GOP spending $1 million to save senator who 'joked' about lynching

Republicans are going all-in to rescue Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s (R-MS) political career just days after she made a “joke” about lynching.

Smith, who is white, is facing Democratic challenger Mike Espy, a black man, in a November 27 runoff election in Mississippi. She was recently caught at a campaign event saying, in response to a comment by a supporter, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”

Mississippi was the site of hundreds of public lynchings of black Americans between the late 1800s and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative.

Now, instead of distancing themselves from the painful remark, national Republicans are preparing to drop at least $1 million on television advertising to boost Hyde-Smith’s campaign. And they plan on deploying more staff in addition to the two dozen they’ve already placed in Mississippi.

Politico also reports that White House operatives are considering pulling Trump from his post-election funk by having him campaign for Hyde-Smith. Trump has a long history of racist remarks himself, coupled with support for bigoted groups like neo-Nazis, whom he called “very fine people.”

But even though Trump won the election in Mississippi by 17 points in 2016, that is no guarantee of future success. After Alabama went strongly for Trump in 2016, he campaigned for the GOP candidate Roy Moore, who was exposed as a pedophile, and now Democrat Doug Jones represents the state.

Backing Hyde-Smith after her hanging remark shows the party hasn’t learned its lesson. Even if it ekes out the win in Mississippi, just as with its indulgence of pedophilia, the GOP can’t come back from being the party of lynching “jokes.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.