Robert Costa of
The Washington Post writes that tea party favorite Chris McDaniel, the Mississippi state senator who will face incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran in a GOP runoff primary two weeks from now ....
...has come to represent everything that establishment Republicans fear about the tea party: He is aggressive, unpredictable and, at times, insensitive — if not offensive — on matters of gender and race.
But what makes them afraid isn't so much that they disagree with McDaniel when it comes to policy, it's that they are afraid he will embarrass them:
“One of the lessons of the Todd Akin disaster is that Democrats will not hesitate to tie the statements, behavior and controversies of one Republican candidate to all Republican candidates,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “This is the kind of stuff that the producers and hosts of MSNBC daytime programming salivate over.”
After Akin's comments, Republicans did try to distance themselves from him, but only because they didn't want public revulsion at his views to hurt them in other races, not because they actually were offended by what he said. In fact, they still wanted him to win, because they knew that having Todd Akin in the U.S. Senate would mean another vote for the Republican agenda.
The same thing will be true if McDaniel wins the primary. Republicans will join hands and rally around his campaign, because at the end of the day, what McDaniel believes is what Republicans believe. It's just that he's a little more honest about it than they are.
