Cassidy insulting GOP officials risks little

It’s not that Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy doesn’t want to win reelection, but that he’s gone past the point of return long ago and can afford pettiness in politics.

Last week, GOP state Rep. Roger Wilder claimed Cassidy had reneged on supplying him with tickets to Washington Mardi Gras festivities. During the last part of January traditionally Louisiana’s congressional delegation hosts the event which typically sucks in a lot of state and local politicians, plus more lobbyists than a stick could be shaken at. This demand makes these somewhat valuable for purposes of politicking.

Apparently, Wilder went to secure his promised ones and was told instead he’d get a refund. He says it was his support of Republican state Sen. Blake Miguez, a rumored candidate for Cassidy’s job in 2026, of which Cassidy’s staff got wind and so farmed out the ducats elsewhere.

One might think Cassidy would not want to stir animosity among Republicans by doing something like this as under the new election rules for Congress. Louisianans will vote in a modified closed primary, where a nomination contest occurs for each political party. That nomination is won when a nominee secures a majority of those voting, meaning it could go to a runoff. Only registered voters of that party, plus any unaffiliated voters not voting in any other party’s primary, may participate in these elections.

This differs from the past system used for all but a few years since the 1974 Constitution went into effect, where all candidates regardless of party label ran together, eschewing nominations entirely, with the one who received a majority, through runoff if necessary, winning. This means party registrants have a much bigger say in who ends up competing in the general election, where the candidate with the most votes wins without needing a majority or a runoff to achieve that.

And state Republicans in the main have no love lost for Cassidy, who almost immediately after reelection in 2020 – after saying he wouldn’t – voted to convict Republican Pres. Donald Trump in an impeachment trial allegedly for inciting insurrection. In an evenly-divided Senate, a few GOP senators concurred along with all non-Republicans, but that was several votes short of conviction. Even though Trump had left office, successful prosecution would have prevented him from holding office again.

Cassidy wasn’t sorry about his vote, despite it being wasted in trying to end Trump’s political career and which a solid majority of Louisianans opposed. He tried unconvincingly to explain it away then began digging deeper with a series of actions that supported Democrats big-spending agenda. And he doubled down on his antipathy to Trump, last year refusing to say he would vote for Trump although he declared he would vote for the party’s nominee, after in previous years saying Trump shouldn’t run and should be convicted on politically-motivated charges dealing with classified documents and that Trump couldn’t win. He also suffered censure by state Republicans.

None of this can be undone, and no doubt his first announced opponent GOP Treasurer John Fleming and anybody else who gets in like Miguez could will remind voters of it all in a state where Trump bagged 94 percent of the GOP vote and 88 percent of conservatives last year – and where 47 percent described themselves as “Make America Great Again” Republicans and even among the fifth of Republicans who didn’t label themselves as such 82 percent voted for Trump – Cassidy’s antipathy towards Trump and the negative aspersions cast on Trump’s agenda cannot be finessed or hidden.

So, why not go after party officials, not many of whom will support Cassidy anyway? He banks upon a large campaign kitty to bypass them and discuss all the goodies he has brought the state – but his opponents will remind voters of all the other stuff that will cost him votes in a Republican primary and history is littered with large-spending incumbents defeated because of policy and personality missteps. Regardless, he made his bed long ago and has to lie in it, so he really loses nothing with incidents like this.