Greenwood Commonwealth, The (Greenwood, MS)

Section: Opinion

Words don’t fit McDaniel’s vote

February 24, 2014

U.S. Senate candidate Chris McDaniel, when he’s decrying the wasteful spending of the federal government, includes the arts as an area where he says the waste is obvious.

He likes to single out the $200,000 Congress gave to the Rock and Roll Music Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.

Mississippi Conservatives, a political action committee supporting incumbent Thad Cochran, however, points out that McDaniel, as a state senator, voted last year to give 10 times that amount in state money to the Grammy Museum being developed in Cleveland, Miss.

We don’t criticize McDaniel for that vote. The Grammy Museum is going to be a great attraction for the Delta, generating tourism revenues that should more than offset the state’s investment while also providing another cultural outlet for residents of this state.

What we do criticize is the apparent hypocrisy of McDaniel’s campaign. He may say now what his tea party fans want to hear, but some of his votes before he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate say something else.