I personally can't get past that time when Senator Thad Cochran wouldn't vote for a resolution to apologize to African Americans for not outlawing lynching. But, with enough pork and enough targeted ads, it nonetheless looks like his strategy to court black voters to participate in the GOP primary saved him from obscurity (and the Tea Party).  In the run-up to Tuesday night's Republican Senate primary run-off in Mississippi, both "mainstream" Republicans and a good number of black Democrats suddenly began telling us here in Jackson that we all needed to bail out Cochran, the six-term Senator who managed a win over Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel. The desperate incumbent persuaded black voters door-to-door over the past week, and the All Citizens for Mississippi Pac, which is headed by several black leaders including a prominent bishop, even bought large ads in my progressive and majority black-read newspaper.  That was a first for Cochran and most of his GOP associates, who usually don't want to be seen as even acknowledging "the Democrats" – literally a code phrase in Mississippi for African Americans, who make up 36% of the electorate but vote overwhelmingly Democratic and against a Republican party that grips control in my state by appealing to bigoted voters. It's unusual for black voters to cross over to a GOP primary – but as long as they don't turn out to vote in the Democratic primary (which was on 3 June this year), they are allowed to vote in the GOP run-off. They just usually don't.  And for good reason. For one, it's not common for the Republican Party here to act like they care about or need the black vote. But after the Tea Party forced the mainline GOP to trawl new waters to win their own primary, we ended up with "poll watchers" turning out to intimidate the black vote just like the Dixiecrats did 50 years ago and the likes of Breitbart's site wigging out because the GOP says out loud that it needs black voters to win.  Still, federal money is vital to Mississippi, and enough Democrats apparently held their nose on Tuesday to vote for Cochran. That wasn't easy for people scarred by a deal with the devil laden with pork-barrel politics and a whole lot of coded, "wink-wink" racism. Cochran, former governor Haley Barbour and other so-called mainline Republicans were almost forced to reap the rewards of the racially-tinged, anti-DC, entitlement politics they themselves have been peddling for so long.  Of course, Cochran has, despite his anti-government rhetoric, long been the "pork king" – but the hypocrisy of being a member of the party that lures so many federal dollars to Mississippi (and especially to GOP pet projects) while claiming to be against "big" government hardly mattered to Republicans over the years. There was a pact among those who could see the hypocrisy to not talk about it, and they instead concentrated on feeding red, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-"librul" meat to the state's more conservative – and less politically astute – voters.  The high-on-the-hog GOP then washed it down with dog-whistle racism – a practice of appealing to white southern voters' worst instincts honed to perfection by one of Mississippi's own. The young Barbour was an early adopter of the then-new Republican Party, once it started moving to take over Dixiecrat voters in the years following President Lyndon Johnson's signing of the Civil Rights Act. Barbour, a disciple of southern-strategy architect Lee Atwater, starting honing these hypocritical political skills when he worked for Richard Nixon and then later for Ronald Reagan.  The strategy of appealing to latent racist beliefs saw its first great victory after Ronald Reagan kicked off his general election campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in 1980 – just nine miles from where James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were buried under a dam 50 years ago this week. Reagan stood in front of the Dixie-flag-loving fair-goers and preached about how despicable the federal government was – amen, brother! – in a coded speech meant to draw lost Dixiecrats straight into the GOP.  But Barbour, Cochran and Co never walked their talk on small government. It's always been about who gets the federal dollars – seaport projects over poor people displaced by Katrina, for instance – and never about not spending the money in the first place. Barbour's GOP has been willing to divide and build mistrust among Mississippi voters – especially against "the other" – for years in order to keep the southern-strategy shell game in play.  There was something more important at stake in the game than human decency: holding on to the votes of all those former Dixiecrats who were then propping up the GOP.  But that deal with the devil cannot last for the Republican Party, despite Cochran's win. For one thing, some of the panderees are eventually going to wake up and smell the hypocrisy of a pork-loving, small-government Republican at some point. And, whatever else you might think of the Tea Party, many of its members are now willing to call out the corporate welfare kings for their chicanery. (Or, at least those not named Koch.)  Even with Cochran's thin margin of victory, mainline Republicans in Mississippi now have to live in the crumbling house that Haley Barbour built, with the help of his friends and mentors. It was a little hilarious to watch Barbour's crew repent thumbing their noses at so many potential voters until the past week, sending mailers to people in black Jackson neighborhoods touting Cochran's supposed support of public schools, HBCU funding and "blight protection for minority communities" ... even as people in richer, whiter neighborhoods were getting Cochran mailers featuring all white men and Cochran touting his pro-NRA, anti-abortion cred and his "more than 100" votes against Obamacare.  Still, with all that effort, the GOP cannot suddenly welcome a bunch of black Democrats to their tent. They voted almost exclusively for the federal money Cochran brings home – not for the party that abandoned African Americans back in the 1960s.  It's like that time that Trent Lott went on BET after he earned so much enmity for his praise of Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrat cause: it's just too little, too damn late. Cochran has shrugged off the Tea Party – but what now? Suddenly, he and Barbour's GOP will become friends with black voters?
Donna Ladd: Here in Mississippi, we know the difference between a Republican talking to black Democrats to win a primary – and bringing home the bacon from DC