What has brought Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy close to extinction in his quest for reelection now threatens the chances of GOP Rep. Julia Letlow for promotion to that office.
Last week, news escaped concerning Letlow’s endorsement of diversity, equity, and inclusion practices during her time as a University of Louisiana Monroe administrator prior to her election to Congress. Recordings of her interview process to helm the university in 2020 as well as internal documents revealed her expressing support for the divisive measures, which posit that American societal differences among races comes from irredeemable racism practiced, whether consciously, by majority whites that may be compensated for only through reverse discrimination.
Actually, it was only the publicity of her past statements that was anything new. Media had reported on the documents and the video has been publicly online for years, but the presence of these recently picked up amplification by additional media reporting.
Letlow defended herself against charges of being woke by pointing to her actions in Congress. She has supported several measures and made statements that contradicted support for DEI, maintaining that at one time she saw the goals of DEI as benign but that it had become “hijacked by the radical left” leading to her rejection of it, and that her endorsement by Republican Pres. Donald Trump demonstrated congruence with his anti-DEI agenda and actions.
However, the contents of her paper and electron trail make her appear to be all in on DEI initiatives. That’s not unprecedented in higher education these days for anybody with ambitions to advance up the ivy tower, as the ethos of DEI has become so pervasive that, until Trump in his second term began to throw up roadblocks through various executive and judicial actions, somebody vying for top jobs in academic administration had to parrot DEI lingo regardless of their true feelings about it.
Letlow, of course, had no idea six years ago of the future tragedy of her husband’s death that would propel her into Congress where as a Republican any past, even if just lip service, enunciated fealty to DEI would make her suspicious to Republican voters even as it would bring approval from (most) faculty lounges. In other words, she on the outside may have articulated DEI principles as a tactic solely to get ahead in academia.
That makes her very much like Cassidy, who spends much of his campaign tying himself to Trump while conveniently not mentioning he voted to convict Trump between terms of ludicrous and wholly partisan impeachment charges, after declaring at first the effort unconstitutional. It was an entirely about-faced and unprincipled display likely a product of political calculation: Cassidy believed Trump was a spent political force and by joining the majority Democrats’ mob he could curry favor with them and Democrat Pres. Joe Biden to further his senatorial career, as well as allowing him to get a leg up within the GOP to credential himself as an anti-Trump party leader now that the Trump wing appeared to be on the way out.
But he miscalculated and now is paying the price, much as unforeseen events would make Letlow’s status-climbing come back to haunt her. That he tries to cram away the whole fiasco down a memory hole is even more craven, while Letlow at least attempts to frame her whiplash as correcting a mistake.
Yet the common denominator between the two on this score is they both have displayed a tendency to do what it takes to get ahead, even if it means selling out presumed principles, which will make voters question whether they can be trusted. That trait becomes even more illuminated given great contrast delivered by the other main candidate for the Republican nomination, GOP Treas. John Fleming, who is considered (as a negative to some) highly principled and consistently conservative.
It's possible that one or both of Cassidy and Letlow can make the inevitable runoff. However, a majority of Republican primary voters may be in no mood to select as their nominee a candidate who on basic issues has shown a tendency to go whichever way the wind blows.
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