Unfortunate outcome has electoral ripples

Sadly, for the third time in its history Louisiana has had someone duly elected to Congress die before taking office for the first time, with this regrettable occurrence reverberating outside of the state that could trigger distasteful Democrat calculations.

The unpredictable Wuhan coronavirus struck down Republican Luke Letlow mere days before he would have been sworn in to serve the state’s Fifth Congressional District. In 1872 and then in 1882 it had happened, although in both instances just after the election and well before the next Congress would meet.

His new House neighbor GOP Rep. Mike Johnson, a few years older than Letlow’s relatively youthful 41, earlier this month weathered a bout of the virus with little difficulty, and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a couple of decades older, did the same earlier this year. Unfortunately, you never know with this virus, and at this difficult time Louisianans should offer up prayers for him and his family.

Unlike Newsom, Edwards unworried about recall

Each state has a botched Wuhan coronavirus pandemic response by its Democrat governor, who also turns out to be a hypocrite on the issue. As a consequence, each state suffers economically. Yet only one stands a good chance of enduring a recall election, telling us about the state’s politics and culture

California Gov. Gavin Newsom faces increasingly rough waters over this discontent. Actually, in terms of his initial response, things started out about as well as they could given the pandemic’s circumstances. Newsom acted swiftly in its early days with a flexible strategy of restrictions that allowed for much of the economy to stay open while California rang up a comparatively low number of cases and deaths despite being on the shore of the virus’ origin, the People’s Republic of China.

But eventually cases and deaths began a steady march upwards while Newsom, although with some temporary retreats, steadily clamped down harder and more widely on the economy. The fallout triggered depopulation to the point likely now the state will lose a seat in the House of Representatives in the upcoming reapportionment and a cascade of significant employers decamping to low-tax states.

Confused conservatives impede LA evolution

For fundamental change to occur in Louisiana politics – more specifically, evolution away from a state government-centric, primarily redistributive, and populist system – conservatives have to understand why things are as they are before they can act to make things different. Including when they are their own worst enemies.

A couple of examples surfaced last week illuminating how some conservatives don’t get it; one from the world of electoral politics and the other from the milieu that provides the intellectual ammunition for conservative ideas to triumph. In the aftermath of state central committee elections earlier this month, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Eddie Rispone announced his intentions to lead the state party.

Prior to his run for governor, where he almost knocked off Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, Rispone had worked behind the scenes to elect conservatives. During the latest round of governance elections, he backed several candidates. In a sense, this desire for the GOP’s chairmanship merely extends his history of building an infrastructure to elect conservatives.

Pandemic tale of two states not good for LA

Accelerated by the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, the “end of cities” isn’t confined to Louisiana’s urban areas as an indictment of the state’s direction the last five years under Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards.

Up to the production of 2020 population estimates – which in a couple of weeks the actual Apr. 1, 2020 census numbers will supersede – analysts ruminated about the hollowing out seen in a number of American cities, and about others that have see a surge in new residents over the year. Relatively heavy outflows came from New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, DC, while the likes of Austin, Phoenix, Nashville, Tampa, Jacksonville, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Dallas, Charleston, Denver, Tulsa, Louisville, Burlington, Knoxville, Syracuse, and Little Rock appear to have picked up significant numbers of new residents.

Notice something? Losing cities were in states (and DC) with Democrat control of government, while among winning cities only Denver, Syracuse, and Las Vegas were the same, with every other city (except Burlington) located in a state with complete Republican control (Vermont has a Democrat-led Legislature). More anecdotal evidence confirms flight from overtaxed, overregulated leftist states towards friendlier conservative ones.