My must read of the day is "Mississippi Senate race, reflecting split within GOP, nears its finale," in the Los Angeles Times:
As the candidates stumped across Mississippi in a final push for votes before Tuesday's runoff election, the choice of venues reflected the race. The contest for Mississippi's Republican Senate nomination pits genteel against charismatic, experience against a newcomer, but — more than anything — the GOP's establishment base of business conservatives against a tea party insurgency echoing themes of economic populism. […]
As the season's most competitive, nasty, and costly primary showdown heads into its final stretch, widely divergent polling shows the outcome is uncertain. The first round earlier this month resulted in the narrowest of margins — McDaniel with a 1,400-vote lead over Cochran — and neither man reaching the 50 percent threshold for victory because of a smattering of votes that went to a third candidate.
The Mississippi Senate race matters, but not for conventional reasons. This is not a "battleground" race that is expected to determine control of the Senate. Election analysts consider the state "likely Republican," and when you remember that the last time the state sent a Democrat to office was in the 1980s, it seems comfortably red.
What makes the race interesting is the intra-party conflict: the establishment vs. the tea party.
I’ve contended, time and time again, that this "rift" is over inflated and the tea party’s influence is not waning because it has become an imbedded part of the Republican Party—so I’m not entirely convinced "establishment vs. tea party" is the best way to describe it. There is a clear ideological debate occurring here, but this race is largely a battle between external groups. Consequently, I don’t see this race as a "battle for the soul of the GOP," but as the best chance for outside, national tea party groups to prove they still have clout.
Those are the groups that were unable to produce viable candidates to knock off key targets in Kentucky and South Carolina, and they were not involved in Rep. Eric Cantor’s surprising loss.
Before the runoff, outside groups had spent over 8 million dollars in this race—now spending is at 11.6 million. In this race alone, 33 independent groups have spent money, and, as the New York Times notes, that is "at least 10 more than in other high-profile Senate races this year."
This is a battle between outside groups—the tea party doesn’t "need" to win because they never lost.
Perhaps, more than anything, this race matters because we want it to and thanks to questionable antics, dirty attack ads, and questions surrounding voter outreach, it has certainly been interesting.