3/2/15, "Rick Perry Hires Another Barbour for Presidential Campaign," Mississippi Conservative Daily
"In an article out today in the New York Times, as well as the Clarion Ledger, it has been announced that Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, has hired yet another Barbour for his presidential campaign. Austin Barbour, the brother of Henry Barbour, has been tapped by Perry to run his Super PAC.
Unfortunately, this is not Perry’s first Barbour hire. As was reported back in September, Perry hired Henry Barbour to advise him on his campaign for the White House. And judging from the Barbour Brothers’ conduct in the Cochran/McDaniel race, specifically the despicable actions they took last June, one must wonder if this will be the strategy used by Perry to win the Republican nomination, assuming he can, at the very least, remember what departments he wants to cut this time around.
For Mississippi’s True Conservatives, the supporters of Chris McDaniel, this should be the death knell of any support for Perry.
From the New York Times story:
"Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, is continuing to put the pieces in place for a 2016 campaign.
Mr. Perry is moving to establish a “super PAC” to back his effort, and has turned to Austin Barbour, a Mississippi-based lobbyist and political operative to head it, according to three people with knowledge of the moves.
Mr. Barbour’s brother, Henry, is a Republican national committee member who has supported Mr. Perry for years. The brothers’ uncle is Haley Barbour, the former Mississippi governor and a senior figure in Republican circles.
Austin Barbour most recently worked with his brother to help re-elect Senator Thad Cochran, the Mississippi Republican, in 2014, in one of the most competitive Republican primary fights of the midterm cycle.
Both Mr. Barbour and a spokesman for Mr. Perry declined to comment.
The aim of the super PAC is to raise large sums of money from donors, largely to finance television ads. Part of Mr. Barbour’s job will be to attract donors and assure them their money is being spent well."" via Free Rep.
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3/2/15, "Rick Perry Steps Up PAC Staffing," NY Times, "First Draft," Maggie Haberman
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Codevilla on the 2014 Mississippi GOP Primary and Runoff:
6/30/14, "The Ruling Class Went Down to Mississippi," Angelo M. Codevilla, Liberty Law site
In the Mississippi primary, Republican establishmentarians from around the country solicited votes from Democrats to defeat the insurgent challenge to Senator Thad Cochran. Their arguments were the same ones used by the bipartisan ruling class that has ruled America for a generation:
The role of government is to generate benefits for its clients,
and those who object are bad people.
They paid many Democrat voters (nearly all black) so called “walking around money” for their votes, and have refused in many counties to let McDaniel aides examine the voter roles to see whether these voters were eligible to cast ballots.
The retail corruption is much less remarkable than the acquiescence therein of the establishment’s leadership – such as Karl Rove and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. This is very remarkable. Rove’s super-PAC, “Conservative Victory Project,” which played a leading role in recruiting Democrats for Cochran,
exists explicitly to defeat insurgent Republicans everywhere.
The Journal’s editorial page, whose editorials and featured columnists mobilized opinion against the Mississippi insurgency, had done the same throughout this and previous years’ primaries. Rove’s post election commentary glossed over the vote-buying as if it had not happened, while the Journal’s Jason Riley endorsed it cynically as “minority outreach.”
To Republican and independent voters who are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, the conflict between the pretenses and the actions of such as Rove and of the Journal added insult to injury. The Journal, for example, never loses an opportunity to declare itself the mortal enemy of “crony capitalism” as it decries the direction in which America has been headed, while the word “conservative” as part of the title of Rove’s super-PAC intentionally evokes the complex of sentiments of voters angry at the ruling class’s characterization of them as, well, the litany: “racist, greedy, stupid,” etc.
Indeed, the Republican Party’s very identity, the one, sole, argument it makes to persuade voters to vote Republican rather than Democrat,
is that it will take the country
in a direction different from the one in which it has been going.
But, in the Mississippi primary, the Republican Establishment’s campaign was by and for crony capitalism, and employed the classic themes by which the ruling class has beaten down the rest of America.
To Mississippians white and black, the establishment’s message was: All this Tea Party talk about dangerous deficits and the need to cut spending is a threat to responsible officials’ capacity to bring you the jobs and federal assistance on which your prosperity depends. Orchestrating that message was Haley Barbour, former governor of Mississippi, former national chairman of the Republican Party,
and arguably Washington’s biggest lobbyist.
Day to day operations were run by Stuart Stevens, formerly chief strategist in Mitt Romney’s 2012 national campaign, along with Henry and Austin Barbour, Haley’s nephews. There could be few better
personifications of crony capitalism.
To the blacks, who, according to The New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight.com provided some forty thousand votes, the message was:
Don’t be intimidated by the Tea Party. . . . Mississippi cannot and will not return to the bygone era of intimidating black Mississippians from voting. We must rise up on Tuesday and have our voices heard on who will represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate. VOTE THAD COCHRAN.The Times reported the effect: Roger Smith, a black Democrat who said he was being paid to organize for Mr. Cochran, said, ‘I don’t know too much about [Cochran’s opponent] McDaniel other than what McDaniel is saying:
that he’s Tea Party, he’s against Obama, he don’t like black people.”
In short, those who oppose the way things are done in America are racists.
You ought to hate them as they hate you.
Why do such things? Cui bono? Clearly such behavior by the Republican establishment has nothing to do with the role it claims for itself of opposition to the direction on which America has been taken in recent decades,
never mind with anything “conservative.”
It has everything to do with maintaining its status,
and that of its clients, within the ruling class.
The Mississippi primary confirmed yet again that, if America is to go in a direction other than the one of which some three fourths of American disapprove, it is compelled to do so with a vehicle other than the Republican Party."
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"Angelo M. Codevilla professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University. He served as a U.S. Senate Staff member dealing with oversight of the intelligence services. His new book Peace Among Ourselves and With All Nations was published by Hoover Institution Press." Photo above from Liberty Law site.
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Added: From NY Times article linked in Codevilla piece, NY liberal billionaire Mike Bloomberg gave as much as $500,000 to support the GOP Establishment candidate in the 2014 Mississippi GOP primary:
6/24/14, "Cochran Holds Off Tea Party Challenger in Mississippi," NY Times, Jonathan Weisman
"Also sure to inflame the right: a center-right super PAC, Defending Main Street, which contributed over $150,000 to Mr. Cochran during the runoff, received $250,000 from Michael Bloomberg in the same period, according to a source close to the former New York City mayor.
Mr. Bloomberg also contributed $250,000 to Mr Cochran’s super PAC, Mississippi Conservatives, before the primary....
It was an extraordinary end to a wild campaign, with a Republican
standing up for the rights of black Democrats,
and with Tea Party groups from the North,
especially the Senate Conservatives Fund, crying foul."...
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Karl Rove's "Conservative Victory Project" mentioned in Dr. Codevilla's article was financed at least in part by Rove's American Crossroads PAC:
"Conservative Victory Project," 2014 donors:
American Crossroads, $18,685, OpenSecrets.org
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"Conservative Victory Project," 2014 Expenditures:"
"Top Vendors/Recipient, American Crossroads"
"$17,160," Accountants, compliance, legal services, misc.
.
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In his 6/26/14 Wall St. Journal article Mr. Rove says he made three donations to the 2014 Mississippi GOP primary: one to the Cochran campaign, one to Mississippi Conservatives (Cochran's PAC) via Rove's super PAC American Crossroads, and one to the Mississippi GOP primary runoff. American Crossroads PAC also donated to Rove's "Conservative Victory Project."
Rove: "(Full disclosure: I donated to Mr. Cochran's campaign and the super PAC that I help, American Crossroads, donated to Mississippi Conservatives in the primary and runoff.)"...
6/26/14, "National Tea Party Groups Take A Beating," WSJ, Karl Rove
"The six-term senator's victory was due to a strategy by his campaign...led by GOP national committeeman Henry Barbour and his uncle, the very popular former Gov. Haley Barbour."...
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Per OpenSecrets.org, American Crossroads donated $210,000 to 2014 GOP primary PAC, "Mississippi Conservatives:"
("Bluegrass Cmte" above with $50,000 donation is a Mitch McConnell group).
About: "Mississippi Conservatives"
"This committee is a single-candidate super PAC in support of Thad Cochran (R)."
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What it cost them to beat us in the the 2014 Mississippi GOP primary:
Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran campaign spending chart, OpenSecrets.org:
.
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