Hey, all you Mississippi legislators who switched from Democrat to Republican. Yes, all y’all who vote the conservative party line and give Republicans super-majorities in the House and Senate. Are y’all really fake Republicans?
That seems to be the message coming from your colleague Sen. Chris McDaniel regarding another former legislator who switched from Democrat to Republican.
“"Before Commissioner Hyde-Smith was elected to lead the Department of Agriculture, her only legislative experience was that of a Democrat,” exclaimed McDaniel, after Gov. Phil Bryant selected her and not him to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran. “She ran as a Democrat. She served as a Democrat. She voted like a Democrat. Although her reputation in Jackson was that of a moderate Democrat, the last thing the state of Mississippi needs in Washington is another moderate Democrat."
Yes, guys, when Cindy Hyde-Smith was elected to the Mississippi Senate in 2000, like y’all, she was a Democrat. In 2010 she switched to the Republican Party. In 2011 she ran for Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce as a Republican and won. In 2015 she ran unopposed in the Republican primary and was handily re-elected in the General Election.
Hey, Senators Terry Burton, President Pro Tempore and Rules Committee Chairman (2002), Videt Carmichael, Insurance Committee Chairman (2002), Tommy Gollott, Ports and Marine Resources Committee Chairman (2007), Gray Tollison, Education Committee Chairman (2011), and Nicky Browing, Forestry Committee Chairman (2013), y’all switched and helped give the GOP a conservative super-majority (over 60%) in the Senate in 2013. Are y’all really fake Republicans as your colleague suggests?
Hey, Representatives Nolan Mettetal, Universities and Colleges Committee Chairman, Jeff Smith, Ways and Means Committee Chairman (2011), and Donnie Bell, Workforce Development Committee Chairman (2011), y’all helped give Republicans a majority in the House in 2012. And, hey, Representatives Jason White, Rules Committee Chairman (2012), Randall Patterson, Investigate State Offices Committee Chairman (2014), and Jody Steverson, Public Utilities Committee Vice-Chairman (2015), y’all switched and helped give Republicans a conservative super-majority in the House in 2016. Are y’all really fake Republicans too?
Golly Gomer! How in the world could so many fake Republicans get to hold such powerful positions in the Republican controlled Legislature? Surely people who switch from Democrat to Republican can never be trusted conservatives?
Or is it someone else’s rhetoric that can’t be trusted?
Perhaps the Democratic past of Hyde-Smith is no more relevant than the similar past of two ex-Democrats who became Republican Presidents – Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump. And no more relevant than the past of all the above ex-Democrat legislators who now serve as prominent Republicans in the House and Senate.
Maybe the relevant questions about Hyde-Smith should be has she shown herself over the past eight years as a statewide Republican elected official to be Republican and conservative enough to be the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate.
Hmmm.
Obviously, longtime Republican and conservative Gov. Bryant thinks Hyde-Smith is Republican and conservative enough, as do many other state conservative leaders who point to Hyde-Smith’s campaigning for Trump and serving as co-chair of the his campaign’s agriculture advisory committee.
We’ll find out what Mississippi voters think in November.
Crawford (crawfolk@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist from Meridian.
Sunday, March 25, 2018
Bill Crawford: Who is a fake Republican?
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19 comments:
That attitude is why McDaniel is finished.
Hyde-Smith is a boring lazy pick from a boring lazy governor.
Wait. A journalist wrote this? What a ridiculous, pointless article.
There is no such thing as a Republican in Mississippi. It’s just the Mississippi party. If you want to get elected, just be a “Republican” and speak the ridiculous rhetoric supported by policies that continue to drop us further behind the rest of the country.
Mississippi is going to need a to elect a democrat to this seat or they will be in the minority!
Not so much fake Republicans as pragmatic opportunists.
The Mississippi Democratic Party was mostly Dixiecrats for a long time and hardly flaming liberals.
Politics is about power. The notion that there are consistent party principals and that liberalism and conservatism has EVER truly defined the political parties is delusional and obviously untrue if anyone bothers to read actual history.
The GOP hopes you've forgotten when they were pro-abortion, pro-women, pro-legalization of drugs, for protecting the environment, were the party of African Americans who could vote, and increased taxes and the deficit while in power. Read Bill Buckley and you'll see those were conservative stances. The Dems want you to forget they were anti-abortion and against women voting.
We used to have more rational statesmen but that was from the WWII generation... some of whom actually learned there were things greater than their own self-interest. They put the Nation before Party.
Worse, fake and divisive propaganda is not just " dirty tricks' and "negative campaigns" anymore, it's coming from our enemies and not just Russia but Al Jazzera opinion pieces as well.
Every time you share political pieces without checking the accuracy or the source, you are helping destroy our Nation.
And, should you check, you'll know what politicians aren't checking the facts and are too gullible and easily manipulated to hold office.
But, that would require you to actually be enough of a Patriot to serve your Nation's interest rather than your own.
I agree with the argument made by the article’s author. However, in the early 1990s the author of this article quit the Republican Party via an open letter to the party. I guess he rejoined?
American political parties are like the mafia---you can snitch, switch or die, but you can NEVER leave.
10:54 - Do you really think we need YOU to remind us that Abe Lincoln was a Republican and Eastland was a Democrat six hundred years ago?
There was a time when "Republican" meant you were for personal freedom. It meant that you knew that your job was to assure that government existed because it had certain required public safety responsibilities like national defense, roads, bridges, police and the like.
That no longer is the case. Our "Republican" governor doesn't care about your personal freedoms. He doesn't want you to be able to get a wine-of-the-month club subscription because the state controls alcohol. He doesn't want you to get Medicaid (a health insurance) when it would help the poor and cost Mississippi nothing. He doesn't want you to have good roads and bridges because he never wants to be accused of raising taxes. He doesn't want you to have the sexual partner of your choice because he is fundamentally stupid. He doesn't want you to have legal access to marijuana because he doesn't smoke it. And he should. There is a crushing sense of ignorance and it is not to support your freedoms.
10:32 - I promise you, there is NOTHING boring or lazy about Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Meanwhile Thad got a flight home on the ole miss jet. Still looking for and getting freebies.
They are all fake-Dem & Rep alike. They only care about getting elected. Let’s throw all the bums out. And throw out the next bunch if the turn into the same tired political click that is only focused on reelection.
623, Senator Cochran is still a Senator. He could have flown home on the taxpayers dollar. Would that have made you feel better?
@ March 25, 2018 at 8:39 PM
Great idea - but what will be the issues to motivate you to vote for a candidate?
Because that's where the fork in the road begins?
Mississippians are divided on health care, women's health (abortion), how to fund infrastructure, implementing a lottery, religious freedom, selling alcohol in the state, legalization of marijuana, how to fund education, selling firearms, where you can carry firearms.
There are true fundamental differences between both parties in modern-day Mississippi.
The sad part is they have become racially homogenous/exclusive - where the Republicans in the state legislature are 99.9% white and the Democrats are 75% black.
Wish it was split 50/50 on both sides, but that's not reality in Mississippi.
Yep Ole Miss uses no tax payer dollars at all. My bad.
As someone who considers them a moderate (increasingly conservative) voted for Obama in 2008 (but not 2012), I would argue that these folks did not change, the Democatic party did. The Democratic Party doesn’t know which bathroom to use and is almost completely a social platform party that forgot what government is actually supposed to do. A lot of people who get up, go to work, pay taxes, and don’t do anything wrong to anybody are tired of identity politics and being blamed other people’s shortcomings due to the invisible boogeyman of “privilege”. Never thought the day would come, but the Republican Party is the now the party for moderates and closer to the center. The Democratic party has veered too sharply to the left.
THIS, all of this, is why Chris McDaniel should NEVER represent our state and country . He is so narrow and divisive and incapable of working with anyone for the greater good.
@ March 26, 2018 at 11:45 AM
"The Democratic Party doesn’t know which bathroom to use and is almost completely a social platform party that forgot what government is actually supposed to do."
And the Republicans in Mississippi didn't push a social platform with HB1523 in FY2017? They didn't push a social platform with HB1510 for FY2019?
That dog hunts both ways when it comes to remembering what government is actually supposed to do.
There is nothing moderate or pragmatic about the Mississippi GOP
1:12....you are exactly right in your last sentence. The MSGOP was more actual Republican in the 80's than it is now. Now it is a party of bubbas and Billie Sues right out of Smith County.
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