While Louisiana seems unlikely to provide any electoral relief for Democrats in terms of this year’s governor’s contest and in delivering electoral votes in next year’s presidential square-off, the one statewide tilt where their chances are close to even is in the retention of Sen. Mary Landrieu’s seat. But Landrieu now finds her Senate partisan colleagues are doing her no favors in this quest.
Ever since the levees broke in New Orleans in tragic 2005, Landrieu has recognized that, with the hollowing of her New Orleans base accelerated, she would have to attract different supporters. Following her Democrat cohort Gov. Kathleen Blanco, she adopted the strategy of attracting future votes by blaming the federal government, then entirely controlled by Republicans, for any and every thing no matter how little it had to do with whatever or how much culpability Landrieu herself had.
But now that strategy is starting to backfire since Democrats took control of Congress. Landrieu still can try to rail against the GOP White House, but now she finds Democrats’ pursuit of their agenda largely to blame for a lack of advancement of her causes which she needs to desperately to succeed to have any chance for reelection.
It is a committee led by a Democrat who is stalling some of her legislation. It is the Democrat leadership who shoved her legislation into the Iraq surrender bill that will go nowhere. While other parts of her bringing bacon to the state are being held up by Republicans (since the Democrats cling to the barest of majorities in the Senate), Senate Democrats can solve those problems procedurally, such as moving the Morganza-to-the-Gulf levee project to the general Water Resources Development Act reauthorization. Since that bill has been delayed for years and Republicans are interested in its passage, it is only Democrats failing to act on it (as they prefer to spend resources trying to score political points over war funding) that prevents it from becoming reality.
Landrieu continues to bleat about how Republicans thwart her, but informed observers know the truth – Democrat leaders don’t see Louisiana as a political ally and look down on the state that increasingly rejects their liberalism which is wrong for the American people. They want to help Landrieu retain her seat because it will help them retain Senatorial power, but if that clashes with promoting their own narrow, misbegotten agenda, they’ll throw her overboard – confident that most of the time her loyalty to them still will get her to hew the party line.
It’s a lesson Louisiana voters hopefully will recognize to cut through Landrieu and state Democrat propaganda during the 2008 election season.
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