Steve Deace’s latest column highlights how the RINO establishment in Mississippi squeaked out a victory over Tea Party-backed Chris McDaniel.

Deace points out that in addition to mobilizing Democrats to vote in the runoff (yes, Democrats were allowed to vote in a Republican primary), the GOP establishment used the same kind of smears we’re used to hearing from Leftist Democrats to turn people from McDaniel and toward the oh-so-sweet liberal Thad Cochran.

National Review has a pic of a flier used to smear Chris McDaniel: McDaniel is a racist and the Tea Party intends to prevent blacks from voting.  Uh huh.

In wrapping up his column, Deace nails the current state of the GOP establishment’s war against its own conservative base:

This will be a day long remembered. The day eyes were opened to the inconvenient truth that the difference between the establishment and the base isn’t principles over pragmatism as its media apologists claim, but that the people running the GOP simply don’t share our values. That’s why they come harder after us than they ever have Democrats. They have more in common with them than us.

After we fire the Bolsheviks in the Democratic Party this fall, the tensions that have been simmering within the GOP will boil over into the 2016 presidential primary, creating a new dynamic in the vetting process. It will no longer just be about who’s with us on the issues, but who’s really with us? It’s tough to heed cries of “unity” from people who use racist Democratic smear tactics against us.

Mississippi is the final proof it’s no longer Republican vs. Democrat. It’s now the ruling class in both parties aligned against the tea party — which is another way of saying it’s the government versus the governed.

No kidding. The South Dakota “Republican” Party used similar Alinsky/Democrat tactics against South Dakota Dist. 33 Senator Phil Jensen earlier this year, punishing him for trying to defend religious liberty from homosexual activists with smears that he is supposedly a racist–even though Phil and his wife adopted a Native American girl, and a black man stood with Phil at his wedding. But since when have facts and reality mattered when liberals wanted to smear conservatives? Just one more way in which the tactics of the RINOs resemble the tactics of Democrats.

So yeah, calls for “unity” ring pretty hollow after tactics like this, in addition to all the examples (Ken Cuccinelli, Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Bruce Whalen, et al) where the GOP establishment abandoned, wrote off or actually attacked their own nominee.

As is always the case with liberals (in both parties), all the burden is on conservatives.  “Compromise” means “conservatives do what liberals want.” “Tolerance” means shut up and agree with liberals.” And “unity” means get behind the most liberal candidate available, regardless of party.

*** Bob Ellis *** Is a conservative writer and Life and Liberty News contributor

More commentary from Bob Ellis can be seen daily on the American Clarion