Vitter correctly predicts judicial partisanship, Breaux loss

Regarding the upcoming governor’s race, Sen. David Vitter made two noteworthy statements: that the Louisiana Supreme Court will allow ex-resident John Breaux to run for governor if he tries to qualify, and that regardless Rep. Bobby Jindal will win. These comments deserve further examination.

If Breaux has the audacity to run, there will be a challenge about Sep. 10 to his candidacy. It will appear in the 19th District in Baton Rouge and a decision will be made around the Sep. 16 at best. Also at best, the inevitable appeal will be heard around Sep. 20 at the First Circuit, and the inevitable appeal to that to the Louisiana Supreme Court. However, the Court’s September session will have occurred by then. Even if it expedites, it will not be until the first week of October that the Court would hear any appeal, and an indeterminate number of days would pass before an opinion is issued. The election is Oct. 20.

But Vitter probably is correct about the Court approving of a Breaux candidacy. That’s because, reviewing the composition of the Court, there are five identifiable sympathizers with the notion of a Breaux candidacy and if you need to know one thing about the Louisiana judiciary, whose judges are elected, if it involves a political matter, that its judiciary can be as partisan as any other branch of government.

Yet Vitter also is correct about Jindal winning, in some part because of the tremendous stink that declaring Breaux as a “citizen” of Louisiana form the past five years would raise. Many would recognize this as a sham, as a naked political assertion of power by a dying machine born to place politics above the good of the state trying to preserve its power and privilege. After all, the basis by which Breaux has claimed he has been a “citizen” of Louisiana is so open-ended that any non-American who owns property in Louisiana and hardly sets foot in the state could qualify.

(To emphasize this point, the GOP should find a sympathetic somebody who matches Breaux’s “citizenship” claims as closely as possible, and have him qualify for governor, then contest his candidacy, publicizing it all along and seeing what the Democrats, media, and other willing allies of them have to say about this person, culminating in what the Court has to say about this candidacy. In case he makes the ballot, he could withdraw if he likes.)

Even with willing media accomplices trying to spin any favorable, obviously political decision about a Breaux candidacy, enough of the Louisiana voting public will be sickened by this arrogant display of exactly what good-old-boy attitude has afflicted the state for so many decades to prevent a Breaux victory, likely making Jindal the beneficiary. Which is why the state GOP should be rooting for this suicidal strategy by its opponents.