The Wall Street Journal complained about a lawsuit filed by defeated Republican senatorial candidate Chris McDaniel, calling the suit “meritless” and an attempt to funnel money to trial lawyers -- despite the fact they have championed similarly far-fetched and expensive lawsuits that have been filed against President Barack Obama.

McDaniel, a right-wing tea party candidate, lost to incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) in the June 24 primary. McDaniel blamed his loss on voter fraud, claiming that his campaign found irregular voting patterns. Given the Journal's past concern with voter fraud and the American right to vote, it seems like McDaniel's lawsuit is just the sort of thing they would support.

But in an August 5 “political diary” titled “If You Can't Win, Sue,” Journal opinion editor Allysia Finley criticized McDaniel's decision to challenge the election results, calling his proposed lawsuit an effort to “raise money to feather the nests of election lawyers.” Finley also argued that the suit was “meritless” because “overturning the election results is a long shot, but then the real motivation of this Hail Mary may be to whip up populist furies.”

From the editorial:

At a press conference Monday, Mr. McDaniel lambasted the “dirty money coming in from D.C.,” and his attorney suggested that Cochran supporters who perpetrated the alleged election fraud ought to go to jail. Mr. McDaniel intends to take legal action in the event that the state GOP squashes his petition. The case could then take any number of routes through the state court system, but sustaining the challenge would require lots of lawyers and money regardless of how it proceeds. This would be a bonanza for Mr. McDaniel's election attorneys who have been making nice work from filing records requests.

Last month the McDaniel campaign sued county circuit clerks for denying them access to polling records with voters' birth dates. After the state Supreme Court rejected the petition, the campaign filed a motion for a rehearing, which was also denied summarily. Keep in mind that Mr. McDaniel started out as a trial lawyer. Filing meritless claims might be par for the course.

But Finley's editorial colleagues at the Journal apparently disagree that lawsuits filed by political losers are “meritless.” Earlier this year, the Journal published Sen. Ron Johnson's (R-WI) announcement of his lawsuit suing the twice-elected Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act (ACA), promoting a lawsuit that was almost immediately thrown out of court. On June 27, the editorial board went further and directly praised John Boehner's questionable plan to sue President Obama over the one-year delay of the employer mandate of the ACA. Although many legal experts have largely dismissed this suit as well, the Journal argued that Boehner's lawsuit was evidence that “the Speaker is showing more care that the laws be faithfully executed than is President Obama.” That editorial went on to assert that the lawsuit wasn't “frivolous” because apparently Boehner wouldn't “wager the House's reputation, and his own, on a novelty lawsuit.”

In another editorial from July 31, the editorial board again encouraged Boehner's lawsuit, calling it a “shame” that the suit was being dismissed as “frivolous” because it purportedly “involves crucial questions about the architecture of American government and the separation of powers.” The Journal ultimately concluded that “the courts may take such a challenge seriously.” Strangely enough, none of these latter editorials seemed particularly concerned with the costs associated with Boehner or Johnson's suits, or how they might “feather the nests” of trial lawyers -- but perhaps money is no object as long as the defendant is Barack Obama. 

Photo by Pete Souza via Flickr/The White House under a fair use license.