HATTIESBURG, Miss.–He’s not ready to give it up yet. Tea Party candidate and state Sen. Chris McDaniel made the rounds on national talk shows Wednesday, indicating that he is not ready to give up in his bid to be the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.
He was defeated Tuesday in a run-off by Sen. Thad Cochran, who got 50.7 percent of the vote.
In his speech he did not concede, but blamed the Republican establishment for luring “liberal Democrats” to cast crossover votes for Cochran, which is legal as long as they did not vote in the primary on June 3.
“These are people that always talk about party unity and party cohesion and how we’re supposed to stick together,” he told talk show host Mark Levin, “and they did some of the most despicable things to me and others around me that I’ve ever seen. They pandered to liberal Democrats. They had an orchestrated effort to reach out. They talked about if I was elected we were gonna get rid of food stamps and destroy public schools.”
McDaniel said there were also allegations that his camp was trying to suppress the minority vote.
He appeared on the Sean Hannity radio show also Wednesday.
On Levin he pointed the finger at Mississippi’s former governor, who sided with Cochran in his campaign.
“It’s Haley Barbour and Thad Cochran. They’re not fighting for principles any longer. It’s about money and power. They’re gonna talk about being conservatives and how we have to fight the conservative fight when they just pulled over 35,000 liberal Democrats to defeat the only conservative in the race.”
As far as a possible challenge, McDaniel has not made a clear announcement, but the Miss. Tea Party scheduled a press conference for Thursday afternoon to talk about the election.
Most of the groups that supported McDaniel acknowledged defeat by Cochran by early Wednesday.
