Fox News: Funny Last Minute Article Change

[Foolmewunz]

This is funny. I'm sure it will be rewritten.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...op-runoff-race-between-veteran-lawmaker-thad/

This portion is from half-way through the article until the end.

In the days leading up to the runoff, Cochran, a career politician who has spent 36 years in office, scrambled for votes.

On Sunday, Cochran, 76, and a dozen campaign volunteers greeted hundreds of workers at the Ingalls shipyard on the Gulf Coast. He handed out fliers that said, “Save our Jobs.”

At the event, Cochran shook hands with anyone willing to shake his and said, “I hope you have a nice day.”

But some say it was too little, too late for the veteran lawmaker to chase down his much younger opponent, who turns 42 this week and has already built a strong conservative base.

During Cochran’s shipyard event, The Associated Press reported a man telling the senator, “It’s time for a change, dude. You need to go.”

McDaniel campaigned on the idea that Mississippi needed a younger and more conservative candidate in Washington.

Cochran was elected to the Senate in 1978 and had been the former chairman in the Senate Appropriations Committee. He had not aggressively campaigned before the June 3 primary, a sign some say highlighted a misplaced sense of comfort and confidence from a career politician.

Only seven incumbent senators from either party have lost in primary elections. One was defeated in a state convention; two others happened after incumbents switched parties.

There has only been on pure incumbent defeat since 1994, which came when Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., was taken down politically in the 2012 GOP primary by Richard Mourdock, a Tea Party-backed conservative.

Mourdock ultimately lost in the general election to then- U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly after Mourdock declared pregnancy as a consequence of rape was “something God intended” in a debate.

The defeat of Lugar and Cochran represent what Washington politics used to be – lawmakers who tried to take care of their state even if it meant working with the opposing party.

In a recent interview with PBS NewsHour, Lugar, 82, said he thinks the political landscape in America is changing and not necessarily for the better.

Lugar said he sees similarities between his loss and Cochran’s.

“I think there are many parallels,” he said, noting that “many of the same national groups” who were against him are spending big against Cochran, too; that he was willing to work with Democrats to get things like the Farm Bill passed; and that he was for “continuity.”

Sounds like they're writing up a McDaniel win, right? The headline and the first five or six paragraphs report the Cochran win. I think they were following the TP polls and all the money spent and had a breathless article on the stunning TP victory in Mississippi all ready for release.

 

[SezMe]

I just read it. It has been rewritten.

Very interesting contest. If I had lost a party primary because of cross-over votes, I'd be royally pissed as well.

 

[Foolmewunz]

I just read it. It has been rewritten.

Very interesting contest. If I had lost a party primary because of cross-over votes, I'd be royally pissed as well.

Well, if you ask the GOP mainstream, the reason the TP wins in some primaries is because the Dems crossover and vote for the extremist candidates so we can steal a blue district or Senate seat. Now, according to the conservative wing, it appears we cross over to hurt the Tea Party. It must be a lovely world, GOP Planet. Somebody else is always to blame.

So far this year it's Mainstream GOP 5 - Tea Party Wing 1. The Cantor situation looks more and more like the old adage that 100% of politics is local.

 

[daredelvis]

I just read it. It has been rewritten.

Very interesting contest. If I had lost a party primary because of cross-over votes, I'd be royally pissed as well.

If I were the member of a party where a unapologetic attender of neo-confederate and white nationalist rallies gets almost 50% of the vote (maybe even more if you remove the cross-over voters), I would be royally pissed. Not really, I would leave that party.

Daredelvis

 

[Puppycow]

Someone is a sore loser:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/25/politics/primary-wrap/

 

[Polaris]

Someone is a sore loser:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/25/politics/primary-wrap/

*Droopy voice*: "Mean old incumbant. Mean old Democrats."

Guess what, McDaniel, if you were elected you'd have to represent the whole state - not just your base. That comes with the job. You just weren't that appealing and you lost.

Why don't you queef about it, ya pussy?

 

[Foolmewunz]

Someone is a sore loser:
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/25/politics/primary-wrap/

That's a nice recap of the day's events. Looks like the score is more along the order of Mainstream GOP 12 - TP 1.

More interesting is that the cannibalism in the party has them taking on bona fide conservatives, like in OK, and trying to make them into RHINOs. The Tea Party wing is just digging itself deeper and deeper.

 

[SezMe]

I hope McDaniel runs as a write in. It would make for a fun campaign and maybe the GOP would split the vote and let a Dem sneak in the back door.

 

[Cain]

Limbaugh, the man who called for "Operation Chaos" against Obama, is decrying the GOP establishment for seeking votes from moderates and liberals. Good times.

 

[turingtest]

Well, if you ask the GOP mainstream, the reason the TP wins in some primaries is because the Dems crossover and vote for the extremist candidates so we can steal a blue district or Senate seat. Now, according to the conservative wing, it appears we cross over to hurt the Tea Party. It must be a lovely world, GOP Planet. Somebody else is always to blame.

So far this year it's Mainstream GOP 5 - Tea Party Wing 1. The Cantor situation looks more and more like the old adage that 100% of politics is local.

The thing is, McDaniel is only complaining about Democrats crossing over because he lost; for all he knows, or can know, he got more of the crossover votes than Cochran did. He knew, going into this thing, that crossover primary voting was allowed (as long as Democrats doing it hadn't already voted in the Democratic primary); if he couldn't appeal to those potential votes for a working (as opposed to purely obstructionist) government, that's on him, not on the voters who are, after all, allowed a free choice, even if it's only for the lesser of two evils.

My wife works at the shipyard mentioned in the OP article; according to her, sentiment there was heavily in Cochran's favor, because of his record in getting jobs for Mississippi- in a political climate of "jobs, jobs, jobs," that was more positively appealing than McDaniel's rarefied and more generalized ideology against things (though, admittedly, it was close). And Cochran, in his ads leading up to the runoff, stressed that aspect of his record, which I think may have had more to do with his victory than Democratic crossover.

It may also have helped that Cochran was endorsed by Brett Favre,* a local deity here. It's kind of depressing to think that celebrity endorsement could have had that much effect; but nobody ever went unelected by underestimating the superficiality of their electoral base.

*Ol' Brett's looking more and more like a character from Deadwood; I kept waiting for him, in his commercial, to say something Al Swearingen-style. If you've ever seen the show, you'll know what I mean; if you haven't, there's no way I can get the idea (meaning the word) across without violating forum rules.

 

[Minoosh]

Sounds like they're writing up a McDaniel win, right? The headline and the first five or six paragraphs report the Cochran win. I think they were following the TP polls and all the money spent and had a breathless article on the stunning TP victory in Mississippi all ready for release.

I'm sure this is exactly what happened. I don't agree with Fox's editorial views, but as a journalist who made the transition from print to Web, I have a bit of sympathy. We posted as fast as our fingers could fly and relied on the headline to cover our asses if a huge swath of the story had become obsolete. (But we'd still rewrite the lede, jeez!)

Actually I felt the tone overall was fairly even. It didn't sound quite so "breathless" to me, just obviously premature. Having watched Megyn Kelly smack down Karl Rove during the 2012 presidential election, I've seen Fox get a few things right and I believe there are some journalists there who try to be fair.

 

[turingtest]

I don't know why McDaniel is being such a crybaby about something that he himself did in 2003:

There is one section of Mississippi election law that the McDaniel team seems to think could work to their advantage. That section reads: “No person shall be eligible to participate in any primary election unless he intends to support the nominations made in which he participates.” In other words, if the Democratic voters who helped Cochran win plan to vote for his opponent, former Rep. Travis Childers, in the fall, that would, theoretically, be against Mississippi law.

"I wouldn't be too optimistic if I were [McDaniel]" says John M. Bruce, head of the University of Mississippi political science department. "This issue has already been adjudicated." A 2008 decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals said that in order for a ballot to be thrown out, poll workers would need to ascertain that the voters already were planning on supporting a different candidate a few months down the road. As Bruce says, "that's not enforceable". Bruce — who has lived in Mississippi for over 20 years, says that he can't remember anyone ever discussing this section of the state's election law at such length. The 2008 case was mostly unnoticed. "No one even thought about this law," he noted.

And, as Daily Beast reporter Ben Jacobs points out, even McDaniel has taken advantage of the open primary system. He voted in the Democratic primary in 2003. Jacobs adds that "his campaign has declined multiple requests for comment as to whether he voted for the incumbent Democratic governor, Ronnie Musgrove, in the general election that year," a move that, under McDaniel's logic, would be illegal.

Oh, wait...he's playing crybaby because this time it worked against him.