Opinion: Mississippi Republican Party’s Law Firm Comes to the Rescue of LIBERAL DEMOCRAT..."usi
Butler Snow’s support of former Senator Bob Dearing shows exactly how wide is the current GOP split.
By Ryan S. Walters
In perhaps the biggest political news story of the year, the MSGOP’s top law firm, Butler Snow, with deep connections within the Republican Party, has thrown in with leftwing Democrat Bob Dearing in his race against conservative Melanie Sojourner, the former campaign manager for Chris McDaniel in his race against Thad Cochran. As of today, the race is down to the absentee ballots and it looks to be very close, maybe as little as a 10-12 vote difference out of more than 15,000 cast.
As I pointed out last week, Dearing is the quintessential liberal Democrat. He has supported every liberal cause in the past, in his years in the State Senate, and in this election ran on Medicaid expansion, the extension of Haley Barbour’s invasive eminent domain policy, and more taxation. If there’s a liberal cause, then Bob Dearing has supported it and will do so again.
But in a shocking twist of events today, Butler Snow has sent two lawyers to McComb to pull Dearing, not Sojourner, over the line. These lawyers have stood over election workers, in a very intimidating manner, and had to be told to sit down multiple times. They have repeatedly interrupted election commissioners to ask for voter names and addresses, the same information the same firm argued that Chris McDaniel could NOT have. So, in other words, they’ve pulled the old Barbour-Cochran vote-stealing playbook, the same one they used against Chris McDaniel last year.
And how deep are Butler Snow’s Republican Party connections? Haley Barbour works there, as does Phil Bryant’s daughter. Senator Roger Wicker’s daughter, Caroline Wicker Sims, is also employed. At least one chief of staff to Barbour and many policy advisors and legal counsels from Phil Bryant, Haley Barbour, and Tate Reeves also find work at the firm. So it’s safe to say that Butler Snow IS the Establishment Republican Party in Mississippi.
But how is the cash-strapped Bob Dearing, who couldn’t raise any money for his own campaign, paying for two attorneys at $500 an hour? Well the word on the political street is that Dearing, as payback for the support, will switch to the Republican Party upon winning the race.
So think about this for a minute: The State Republican Party of Mississippi is seeking to replace a strong, principled conservative Senator with a leftwing Democrat who, upon switching parties, would literally be a Republican In Name Only.
This is the same party establishment, mind you, that spent over $100,000 to defeat Bob Dearing four years ago! And whom was Bob Dearing running against in 2011? Melanie Sojourner, but that was before her apostasy.
So the Mississippi Republican Party would rather have Bob Dearing in the State Senate, with his tax-and-spend, big government ways, than Melanie Sojourner, who has been rock-solid in her support of conservative principles and limited government, even though they spent 100K in 2011 to knock him off.
This turn of events is about two things: Making the Republican Party more liberal and crony-oriented, in the mold of Haley Barbour; and retaliation against a strong supporter, and political partner, of Senator Chris McDaniel, the leader of the opposition to Big Government Republicanism in Mississippi.
This, my conservative friends, is the face of the Republican Establishment, or to be more blunt, our new enemy. Such treachery, if not outright treason, betrays the party, conservatism, and everything we, as a movement, profess to stand for.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” so said Edmund Burke. It is a lesson for the good folks in Mississippi to put a stop to the Establishment Republican Party before its rottenness corrputs the entire state.