Trump's lady

When it comes to insipid, substance-free campaigning, Julia Letlow isn't blazing a new trail. She's just following in Bill Cassidy's footsteps.

NEW ORLEANS — You’d think that someone who has served nearly six years in Congress after well over a decade in academia, someone with a Ph.D. in Communication who was a viable candidate for a university presidency, someone like, say, Julia Letlow, would want to show off some brain power after a big political victory.

But, no. After winning the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate on Saturday, and thus becoming the prohibitive favorite to win the Senate seat in the fall, Letlow decided to go with what got her this far in the race: insipid flattery.

Donald Trump, Letlow said, is “the greatest president this country has ever had,” according to The Times-Picayune.

Upon hearing or reading this, your first impulse might be to invoke Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln or FDR.

But Letlow wouldn’t really have to go that far back in history to find presidents who surpass Trump.

Letlow, 45, grew up as Ronald Reagan helped teeter the Soviet Union and as George H.W. Bush guided us through the end of the Cold War — while also becoming the last president to enter a war in the Middle East with a clear objective and exit strategy.

Letlow is certainly old enough to remember that Bill Clinton left office with a budget surplus.

And, Letlow was well into adulthood as Barack Obama steered us out of a financial crisis and won health coverage for millions.

I’m not arguing that any of them will be labeled as great presidents in the judgment of historians. Just that the ethically and intellectually challenged winner of the FIFA Peace Prize is obviously far from great and doesn’t compare well with any of them.

But, Letlow knew, and knows, that Trump’s endorsement is still gold in a deep red, Deep South state where his popularity is, inexplicably, as resilient as inflation.

And she appears to know that if you keep him and his supporters high enough on their favorite drugs, flattery and loyalty, they will gleefully overlook past departures from the party line.

Letlow’s opponents, early in the campaign, began calling her out for her well documented, enthusiastic (and fully defensible) support of DEI initiatives. Evidence included a video of her August 2020 job interview for the presidency of the University of Louisiana at Monroe, during which she lamented the lack of diversity at ULM, touched on “amazing work” in DEI initiatives she’d witnessed during visits to eight other colleges, and called for formation of a ULM Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

That interview happened only months before she left ULM and entered the House. Yet, this is how she explained the issue away in a TV interview early this year:

“I saw it firsthand when I worked at the university,” she said. “DEI was presented to us as something that would help people achieve the American dream. When I quickly witnessed that it was hijacked by the radical left and turned into indoctrination and actually holding people down, I spent the past five years in Congress fighting against it.”

Quickly witnessed? She’d been at the university on and off in some capacity for over a decade? When did “the radical left” pull off this heist of what had only months earlier been “amazing work”?

Doesn’t matter. Trump and his followers are perfectly OK with facial nonsense. Some of them even believe it.

Note the dispiriting remarks of a Letlow voter interviewed Saturday by the AP:

“Trump’s lady all the way,” said Barbara Dufrene, 67, of Marrero. She added that she knew little about Letlow but was counting on the president to lower her healthcare costs and increase her social safety net. “I always vote whatever Trump wants.”

That was a day after The Wall Street Journal reported:

Nearly four million people who signed up for Affordable Care Act plans this year have already dropped their coverage after the loss of subsidies resulted in sharply higher costs.

It’s not like Letlow blazed a new trail. She was just retracing the footsteps of the man she helped Trump oust from the Senate in the May primary, incumbent Bill Cassidy.

Cassidy was the challenger 12 years ago in a similarly substance-free campaign best remembered for his repeatedly telling voters that then-incumbent Mary Landrieu voted with then-President Barack Obama 97 percent of the time.

You could argue that Cassidy was defeated in May because he crossed Trump, voting, conscientiously, for a Senate conviction after the House impeached Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in 2021.

But consider the possibility — admittedly, this is counterintuitive — that Cassidy didn’t cross Trump often enough. Cassidy and other Republicans who have largely said or done little or nothing about his political self-dealing, racist immigration policies, lies, crackpot vanity projects, extra-judicial killings at sea, and policy missteps have only enabled his takeover of the party and his ability to continue mowing down intra-party opposition.

And, so, the party, and the nation are stuck for now with the tragicomedy of an administration symbolized by a swampy reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial and a ceasefire that isn’t really a ceasefire in the Middle East.

Play up to a bully for too long and you might never be able to successfully stand up to him.

Cassidy found that out. Letlow will, too, if she ever reaches a point where her conscience (assuming she has one) moves her to oppose Trump.

STILL WITH ME?

Please take time to read Ron Fournier’s assessment of coverage of the Iran war.