It would be refreshing if the latte-Machiavellis at the NRSC would forget about playing political chess and do something they are really good at: sitting in the corner, making motorboat noises and befouling themselves.

The best example of this, of course, comes from Mississippi where those who allege to be the GOP Senate campaign masterminds have been trying to haul the doddering, semi-lucid porkmeister, Thad Cochran, across the finish line.

Leaving aside for the moment the electoral blowback from the completely dishonest and dishonorable stories spun by Eric Cantor protégé Brad Dayspring, the entire Cochran campaign was based on the most stupid and irresponsible political strategy conceived in the past generation.

The NRSC decided there were two Cochran selling points: first, Cochran was the past master of bringing home the federal bacon; second, Chris McDaniel was unelectable.

The Cochran camp vowed to run the primary as a general election campaign and encouraged Democrats to abuse Mississippi’s open primary system to vote for Cochran. Nevermind, the logical disconnect that they were asking politically active Democrats to come out to vote for the STRONGEST GOP candidate. The theory was that the thought of Thad, when not globetrotting with his “special assistant,” bringing home federal dollars would outweigh the inclination of Democrat voters to actually want to win the senate seat.

Anyone but the NRSC could see that encouraging Democrats to vote in the GOP primary after branding one of the candidates as unelectable was going to result in Democrats voting for Chris McDaniel.

Now Brad Dayspring is circulating a Thad Cochran press release slamming Chris McDaniel as being unelectable and using as evidence an statement by Harry Reid.

“In a Politico article today, Harry Reid made it clear as “he said that ‘everyone is pulling for’ tea party favorite Chris McDaniel to win his runoff fight against GOP Sen. Thad Cochran in Mississippi, a scenario that the Democratic leader believes would make the general election even more competitive for his party.”

Why is this unexpected? They should be crowing that their campaign has been a raging success. This is what they wanted, right?

And, we can’t help but note that Cochran is still trolling for Democrat votes.

Meanwhile Dayspring, and presumably the rest of the NRSC brain trust are concerned about really important stuff:

“One of the lessons of the Todd Akin disaster is that Democrats will not hesitate to tie the statements, behavior and controversies of one Republican candidate to all Republican candidates,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “This is the kind of stuff that the producers and hosts of MSNBC daytime programming salivate over.”

MSNBC? Really?  That’s the metric the NRSC uses? What the daytime ranters on MSNBC say? If that is the case why isn’t Dayspring terrified of the fact that Cochran has abandoned his wife in a nursing home, which he rarely visits, and taken to living in an open and notorious manner with his “executive assistant”? Isn’t he concerned what Rachel Maddow will say about the propriety of keeping what to all appearances is a , well “executive assistant,” on his office payroll and traveling with said “executive assistant” at government expense?

The entire fiasco in Mississippi has been a disgrace from the beginning and a sign that the NRSC needs a thorough housecleaning. It wouldn’t be going too far to suggest that everyone currently on staff at the NRSC should be horsewhipped on the steps of the Capitol and banned from politics for life. Encouraging Democrats to vote for a weak, doddering old Thad Cochran is bad enough. Expecting Democrats to vote for Cochran because he is supposed to be the strongest GOP candidates is just stupid beyond description.