Conservative Victory Project."
Rove: "(Full disclosure: I donated to Mr. Cochran's campaign and the super PAC that I help, American Crossroads, donated to Mississippi Conservatives in the primary and runoff.)"...
6/26/14, "National Tea Party Groups Take A Beating," WSJ, Karl Rove
"The six-term senator's victory was due to a strategy by his campaign...led by GOP national committeeman Henry Barbour and his uncle, the very popular former Gov. Haley Barbour."...
======================
===================
Per OpenSecrets.org, American Crossroads donated $210,000 to 2014 GOP primary PAC, "Mississippi Conservatives:"
("Bluegrass Cmte" above with $50,000 donation is a Mitch McConnell group).
About: "Mississippi Conservatives"
"This committee is a single-candidate super PAC in support of Thad Cochran (R)."
====================
About: "Mississippi Conservatives"
"This committee is a single-candidate super PAC in support of Thad Cochran (R)."
====================
.
No comments:
Post a Comment