I haven’t focused much on the Mississippi Republican Senate primary, in which Chris McDaniel is challenging Thad Cohran, except to have previously noted that NRSC race card play against challenger hurts us all.
But the latest intrigue makes what came before look like child’s play. Ed Morrissey and Allahpundit at Hot Air have background, but the story is fairly simple: A pro-McDaniel blogger was caught sneaking into a nursing home where Cochran’s wife was resident due to Alzheimers or some other form of dementia, and photographed her. Very ugly stuff.
Then things got even more strange when the Cochran campaign and NRSC suggested that McDaniel somehow might be involved, and that inconsistent statements as to how and when the McDaniel campaign found out about it were incriminating.
Then, it turned out that the Cochran campaign itself knew about the break in but sat on it for two weeks before notifying authorities. The NRSC communications director who was tweeting with wild speculation about the McDaniel timeline has not, as of this writing, responded to my request as to when the NRSC found out about it.
Erick Erickson thinks there’s collusion between the Cochran campaign and NRSC to pin the blame, at least by innuendo, on McDaniels.
The latest development is that the blogger’s wife suggests in an interview that McDaniels, at least indirectly, was in on it:
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I guess it will sort itself out.
While I realize the NRSC is an incumbent protection organization, reckless speculation is damaging to the party.
If there was collusion between the Cochran and McDaniel campaigns, it should be over for Cochran and the NRSC needs to be held to account.
If the McDaniels campaign was involved in orchestrating the taping, it’s lights out.
I hope we get to the bottom of this, quickly.
Update: Blogger’s attorney says his actions not part of conspiracy:
Tuesday night will make the fifth night blogger Clayton Kelly will spend in the Madison County jail.His name and actions have attracted national media attention. But not in the way he originally planned.”It’s not a big conspiracy that somebody was leading him astray. And then got him going down the road and he couldn’t stop,” said his attorney Kevin Camp. Kelly told Camp, he was researching a story about Cochran and a possible mistress. He wanted to bring home the point that it was taking place while his wife was in St. Catherine’s. Kelly’s attorney says he used this visitors pass to park and get the picture on Easter Sunday.”He was being fed information the story itself, not information to go and take the photo,” said Camp.
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