In these elections for Louisiana to
fill its slate of federal elected officials, Democrat Landrieu struggled in her
reelection bid against Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, in the
process becoming the first incumbent to lose from the state in over 80 years. Even
as she lost by 12 percent, compared to her down-ballot colleagues she didn’t do
badly.
In the Fifth Congressional District
political newcomer Republican Dr. Ralph
Abraham rolled up over 60 percent of the vote in triumphing over Democrat
Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo, and in the Sixth Congressional District longtime
political aide and appointee Republican Garret Graves did the same against
Democrat former Gov. Prisoner
#03128-095. This will leave starting next year the only such Democrat in
Louisiana being Rep. Cedric
Richmond.
In a way having Richmond as the
sole survivor for the party is fitting, for the idea that an unapologetic
liberal – one who favors abortion and same-sex marriage, that sees racism
forever institutionalized in government and society that requires race-based
intervention to avoid, who demands higher taxes disproportionately foisted upon
the productive class, supports bigger government in all of spending,
transferring wealth, and of regulating peoples’ lives including of their firearms,
conceptualizes pursuit of American interests globally as illegitimate, and who
worships at the altar of the religion of significant anthropogenic climate
change – could win federal office began with Landrieu. She was the first truly
successful federal candidate and/or statewide candidate, starting with her
initial state treasurer victory, that embraced the national Democrat agenda.
Now her only heir left is Richmond, who wins only because he represents a
district more prone to viewing the political world in lenses provided by trusted
Democrat operatives ground from historical circumstance and whose constituents generally
are less capable, for reasons of lower educational attainment, reduced
information, and cultural factors based both on history and policy decisions
reinforcing that, of matching issue preferences to longer term self-interests.
Up until then, even as successful
statewide and/or federal candidates in the state were liberal economic
populists, they often hewed closely to more conservative issue preferences in
the realms of social and foreign
policies – even back then vigorous but today’s moldy oldie opponent of Graves, known
then as Edwin Edwards. As treasurer, Landrieu had little policy opportunity to
demonstrate that, but when she ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1995 followed
by her successful Senate run a year later, her deviance from the model became
patently obvious. And for years she prospered electorally by casting enough
pork barrel and selectively contradictory votes to the ideology inherent in her
new model to fool enough voters to stay in office.
But as Louisiana
voters have begun to think more ideologically and thereby a majority of
them have ceased voting against their own self-interests, the unabashed liberal
model of Landrieu fell of the weight of its own internal contradictions. Yet,
more remarkably, all varieties of Louisiana Democrats got hammered in this
election.
Edwards provided the traditional
populist model common from a quarter-century ago, clearly now spent as anything
more than a local phenomenon. Mayo gave a view of the “new south” version – the
supposedly competent, business-oriented Democrat, and black on top of that like
the majority in his constituency – but underneath that skin a white,
northeastern liberal struggles to get out articulating
the same tired themes of the necessity of wealth redistribution that scream
out liberal populism.
So, regardless of being new wine in
(if camouflaged) a new bottle (Landrieu), old wine in an old bottle (Edwards),
or old wine in a new bottle (Mayo), large majorities found it all distasteful.
Instead, the GOP diversity in its candidates was what succeeded among those in
the electorate.
Cassidy, as a number of
higher-profile elected Republicans in Louisiana’s recent history have done,
made the conversion from Democrat to Republican, and while perhaps not as
conservative as fellow House members Reps. Steve Scalise and John Fleming, is still plenty
conservative and more than willing to rein in the excesses of the Pres. Barack Obama
era. Graves came from an insider, government staff/executive background but
still articulated solidly conservative themes to get the country back on track.
Abraham illustrates the non-politician, conservative common man who after years
of activism on the sidelines felt compelled to offer himself as a tonic to a
national government more than ever straining to break from conservative
restraints that preserve liberty.
On Saturday, all kinds of
Republicans not only defeated all kinds of Democrats, but decisively so. This
signals nothing abrupt, but rather the culmination of a process where Louisiana
Democrats have made themselves a permanent minority by their leadership embracing
the national party’s flailing liberal agenda, to the point that its candidates
no longer can differentiate sufficiently themselves from it to be competitive
except where political subcultures highly distinct from the state’s exist.
These election results show a
majority of Louisiana voters have aligned their self-interests with parties’
and candidates’ agenda, voting congruently with these for the first time in memory, for
federal and/or statewide offices. At the state level, it completes the process
producing a party system with majority Republicans and minority Democrats, an entire
reversal even of the recent past that gives every indication that it will
endure for some time to come.
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