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GOP isn't doing Kennedy any favors
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Race
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Contributor | Brandonius Maximus |
Last Edited | Brandonius Maximus Oct 12, 2008 03:28pm |
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Category | Commentary |
News Date | Sunday, October 12, 2008 09:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
Description | The national GOP can make a huge difference when it sends hot-shot campaign managers and strategists to help a candidate in Louisiana.
It may be no exaggeration to say that a swing of 10 percentage points is possible once they get cracking.
One of these days they will notice that the swing is always to the Democrats.
That was already happening more than two decades ago, when Republican experts descended on Louisiana to help then-U.S. Rep. Henson Moore get elected to the Senate. Whether Moore could have lost on his own will never be known, but he never stood a chance against John Breaux once the experts from out of state got their hands on him.
The election result evidently did not persuade the GOP that it might make sense to get a grasp of the issues that matter to Louisiana voters, and nothing has changed much since.
The latest GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, state Treasurer John Kennedy, looks less and less likely to survive the effects of his party's expertise.
Republicans came here in force because they had decided that Mary Landrieu was the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate. Either Kennedy had arrived at the same conclusion, or he had experienced a sudden and profound philosophical awakening. Whatever, he switched parties just in time to enter the race against Landrieu.
Newly minted Republican though he was, Kennedy had a lot going for him and had built a reputation as the scourge of boondogglers at the State Bond Commission. His manner remains studiedly down home, but he is plenty smart and holds degrees from Vanderbilt, Virginia and Oxford, England.
Yet right now he looks like an idiot. Surely he could not have pulled that off without some serious professional advice. Landrieu must be dancing a jig over a gaffe that threatens to overshadow the rest of the campaign. |
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