The McDaniel Hostage Crisis – Day 24– the Hallmark decision, “candidate welfare” & delay

We interrupt this coverage for a special report.

The Supreme Court of Mississippi wasted no time in striking down State Senator Chris McDaniel’s request to force Circuit Clerks to allow him to see birthdates in original poll books without having the information redacted. This will forever be known in Mississippi jurisprudence as the “Hallmark” decision. This will likely have a trickle-down effect to the fatwa that the McDaniel campaign has declared against Circuit Clerks statewide.

MS Supreme Court Order denying Chris McDaniel relief

But this decision was a lot less about the validity of original poll books and a lot more about money. Your money. By demanding to look at the original poll books, the McDaniel campaign attempts to do an end-around of actually having to pay for copies of the poll books, which is what a common citizen would have to do. The McDaniel camp wants taxpayers to pay for it instead of them. Call it “candidate welfare”. The Y’allPolitics nation feels taxed enough already and doesn’t think it’s the proper role of government to just be making free copies for everyone. It’s not in the constitution, anyhow.

Of course, having the Supreme Court decide against you is just a minor speedbump in the pursuit for “truth and justice.” In tea party meetings across the state, volunteers are gathered together to see if the word “birthday” is actually in the constitution. Meanwhile, the campaign is asking for a “do over’ of the decision saying that since the whole Supreme Court didn’t hear it, it wasn’t valid enough for them.

While we believed, and still believe, that an official court challenge by McDaniel is a certainty, they’ve revealed their tactics as simply being nothing more than dragging this out procedurally for as long as humanly possible and hoping something good happens. Their faith in their evidence is low or they would have already filed. As we are in Day 24, the legitimacy of any challenge wanes with each passing day, and there would be no reason to sit on a smoking gun. The press has totally given up on the campaign to have any credibility in what they’re saying. And because the cost of the effort seems to be the only consequence for dragging this out, they seem to have enough folks engaged to pay for or borrow for the cause (though that may be waning too). Because there are no political consequences for acting a fool, that seems to be exactly what we are in for until (1) they run out of money (2) they procedurally exhaust every procedure to delay (which could be another month or more) or (3) that the political pressure from their families, co-workers, own supporters and/or the Republican Party and its leaders become so intense that the “juice stops being worth the squeeze.”

Don’t say we didn’t tell you so.

That’s the way it was – Day 24 of the McDaniel Hostage Crisis.

Good day Mississippi – and good luck.