Cassidy supplies model against left's bullying

Louisiana’s Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy’s center-left origins have resurfaced, and that’s actually a good thing.

Perennial candidate Rob Maness, who launched his string of defeats by losing to Cassidy for the Senate in 2014, kept telling anybody who would listen that Cassidy was too liberal ideologically. While his voting record in the House of Representatives belied that, others asserted he had a leftist streak in him that certainly he had more than a decade ago.

Cassidy’s Senate tenure has given no reason to believe he acts anything as a conservative, with a lifetime American Conservative Union voting scorecard rating of over 82. But the leftism he once flirted with came out strongly in his actions concerning the nomination of Appellate Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

In the past couple of weeks, desperate to derail his nomination since they didn’t have the votes to do that, Senate Democrats seized upon and hyped allegations of sexual indiscretions, if not illegal behavior, in Kavanaugh’s youth, which since have been demonstrated as uncorroborated from accusers with little credibility. Despite that, rock-ribbed partisans and/or leftist ideologues have kept the torches lit wanting to burn the nomination at the stake.

This comes as no surprise, because emotion and bolstering pathologically-held convictions are all liberalism has left to justify its existence. Intellectually bankrupt and unable to win elections on the issues, it only can turn to this to try to win public policy battles. This is why mainstream conservative activists will conduct civil debates through the spoken and written word, drawing upon research and history to validate their worldviews and seldom resorting to histrionics bereft of facts, while their liberal counterparts typically scream in people’s faces, commit acts of thuggery, and conjure up baseless accusations in order to score points.

Unfortunately, this makes the conservative policy-makers have to play the left’s game to some extent. And the ebbing familiarity that Cassidy has with it may have prompted him to deal as he has with the nomination travesty unfolding.

When accosted by a leftist mind-numbed robot spouting nonsense about the whole affair, Cassidy gave as good as he got, calling her out for her endorsement of assuming guilt while having to prove innocence and of wanting to turn a confirmation hearing into a trial over uncorroborated charges wholly lacking credibility. This followed comments Cassidy made, concerning a set of ludicrous allegations against Kavanaugh, that the accuser should face criminal referral because she made them under oath to the Senate.

Whether other senators understand this, Cassidy has figured out that leftism has devolved into and rapidly is becoming defined through bullying behavior. And the only way to stop the left from continuing to act as a bully is to stand up to it.

That many Democrats sitting as his colleagues have condoned, if not egged on, that kind of behavior and worse, Cassidy has sent out a message that these tactics won’t make him cower. That personally is he anything but pugnacious amplifies the symbolism of his defiance.

Others on the political right can capitalize on Cassidy’s approach. By shutting down this behavior, by letting the world see this unreason for what it is, while the left won’t abandon this mode because that’s all it has, the diminution that will follow will improve public policy debates, leading to better decisions.

Bullies stop bothering you when you confront and shame them. Conservatives need to understand that and act accordingly with the left, Cassidy has shown.