The Mississippi Senate Race

Clips this morning from both candidates in the Republican Senate primary in Mississippi showed the state of the campaign as the voting commenced today. The challenger seemed fresh and sincere, talking without notes, while the incumbent, Thad Cochran, had to read from notes written by an aide, and looked old and decrepit.

The main issue, if the lamestream media is to be believed, is the use of a video by some supporters of the challenger. The video showed Cochran's wife in a nursing home. The challenger has disavowed any connection between his campaign and those who publicized the video.

This raises a fundamental question. Why is true information considered so toxic? We have politicians who regularly lie to us, not to mention the politicians who engage in dirty tricks (think of Nixon using the CIA, FBI, and IRS to persecute his perceived political "enemies").

I can't help but think of the 1988 presidential campaign, when Michael Dukakis was forced to fire his campaign manager for disseminating true information. The true information was a tape of British Labour leader Neil Kinnock, giving the same speech that Joe Biden had plagiarized from him in a recent campaign speech. It was entirely true information, so what was the problem? The campaign manager was forced to resign, and Dukakis's campaign went into the toilet, never to recover.

What, then, is the big problem of releasing true information? The Mississippi race is said to be dead-even, but my hope is that Cochran's actions in trying to deflect from the real issues and make the tape of his wife an issue will backfire and we will get fresh blood in the Senate. God knows we need it.