A lawyer for Mississippi tea party insurgent Chris McDaniel filed a notice of appeal last Friday against a judge’s dismissal of his challenge to his June 24 primary runoff loss to incumbent Thad Cochran. Via the Columbus Dispatch:
McDaniel attorney Mitch Tyner said in a news release Friday that he disagrees with McGehee’s ruling.
“The merits of Chris McDaniel’s challenge are strong, and the evidence clearly shows the outcome primary runoff was corrupted by Democrats participating in the Republican primary runoff election,” Tyner said.
Tyner told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday that he will file papers Monday asking the Supreme Court for quick consideration on an appeal.
That would be the same Mitch Tyner whose name turns up in the list of “irregular” votes that the McDaniel team claims to have uncovered, a clue to the actual strength of McDaniel’s case, which has met a dead end so far because he failed to file it in time.
Outside observers are scratching their heads over his decisions to keep this going, and the odd way in which he let the twenty-day window close on his challenge. Even the Mississippi papers are telling him to give it up. In terms of burned bridges, however, the damage was done months ago, and at this point McDaniel’s objective is not really about reversing the results of the runoff anymore.
It’s about money.
In the long run, McDaniel expects to benefit most from not having the relative merits of his case judged by any court of law, continuing his appeals forever and ever in the court of conservative opinion instead. In the opposites-day universe of right wing media, his ‘evidence’ never has to withstand actual scrutiny. The simplistic pabulum in McDaniel’s speeches, and the overwrought Nazi metaphors on his Facebook page, are not gaffes at all; they are exactly the reasons why his fans love him so much. They are the only jury to which he truly wants to appeal.
Indeed, McDaniel got an overwhelmingly-positive response from his Facebook followers last week when he asked them whether he should appeal. There is a familiar feedback loop at work here, one that I have witnessed with other Republicans.
Then this weekend, McDaniel announced the formation of True Conservatives PAC, or True PAC, and put out a fundraising challenge. It is apparent that he does not expect to win a United States Senate seat anymore. Instead, he is building up the infrastructure of Chris McDaniel, Inc. while he carefully cultivates the legend of a grassroots candidate whose victory was stolen.
He’ll probably make a mint.