|
|
"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
|
Kennedy [LA] may find GOP's been overrated
|
|---|
| Parent(s) |
Race
|
| Contributor | Brandonius Maximus |
| Last Edited | Brandonius Maximus Jul 25, 2008 07:50pm |
| Logged |
0
|
| Category | Commentary |
| Media | Newspaper - New Orleans Times-Picayune |
| News Date | Saturday, July 26, 2008 01:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Since Karl Rove is supposed to be a political genius, and State Treasurer John Kennedy has a string of fancy degrees from American and English universities, the room must have been throbbing with cerebral energy when they met last summer.
Perhaps they think too much. If they hadn't put together such a devilish plan, they wouldn't look so naif right now.
Kennedy, running for re-election, was a Democrat at the time, but not one of your Louisiana boll weevils. He had been the most liberal candidate in the race for U.S. Senate in 2004, excoriating President Bush for his tax cuts and pushing for an increase in the minimum wage.
David Vitter, R-Metairie, won in the primary after Kennedy lambasted him for voting the Bush line in the U.S. House of Representatives.
But Rove, then the political brains of the White House, decided that Kennedy was not only cut out to be a Republican, but just the man to displace Mary Landrieu, identified by the GOP brain trust as the most vulnerable Democrat in the U.S. Senate.
Kennedy was perhaps too beguiled to reflect that the GOP brain trust cannot always be trusted to read Louisiana politics, and announced he was switching parties.
This was not, of course, political opportunism. Kennedy was motivated, he explained to supporters, by "bedrock principle." It was lucky he found his bedrock principle just in time to get a lot of money to run for high office. |
| Share |
|
|
2¢
|
|
| Article | Read Full Article |
|
| Date |
Category |
Headline |
Article |
Contributor |
|
|
