Hey. What the heck happened in Dixie last night?

U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi was supposed to get his head handed to him by that tea party upstart Chris McDaniel in the Republican runoff. It didn’t happen. Cochran was renominated for his billionth term in the Senate.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/210473-cochran-topples-tea-party-in-mississippi

It turns out the conservative senator who the tea party said wasn’t conservative enough turned to some unlikely allies in pulling out this comeback win: African-American voters, for crying out loud.

He also got some help by a turnout that exceeded the primary turnout in raw numbers, a feat as rare as, say, African-Americans voting for a Southern Republican these days.

McDaniel scared the bejabbers out of a lot of Mississippians, apparently. Cochran’s team targeted some racially charged comments McDaniel made as a radio talk-show host. McDaniel fired back with criticism of Cochran’s penchant for piling on pork-barrel money for projects he funneled back to his home state.

Then there was this, as reported by The Hill: “McDaniel stumbled over a scandal concerning the arrest of four men, some clear supporters of his bid, for allegedly sneaking into a nursing home to take photos of Cochran’s wife for use in an apparent political attack on the senator.”

It was a nasty, bizarre and totally weird runoff campaign.

Out here in Texas, though, we don’t have a particular hound in that fight.

I’ve got mixed feelings about it all, to be blunt. I am not a huge Thad Cochran fan, but the alternative — McDaniel — was much worse, in my humble view. I guess I’m glad Cochran won. The man has shown the ability to work with Democrats in the Senate, a skill McDaniel would have needed to learn from scratch.

All in all, a bizarre ending to a bizarre campaign.