"Former white suprmacist"

Odd little caption from the EWE birthday tribute at NOLA.com yesterday under a photo from 1991.

Edwin Edwards, left, and David Duke, prepare to discuss their candidacies on WDSU's "Meet the Press," November 10, 1991, in New Orleans. Edwards beat Duke, a former white supremacist, in the 1991 gubernatorial election to serve his last term. Both Edwards and Duke's success embarrassed Louisiana. Edwards had been plagued by government corruption scandals during his prior time in office. Duke was a high-profile racist.

I guess he must have come out of retirement recently.  I kind of get what they're saying, though.  In 1991, Duke really was selling himself as a "former white supremacist" in order to pretty himself up for politics. Most people didn't believe him, of course. But he still got a fair amount of "on many sides" benefit of the doubt in the press anyway. Would he even need to pretend today?  

 

Donald Trump: Republican

Alex Parene patiently explains what some of us have nearly exasperated ourselves trying to say all the while.  The substantive policy direction of the Trump Presidency is proceeding precisely the way any Republican presidency would be expected to. Yeah Trump is also exceedingly crude and stupid. But that's just style points, really.

Trump himself is abnormal. The actions of his administration, with a few notable exceptions, are not. Democrats need to disabuse the Amy Siskinds of the country of their belief that more genteel Republicans would act more responsibly.

The hook may change with the fashion of the day, but the program remains the same. We tried to point this out a few years ago when people were trying to explain there is some sort of difference between Steve Scalise and David Duke we are supposed to care about. We thought that was nonsense.

Now here we are in the time of Trump and Scalise is back in the news. Yes, he was the victim of a horrific shooting incident which we all condemn. But he also just voted to pass AHCA out of the House enabling probably the most deadly of Trump's policy initiatives to date not including the ones that involved actually dropping bombs on people.  Certain folks seem to think that there's some significant difference between the Republicans making the policy and the Republican selling the policy this time around for some reason. Not sure why that is.

Rigging the Election Guide Part Two: The #lasen swamp

On Election Day 2016 there are over twenty candidates in the race to replace retiring U.S. Senator and noted disgrace to humanity David Vitter. Only two of them can qualify for the runoff, of course. And at this stage, everything we've seen in the polling indicates that one of them will be the dripping mound of animated smarm known as John Neely Kennedy. Kennedy is a despicable person. But he's got the highest job approval and name recognition among this field. And he's the only candidate who has successfully run for statewide office. As difficult as it is to stomach, he's always had the clearest path to the runoff among Republican candidates. So the game really is about who squeezes into that other slot.

Louisiana political convention tells us that spot should go to the strongest Democrat.  In fact, that is still the most likely outcome Tuesday. But it isn't a lock.  Early in the year Democratic poobahs were busy figuring out how to replicate their series of happy accidents winning strategy from the 2015 governor's race. 

Handwerk said the party’s current inclination is to attempt to mimic the gubernatorial race — to come up with a strong, possibly lesser-known candidate to rally behind early while Republicans battle each other for a spot in the runoff.

Yeah that didn't happen. This is the case because of a split among Democratic power brokers initiated by the increasingly exasperating candidacy of Caroline Fayard.

The Fabulous Fayards

Why is Fayard in the race? At first it seemed okay. For a while, a popular parlor game involved figuring a way to game the abnormally large field into a double Democrat runoff. This became an especially tantalizing  prospect after David Duke jumped in.  The now infamous Raycom poll even had Duke polling at 5 percent. If that's a reliable number (it probably isn't) it was thought the presence of Duke and other fringe candidates might have captured enough of the Republican vote in the Year of Trump to deny even Kennedy a runoff spot. But that was always a long shot and the math never really worked out.  Duke is still running as a spoiler. But he's probably there to spoil somebody besides Kennedy. More on that in a bit.

Early polling showed Fayard didn't have the numbers to compete. Her campaign was always light on substance anyway. To illustrate this, I refer you to political consultant Lamar White's endorsement of her in this September 2 blog post. The points on which Lamar makes his argument for her are these.

1) She is relatively young. 

If she is successful, at 38, she would be the youngest woman ever elected to the United States Senate. All told, 116 different people have been elected to the Senate in their thirties; not a single one of them was a woman.

2) She hold a prestigious degree.

Caroline is an Ivy League graduate; she finished at the front of her class at one of the top five law schools in the country.

3) She's worked with and for powerful people.

She’s worked at one of the most successful financial institutions in the world (and even at the White House). She’s taught law at Loyola in New Orleans, and as a lawyer, she’s worked on some of the biggest environmental damages cases in American history. Last year, she helped her brother launch a new airline company. A friggin airline company.

LOL "A friggin airline company," exclaims a breathless Lamar there.  Does Donald Trump have one of those?  Also the "successful financial institution" was Goldman Sachs.

4) Caroline represents "a new generation of leadership in Louisiana" whatever the hell that means.

At no point does Lamar say anything specific about what Senator Fayard's agenda is for a tenure in the US Senate. What constituencies does she represent?  Who will she fight against? Lamar doesn't say.  All that matters to him here is the personal profile. The post most reminded me of an old Gambit cover story by Jeremy Alford where then rising star Bobby Jindal was celebrated for his "Geek Appeal" rather than substantively analyzed for his policy agenda. As if to drive home the geek cred point, the post is accompanied by a podcast where Lamar interviews Fayard. See, she's cool. She'll come on this website and chat with us.

Lamar is a friend so I don't want to be too harsh here. I hope if he reads this he takes it as constructive criticism.  But in recent years, especially, he seems to base more of his political pronouncements on his personal knowledge of the individual candidates. Too many of his endorsements can be summarized as "I've met candidate so and so and they were very nice to me."  That's great. But it's not helpful to most readers. If anything, this personality based approach represents the opposite of "new generation" style politics.  It's just a repackaged version of good ol' boy networking. (Fayard is not an ol' boy, though, so I guess it's #woke.)

Anyway back to the race. Once it became apparent that she wasn't an early contender, it made more sense for Fayard to drop out, endorse Campbell, "unite the party" so to speak, and let the Democrats claim their default runoff spot. That didn't happen, though. It's a curious thing. Again, I'm not sure why Fayard stayed in the race. But I'm pretty clear on the effect of her being there. And her behavior in the meantime has ranged from plain embarrassing to downright suspicious.

And the Fayards are a suspicious lot to begin with. I've pointed you over to AZ for some background on this previously.  Calvin and Caroline Fayard have played dubious roles profiteering off of the BP settlement and Wisner trust disputes.  Caroline likes to call this "taking on BP" in her campaign ads. It's nothing of the sort, of course. Hilariously, she won't even endorse the state's attempt to sue the oil and gas industry over coastal erosion. But we've covered that already too.

Here is a more recent AZ post reminding us that Calvin Fayard was among the brigade of Uptown New Orleans aristocrats who, during the post-Katrina aftermath, barricaded themselves in their mansions behind their own guns and private security while taking verbal pot shots at the "demographics" of the city. This is from the Vanity Fair article Jason quotes.

Some of the city’s richest residents stepped into the breach, taking security into their own hands. In New Orleans’s upscale Uptown neighborhood, well-heeled and well-armed property owners, sometimes with security guards to assist them, kept possible looters at bay, carrying firearms openly in their neighborhoods and looking after neighbors’ homes and valuables—even keeping a close watch on friends’ irreplaceable art collections. Attorney Calvin Fayard—one of the region’s major political fund-raisers for the Democratic Party, and the owner of the so-called Wedding Cake House, one of the city’s grand mansions—would remain at home and on guard with a coterie of like-minded friends. Some would use their powerboats to rescue the marooned. Their neighbors would dine on gourmet food from nearby specialty stores. Some would bathe in their stagnant swimming pools. One or two would take the opportunity to fly by helicopter to the office to shred potentially sensitive business documents—to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, should law and order break down altogether.

You might remember some of the other members of this A-Team.  Here is Ashton O'Dwyer in 2005 being interviewed from his stronghold.

In rich white enclaves like Uptown, residents are wary of sounding racist. But with their deep business and family connections, they say they are determined to ensure the new city will be very different than the old one, which for so long has been associated with crime, poor schools and corruption.

"Whatever you do, don't put people back in the city who are criminals and who are incapable of, or unwilling to, help themselves," said Mr. O'Dwyer, a volatile, white 57-year-old lawyer.

"What was once unacceptable in polite, respectable society has not only become commonplace over the past 30 years of Negro rule in this city, but it has become acceptable and I am not going to stand for it any more," said the fifth-generation New Orleans resident. "If we return to the same old, same old . . . I'm outta here."

And this is Jimmy Reiss. 

The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

So these are the Fayards.  This is the world they come from.  And here is how they've applied these values to their political activities.  Caroline was a contributor to former Louisiana Congressman Richard Baker. Baker famously declared after Katrina that God had "cleaned up public housing" in New Orleans. That's pretty well in keeping with the Fayard ethos as laid out above. But there's more.

Much has been made in the news (even today, in fact) of the Fayards' close associations with the Clintons. In 2008 Calvin Fayard was a big time fundraiser for Hillary associated with a group calling themselves "Hillraisers." You may recall that after Hillary lost the nomination to Barack Obama, some of these people had a difficult time reconciling themselves to that fact. Fayard was among them.  Here he is at a McCain/Palin fundraiser aimed at courting disappointed Democrats. Fayard and his "liberal Democrat" friends were especially awed by Sarah Palin.

John Coale, an attorney in Washington, D.C. who is married to Greta Van Susteren, has worked with John McCain on tobacco legislation, and includes Nancy Pelosi among his friends, estimates he single-handedly brought in "50 percent" of the people who attended the fundraiser. He, too, was upset at how "Obama and Howard Dean and the crew" handled the situation as Clinton faced misogyny. He also questioned Obama's fitness for the job: "I've met with Obama three times… I think he was full of platitudes then and he's still full of platitudes now."

"I'm a liberal Democrat," Cole continued. "Sarah Palin just reinforced the reason I'm for McCain. I think she probably has more experience [than Obama], but I think it's appalling the way she has been treated," referring again to perceived sexism.

Calvin Fayard, another lawyer in New Orleans, said he "came away a lot more comfortable" with Palin after meeting her. "She struck me as being very energetic, very knowledgeable, and at least in touch with the rest of the world."

Oy! Here is an NYT account of the same event. 

More than 1,000 people paid $1,000 each for tickets to the main fund-raiser. Nearly 250 people who contributed $25,000 got dinner beforehand with Mr. McCain. 

The reception for former Clinton supporters, which also was attended by Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, was spearheaded by Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a former telecommunications entrepreneur and “Hillraiser” who brought in more than $100,000 for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign; Calvin Fayard, also a former Hillraiser and longtime Democratic donor from Louisiana, and Miguel Lausell, a former senior political adviser to the Clinton campaign from Puerto Rico.

The Hillraisers and the PUMA movement they spawned went on from their infatuation with Palin to other such luminous achievements as spreading (possibly initiating, actually) the disgusting racist "Birther" movement against Obama which, in turn, became a primary vehicle by which Donald Trump entered our national political discourse.  So it turns out we have Calvin Fayard, who is now spending his own money and calling in political favors from within the Landrieu-Carville orbit to push his daughter's Senate candidacy, to thank for a lot of things.  Just keep all of that in mind as we look at how Caroline has conducted her campaign, particularly where it concerns her David Duke fixation.

Usually we talk about David Duke's maneuverings with special attention to his grifting.  Sure, he's a deplorable white supremacist. But the actual reason he even shows up above ground is because he has a nose for money.  The most likely reason Duke is in the Senate race is because one way or another someone is paying him to be there. Recall that when his name first came up as a possible candidate this year, Duke was rumored to be entering as a challenger to US Rep Steve Scalise. At the time we speculated that perhaps some Democrat leaning jokers were attempting to highlight Scalise's controversial association with Duke by placing the two of them together on a ballot much the same way they once tried to run a porn star against David Vitter. At the last minute, though, Duke suddenly found himself running for Senate.  What happened there?  Did he find a more generous patron? 

On the other hand, Duke's motivation for running could be as simple as Duke thinking he could pull in a few extra donations or online followers by attaching his brand to Donald Trump. That's reasonable. Not doubt he has benefited from doing just that.

Similarly, Caroline Fayard has benefited from attaching her brand to David Duke.  Remember, Duke has never polled any better than 3 to 5 percent. But Fayard, has treated him as though he were her principal opponent. From the moment Duke entered the race, Fayard leaped at the opportunity to make the fringe candidate who deserves nobody's attention the center of her campaign. She was the most aggressive at throwing herself into the national media circus Duke inevitably generates.  Here she is on the Maddow show back in August soliciting donations.   All of the candidates tried some version of this, of course. But Fayard has themed the bulk of her advertising and fundraising appeals with the Duke bogeyman.  

The Fayard campaign's most reprehensible use of Duke was a disgusting attack on Foster Campbell that distorted his words and one photograph into an easily disproven lie that Campbell is in some way allied with Duke. Once the lie was exposed, Fayard was roundly shamed for it in the press. Here, for example, is Stephanie Grace giving her the whatfor.  The Alliance For Good Government even withdrew its endorsement of her.  A lot of the people her campaign had drawn into its corner began to feel like they had been used.

But then Fayard doubled down. Refusing to back off from the absurd assertions of her ads, she continued running them. Even more shockingly, she stood by them in person during the second debate at Dillard. Had Duke himself not been on the same stage ranting about Jews, Fayard's bald faced lie would have been the evening's low point by far.

There are people who insist, though, that Fayard's internal polling shows her morally indefensible strategy is working.  Even if they're correct (and we'll know soon enough) that won't necessarily put her in the runoff.  It will keep Campbell out, though.  I hope they're real proud of that "win" if they get it.

Given her, lack of experience in government, her poor positioning in the polls and her campaign's lack of substance, we've often asked why the heck Fayard is even in this race. Her behavior over the final weeks of the election suggest her sole purpose may be to deny Campbell a slot in the runoff.  I don't know enough to say why that is happening.  But I've tried to make it clear that the Fayards aren't exactly trustworthy.  And if it turns out they have friends of friends in common with friends of friends of another candidate well... a lot of these people have friends is all I'm saying. The Fayards are friends and neighbors with wealthy plutocrats who wanted New Orleans ethnically cleansed after Katrina.  That Caroline wants us to think of her now as the anti-Duke is a staggering insult.

Buying in/Buying out

David Duke doesn't have any friends, of course.  But, as we said, he does like money. Cue Clancy. 

Clancy DuBos, a political commentator who has covered Mr. Duke for decades, dismissed the media attention as “cheap headlines and click bait.”

“He’s not in this to win the Senate, he’s in this to make money,” he said.

I continue in my disappointment that no one else has asked about his angle in those terms. It's a natural thread to pull on given what we know about Duke.  He is and always has been a hustler. But he's only one of twenty something candidates here which makes him a hustler among hustlers. So while we're asking why Duke might have been bought out of a congressional race and into the Senate race, we should ask about some of these other transactions as well.

Duke isn't the only Republican angling for the hard core Trumpista vote.  And this has to be frustrating as hell for sandwich magnate John Fleming. Back when he announced his candidacy, on December 7, 2015 (a day that will live in infamy) Fleming had to figure he would be the most extreme right wing nut in the game. Fleming has devoted his tenure in Congress to making a name for himself as a petulant Tea Party insurgent. He has frothed frequently against Obama's health insurance reforms. His hard stance against reproductive rights is so out of touch with reality that he shared an Onion article about an "Abortionplex" thinking it was actual news. Most embarrassing to him and to the entire flood prone state of Louisiana was his vote against relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy.

And still Fleming can't corner the market on reactionary assholery.  Not with Duke hanging around. And not with Rob Maness flanking him among Trump supporters as well. Maness is more flamboyantly pro-gun and pro-life than Fleming but adds just a bit of the populist skepticism of Republican establishment policies with regard to war and Wall Street that puts him slightly more in tune with Trump's schizophrenic messaging than Fleming is.

The Fleming campaign actually attempted to buy Maness out of the race last month. Not unusual, that. What was unusual was Maness' choice not to take the money and instead run to the papers with the story. What is he getting that is better than whatever Fleming offered?  It's hard to say.  We did notice that he's had a few TV ads running paid for by something called "Warrior PAC."

Warrior PAC, which is being run out of California, is backing retired Air Force Col. Rob Maness. It has raised $10,000 from Bo Reily of the William B. Reily Company in New Orleans and has roughly that same amount in the bank. PAC director Robert San Luis said via email that Reily has also paid for polling. 

You may know the William B. Reily Company as Reily Foods, a century old New Orleans based grocery distributor. It owns several well-known brands most notably Luzianne tea, CDM coffee, and Blue Plate mayonnaise... which is amusing to those of us who have been in the habit of pronouncing Maness's name the way New Orleanians sometimes say, "Mah-nezz."  It's also funny to think that Maness didn't sell out to the Sandwich Man because he already had too much Mayonnaise money.

But here's the other thing about the Reilys.  They're not just a prominent New Orleans family. They are a Prominent New Orleans Business Family. To get a sense of this, please take a minute to peruse this January obituary of Boatner Reily III The CV portion of it really gains momentum toward the end. 

Reily also served on the New Orleans Aviation Board.

He attended Metairie Park Country Day School, Woodberry Forest School in Virginia, Yale University and Tulane, from which he graduated in 1950. He was a captain in the Rex organization for 10 years and reigned as Rex in 1982.

An avid runner, he started the Rex organization’s “royal run” around Audubon Park on Mardi Gras morning. In that inaugural run, he wore running shoes painted gold and decorated with colorful ribbons.

Reily was a major contributor to Tulane. The Reily Family Foundation contributed to the Tulane Hospital and Clinic for the construction of the Reily Foundation Pavilion, which opened in 1991, and was a major contributor to the Reily Student Recreation Center.

Cowen said he met Reily when Cowen was interviewing for the president’s job at Tulane.

“He asked incredibly perceptive questions and was extraordinarily kind in the delivery of those questions and listened with great intent,” he said.

Cowen said he often met with Reily in the first years of his tenure leading Tulane. “He provided great insight to New Orleans, its culture and the university,” he said.

He called Reily, the Reily family and its foundation “one of the pillars of Tulane University for generations. They’ve been incredibly generous philanthropically and with their time.”

Rex captain, GNOF founder, Tulane benefactor, personal friend of Scott fucking Cowen. That's all very pleasant.  One more thing about that, though.  While it's certainly believable that these blue bloods and their scions would be enthusiastic Tea Partiers, they prefer to identify as patricians.  The Reilys just don't have all that much in common with the typical Maness voter. In fact, they're actually a lot more like.. the Fayards. But we'll come back to that.

First let's note that one candidate actually was successfully bought out of the race.  His name is Abhay Patel. He dropped out on October 20. See, during the course of the campaign, Patel happened to make a friend.

But during campaign appearances, Patel had an opportunity to visit with (US Rep. Charles) Boustany. He found that he and the Lafayette Republican shared many of same pastimes – they both are avid readers who enjoy talking history – and both see the world through a similar political prism.

"Though we are not in the position we hoped to be in, I am committed to working tirelessly to ensure that we elect a conservative Republican to the United States Senate," Patel said of his endorsement of Boustany.

“I found him a very bright, very articulate young man,” Boustany said in an interview, recalling their first encounter at a Jefferson Parish GOP function.

“Abhay Patel’s passion and knowledge for conservative values, small government, and the Constitution have impressed me over that last several months. His campaign has been focused on ideas and substance rather than platitudes and lip service," Boustany said.

Patel, a lawyer, said he and Boustany talked about creating a committee that could advise Boustany on who to recommend for federal judges and prosecutors in Louisiana; what kind of positions a conservative lawyer would take.

How sweet. They got along famously. I hope Boustany kept the receipt.

Boustany in the Bayou

Oh yeah. Hey, by the way, Charles Boustany is also a candidate here. Did you forget?  He's not out of the running by any stretch. In addition to Patel's backing, he also enjoys the endorsement of the Times-Picayune as well as the always influential Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand. Stephanie Grace even gave him something of a compliment during the final debate when she described him as the "policy wonk in the mix."  Of course, if the policy you are wonking about involves protecting his friends' right to exploit virtual slave labor, or voting 60 times to repeal Obamacare, it's difficult to see that as a positive.

Boustany has two paths to the runoff. One of those would be going through Kennedy.  And he has tried this. His direct attack on Kennedy, this ad featuring an adorable pug and Kennedy's all around sliminess, was the best produced by any campaign. But, as we said at the outset of this post, Kennedy's slot is pretty well entrenched. If Boustany can't edge him out of the runoff, then Plan B is edge out everyone else. How would someone like Charles Boustany go about accomplishing that?

Well, first of all, let's remember that the seemingly mild mannered bespectacled Boustany is actually something of a heavy.  This is where Ethan Brown's Murder In the Bayou is instructive. I say this, not so much because of the book's allegation that Boustany may have been a client of some of the murdered prostitutes in Jennings. I can't really speak to the veracity of that. Having read the book, though, I'd say his connection to the Boudreaux Inn and its operators is more than just circumstantial.

We don't have time to get too far into it here but I do recommend the book. It's disappointing to see the political press brush this off. Their oft-repeated mantra that Brown's chapter on Boustany is "unsourced" is flat out untrue. Brown cites testimony by witnesses interviewed by the task force investigating the murders, ex-employees of the motel, a high profile drug dealer he interviews, as well as, yes, some anonymous sources.  But even anonymous sources are.. you know.. sources.  Unfortunately the media herd tends to steer clear of stuff like this while they're in campaign mode. Maybe they'll come back to it at some point.

What Brown clearly shows, in any case, is that Boustany field rep, Martin Guillory, was running the motel during the peak of its infamy and that he was familiar with the victims and several of the suspects. It's also obvious that Guillory was more than just a bit player in Boustany's world. And that's really the point here.
Boustany's power base in Southwest Louisiana is tied up with a decades-old system dominated by corrupt and brutal Sheriffs along the I-10 drug route. Brown's book focuses on Jeff Davis Parish but the problem is more widespread. Not only is it conceivable that the Congressman's political operation would connect to these criminals somewhere along the line, it's actually more difficult to imagine that it wouldn't.

Boustany is tough and shrewd. He's also backed by people who are themselves tough and shrewd. Newell Normand is one example. Sheriffs like this guy, I guess. He's also the only candidate who we're pretty sure has successfully manipulated the field. It's interesting that Patel can be bought out by Boustany but Maness can't be bought out by Fleming. Duke, perhaps the most corrupt person in the race, apparently can't be bought out by anybody.  Meanwhile the Fayards who just happen to be in the same category of plutocrat as the Maness-backing Reilys are stubbornly running interference against Foster Campbell.

It would be a stretch to tie all of that together into one conspiracy.  That's not really what I'm trying to say. It's just that sometimes the maneuverings of different but similarly interested parties accidentally work toward the same purpose. In this case, it is pretty neat the way all of that lines up in a way that could clear Fleming and Campbell out of Boustany's way, isn't it?  He might not make it, but Boustany certainly is an interesting character. Watch out for that guy.

Wednesday Night Debateball

Not sure how to handle this Senate debate tonight since it's playing opposite Game 7 of the Greatest World Series Of All Time. The debate only runs an hour this time. And it's on CSPAN. So you can watch it on demand later if that's how you want to hack it.  It's less fun to tweet that way, though.

But somebody has to pay attention to this debate.  With so few witnesses, it will be difficult enough as it is to verify that it's even happening.   

The only spectators allowed in 400-seat Georges Auditorium will be the production staff and five guests from each campaign.

“We just elected to have a closed production,” said Vicki Zimmerman, Raycom’s regional news director.

When asked if Duke was the reason, she said, “I’m not going to elaborate any further than I already did.”

As I'm typing this, I can look over at Twitter and see a group of Dillard students are at the campus now protesting against David Duke's inclusion. They seem particularly focused on University President Walter Kimbrough.  For his part,Kimbrough (AKA @HipHopPrez on Twitter) has questioned Duke's invitation himself.

Dillard University President Walter Kimbrough on Wednesday accused the host of the U.S. Senate debate of manipulating poll results to ensure white supremacist David Duke would qualify to increase TV ratings.

"Pretty clear polling rigged as (Donald) Trump would say for ratings," Kimbrough said in a tweet. "Any protests become part of reality show masquerading as news #WakeUp".
 
The debate, featuring six candidates, will be held at Dillard University, a historically black university. In an interview Kimbrough softened his stance about the poll being "rigged," but he maintained "it's a valid question to ask, when the latest poll comes out and (Duke is) at 2 percent," he said referencing a recent poll by the University of New Orleans. 

"It's a valid question to ask," he's just throwing that out there. But, hey, he's got a point.  Any debate that refuses to put totally legitimate candidate Kaitlin Marone on the stage has to be considered "rigged." The fact that they're trotting Duke out there is just further evidence that democracy is in peril.

I do hope the protesters make an effort to disrupt the debate.  Anything is better than having to watch that field of dead weight candidates recite their stupid scripts for an hour. Here's what that looked like last time, in case you missed it. An outburst or two from the crowd might liven that up.  Duke, himself, will just be an oddity. 

Speaking of which, here is an Esquire article out today about Duke's (mostly unwelcome, it seems) presence at this year's Deutsches Haus Oktoberfest.

It was 6 p.m. on Friday, October 21, and Duke was late. Jan, a young, white cop with a crewcut, was standing stoically near a beer vendor when I asked if he'd seen the candidate. "Have you seen him lately?" he shot back, his eyebrows raising. He says it seems like Duke has had a lot of work done, "but it's not good work. He looks like he just got out of a coffin, he looks like a corpse, that's the nicest way I could put it."

He wasn't making fun of Duke when he said this. He wore a pained expression and a faraway gaze, as if recalling some kind of science-fiction trauma he couldn't quite make sense of. "He's a weird-looking person," he said, shaking his head, "I couldn't get past that." When Duke was here last week, Jan explained, a couple of his colleagues talked to him, but he couldn't stomach it, so he just walked away. He sighed. "I don't know how you're gonna do it."

The good news is after this election is over, Duke will have to go back to his crypt and stay there until the next comet comes by or whatever. In the meantime, he's out there grossing people out. But that's nothing out of the ordinary in 2016. 

Regarding that, the Esquire reporter also spoke to Edwin Edwards who had the following to say about Duke and about how is appeal relates to Donald Trump's.

"He's a very intelligent fellow, if a person with his philosophy can be intelligent," Edwards told me over coffee in his home office in Gonzales. Edwards is 89 now and five years out of prison, with a 38-year-old wife, Trina, who he met while behind bars (she wrote him letters), a three-year-old son, Eli, conceived using his frozen sperm, and two donkey-sized collies, Brooke and Belle. "We didn't have a very acrimonious election," he told me. When he was asked at the time if he and Duke had anything in common, Edwards famously replied, "we both have been wizards beneath the sheets."

"When he ran against me and whenever he was running, he always capitalized not just on people who didn't like the race problem, but people who didn't like government, as Trump is doing," Edwards told me. "He has captured, in my opinion, the attitude of many people in America who just are fed up with the government."

That's a very important point by Edwards.  The Duke phenomenon in the 1990s wasn't just some freak show.  It represented a massive section of the GOP coalition. I wrote a longish thing about this last January, in fact. Back then David Duke didn't present himself as some "alt-right" character. He ran as a Republican and tailored his rhetoric to dovetail with the platform tenets of the party's mainstream.  This was remarkably easy to do. That fact, moreso than Duke's past (or "baggage" as Steve Scalise termed it) was the most disturbing and revelatory aspect of his political career. 

Similarly, Trump's success exposes many uncomfortable truths about the present day Republican party that aren't going to just disappear after Trump loses next week.  All the "serious" people are mortified by Trump, of course. But here's Oyster writing a few months ago to remind everyone of the seemingly obvious point that Trump did, in fact, win the nomination.

Sure, in retrospect, the 'conditions' were right. After all, outsiders Trump/Cruz/Carson garnered most of the primary vote. The anti-establishment sentiment was there. Plus, the GOP was due for a comeuppance, as it had played with fire for too long, having whipped its fringe elements into fury (over the existential peril of illegal immigration) and never really 'delivering.' There's also widespread anxiety due to macro-economic structural faults in our late-stage capitalism. (Will we ever grow again at a fast clip without a bubble? A discussion for another time).

But don't let anyone tell you this was inevitable or obvious in hindsight. For Trump, an unelected rookie, to successfully reinvent the rules of national campaigns on his own terms, overcome apparent blunder after blunder, and crush establishment choices like Jeb, Walker and Rubio as well as maverick Ted Cruz (the conservative's conservative)... that's just bananas. Not to mention that party mandarins, conservative media 'thought leaders', Super Pacs, and even other candidates allied to defeat him. Trump was heavily outspent in early primaries, but he won anyway.

How are we to understand this?

Well, we'll take some time to unpack this important moment in American political history. Let's quell the urge to understand too quickly or reflexively fit Trump into old models or agendas.

Tonight, I will offer one analytical tool that I think may be useful. Ask yourselves— would Trump have been successful if he eliminated the xenophobic and racialist appeals in his rhetoric and (scant) policy talk? My view is no. He could've changed almost anything else about his platform and candidacy (and often did). But the blunt warnings of Mexican invaders, thieving Asians, and the black president in league(?) with foreign terrorist cells... etc were the MOST vital components to his successful primary run.

Oyster is telling us two things there, actually. He's telling the campaign's success is due to both the the "conditions" present in the electorate and the unique qualities (I hesitate to say talents) possessed by the candidate.  This is the case in any election. But what all of this also says is that in 2016, the Donald Trump campaign moved enough Republicans to the polls to make him the nominee.

In my view the questions that raises about the party and about the state of U.S. politics this year than it does about the freak show are more significant and enduring than the freak show of Trump's personage. It's important that we don't remove the character from its context.

Otherwise we end up with idiot Democrats who run ads based on the fact that her opponent was once physically touched by one of the freaks and expect voters to impute some sort of meaning from that. Which is why Oktoberfest was a dangerous place to be this year. (This is from the Esquire piece.)

Harbison was far from the only one shooting sickened looks in Duke's direction at the festival. When he tried to shake the hand of Catherine Farnsworth Gensler, a 53-year-old teacher from Duke's hometown, she glared up at him like he was some combination of an ISIS fighter and a Maroon 5 band member. She refused to extend hers, but he grabbed it anyway. "I don't support him," she told me, and then she turned to him. "I don't support you, I'm sorry." Duke seemed startled. "What?" he asked. "I don't support you," she said. "That's fine, that's alright," he told her. "But I'm gonna get a lot of votes. I think I'm gonna win this time."

We can only hope Ms. Gensler never runs for office against Caroline Fayard because that will definitely come back to haunt her if she does.

Pretty ok weekend

We had the fancy people seats in Tiger Stadium.



LSU-Ole Miss on Saturday night with a slight but not uncomfortable chill in a quintessential Louisiana cultural experience. There are probably dozens of  Thrillist clickbaity articles that say this already.  Anyway it's a good time. Especially win the Tigers win. Especially when they win on the strength of a record-setting performance from one of their all time greats.


If you're gonna go, it's important to be aware of a few things, though.  First, there are no alcohol sales in Tiger Stadium.  This seems kind of prudish at first, although it's probably a good thing at least as far as one's wallet is concerned. It's far cheaper to start drinking early on and use the time in the stadium to sober up. Not everyone does it this way.  Try to give the amateurs as wide a berth as possible.

Also, if you're driving to and from Baton Rouge, be prepared to wait in traffic.  We parked over in one of the "levee lots" over by River Road about a ten minute walk further back from where this picture was taken.



After the game, all of those cars have to funnel out onto a single file line going away from the river. We got in the car around 12:30 and didn't make it out back to Nicholson Drive until almost 2:00 am. And that was before the hour and a half drive back down I-10 to New Orleans.

So I guess what we're saying here is, if you're going to Tiger Stadium, be sure and bring plenty beer for the pregaming activity, and plenty of something well caffeinated for the ride home.  Whatever you do, avoid taking an Uber because, well..

Oh and be aware that when there's an election coming you'll want to steer clear of the politicians and.. well... worse than politicians who tend to creep about the stadium during this time.

Business is good

Lots of money being raised this year (ostensibly) to defeat one entirely hopeless Senate candidate. 

The list of avowed enemies of former KKK leader David Duke goes well beyond the other candidates in the 2016 Louisiana Senate race.

That proved true Tuesday (Aug. 30), when the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism PAC was resurrected with the sole mission of eighty-sixing the white nationalist's candidacy.

"The struggle for racial, religious and ethnic goodwill is never really done," said the PAC's chairman, Tulane professor Lawrence Powell, in a statement. "And that's why we've decided to reactivate the Louisiana Coalition: to affirm the values of decency and civility against champions of white nationalism and racial anti-Semitism."

The anti-Duke committee's membership comprises more than a few political heavy-hitters, including former senators Trent Lott, R-Miss., John Breaux, D-La. and Bennett Johnston, D-La., and former governors Edwin Edwards and Buddy Roemer. It also includes Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand, Jefferson Parish Clerk of Court Jon Gegenheimer and former Jefferson Assessor Lawrence Chehardy.

And, hey, good for all the illustrious has-beens willing to put their names on this no-brainer of a cause, unnecessary as it may be. A UNO poll at the beginning of August showed Duke with an 80 percent unfavorable rating. There's zero danger of him being elected.

There's a chance, though, that his presence in the race narrows the chances for some of his Republican opponents. It may even set up an all Democrat runoff under the right circumstances although that is a long shot. Still, there are candidates who benefit from Duke being there just like there if only as a handy fundraising foil. Here, for example, is Democratic candidate Caroline Fayard getting a little free national air time from MSNBC as a direct result of Duke's candidacy.

Of course that isn't exactly why Duke is running. He's running because, one way or another, there's money in it for him. Which is why we're always interested in what happens to money raised in the name of either supporting or opposing him.  In every case it's worth asking how or if he's getting a cut of it. 

There can only be one flag pin

The Louisiana Republican Party today considered and then set aside a scheme to restrict convicted felons (or anyone they don't like) from running in state elections with the little "R" next to their names. Some of them, it turns out, are embarrassed (or at least upset) that David Duke is running for Senate as a Republican this year. 

The proposed regulation would automatically prohibit felons from running for office as Republicans in elections after November, unless an exception was made by the state Republican Party's executive committee.

It also would allow Louisiana's Republican Party to block anyone from getting the "R," for Republican, with a name on the ballot if three-quarters of the State Central Committee voted to bar that person from running as a Republican.

They decided not to do anything, though. The rule under consideration would likely have caused legal headaches in addition to not actually doing anything about Duke anyway.

Even if the changes had been approved Saturday, they wouldn't have been made in time to block Duke, who pleaded guilty in 2002 to bilking his supporters and cheating on his taxes, from running as a Republican in the Louisiana Senate race this fall.

Besides that, the committee members can cry all they like but it doesn't change the fact that David Duke represents a sizeable portion of the Republican Id  and has for decades. We took a little time to explore this last year, in fact.  The nervous denials of the Republican state central committee are no different from the #NeverTrump movement of the national party in this regard.  These are the candidates and ideas they've built a machine pandering to. It's not so easy to just up and ditch them.

Republicans at the state and national level are currently trying to re-brand themselves out of the hole they've dug themselves. Which is why we're suddenly seeing the racist Wallace Dixiecrats, Reagan Democrats, and Limbaugh Dittoheads they've courted for years redefined as an unfamiliar alien force called the "Alt-Right" as opposed to some good and virtuous Republican Party that supposedly exists independently of all that.  It's disappointing that the Hillary wing of the Democratic Party is enthusiastically aiding the GOP in this re-branding effort. But that's a topic for a different post.

Anyway, all of this resulted in some amusing kabuki at the GOP meeting which the T-P covers in the article we began this with.

Duke did not attend the meeting, but his campaign coordinator, Michael Lawrence, did speak out against Republican leaders toward the end of the gathering, well after the rule change had already been deferred.

Lawrence, who was wearing a pin that included both the American and Confederate flags, started shouting that Villere had refused to let Duke speak to the crowd at the meeting. Villere, wearing his own pin with American and GOP flags, told Lawrence over the public address system that the gathering was a "private meeting" and Lawrence would have to leave.

Villere, speaking into a microphone, then called for security to take Lawrence out of the building when Lawrence refused to stop shouting. Five men in suits surrounded Lawrence and escorted him to his car.

Standing in the parking lot after being thrown out of the meeting, Lawrence said Duke planned to sue the Louisiana GOP if they passed any new rule that would block him from running as a Republican in future elections. He said Duke considered it a violation of his constitutional rights.

"Roger Villere has been running this organization like Fidel Castro for 12 years," Lawrence said.  

Just for fun we should see about sending Villere a Cuban flag pin.  

Recycled paper route

My memory is a bit fuzzy now but there's something familiar about this paperboy image from David Duke. I'm almost certain he's talked about his stint as a paperboy during previous campaigns.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, a Mandeville Republican attempting to run on Donald Trump's coattails, even tried to make some sort of connection. He cast himself as a local boy who had a paper route, before pivoting to his predictable rant about how immigration policy amounts to the purposeful ethnic cleansing of America.

Huh... I know James Varney wasn't even writing for the T-P back then.  And that doesn't sound at all like Iris Kelso. Duke must have been reading the society pages back then. "Purposeful Ethnic Cleansing Of America" is a pretty common theme there. 

Who is paying David Duke to run and how much are they paying him?

A lot of people benefit from Duke's presence in the Senate race in both political and financial terms. David Duke is a con man who doesn't do anything unless there's money in it. Looks like he's the favorite pitch of several candidates right now.  So which candidates or associated operators are sharing their boon with him?

Send money or David Duke will eat your face

This UNO poll is only measuring favorables, not actually putting Duke on a list of candidates and asking respondents to pick one. But that doesn't mean the result isn't noteworthy.

Meanwhile, four out of five Louisiana voters have an unfavorable opinion of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, according to the survey, though about 13 percent of voters said they would consider voting for him in the upcoming U.S. Senate primary.

"In sum, this survey reveals that David Duke is extremely unpopular with likely Louisiana voters," according to an analysis accompanying the survey's results.

Still, at least some voters said they would consider casting their ballots for Duke, including 10 percent of Democrats and 15 percent of Republicans.

That’s not nothing! Not in a field of 24 candidates. If Duke can actually pull something close to 15 percent of the Republican vote, we might even be talking about a runoff between two Democrats. It almost makes you wonder who encouraged (paid) Duke to run in the first place. If Donald Trump were here he might even say the election is "rigged." But we know nothing like that happens in Louisiana.....

Anyway we're getting ahead of ourselves.  Before you rig an election,  you first have to make sure everybody participating gets paid. Campaign staff gotta eat too, you know.  Which is why it's so helpful for every candidate Republican or Democrat to have Duke to kick around.  The fundraising emails practically write themselves.

Two major Democrats are using Duke's presence to let their potential voters know just how different they are from him. Lawyer Caroline Fayard, responding to a Duke Facebook post linking her to Goldman Sachs and Black Lives Matter, released a radio ad that casts her as the "direct opposite" of Duke. Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell cited the grand wizard's candidacy in a fundraising tweet, apparently hoping the frightening prospect of a Duke victory would inspire donors to send a little something his way.

His fellow Republican candidates are in on it too. They may be keeping mum on presidential nominee Donald Trump's constant invective against immigrants, women, Muslims, and so on, but they seem downright eager to contrast their own professed open-mindedness with Duke's knee-jerk intolerance. No GOP rival has been more aggressive on this front than retired Col. Rob Maness, a tea party Republican who's taken to social media to call Duke a cowardly loser who's "full of hate."

Maness is in a more precarious position here. Prior to Duke's entry,  he was arguably the furthest fringe of an admittedly pretty far right field.  Now he's trying to distinguish himself as the more reasonable fringe guy. Good luck threading that needle.

Meanwhile, the boogeyman is out there.  If you think your candidate can raise a little scratch selling Duke repellent,  now is the time to make your pitch.

Winter is coming

I have seen the White Walker.



Whoah, if true. But I'm still gonna sit here and refresh the Secretary of State's website to see if he actually qualifies. At first people expected Duke was just hanging around to troll Steve Scalise. But throwing him into the Senate mix really shakes things up.  There are eight Republicans and two Libertarians crowded into that field right now.  If they all stay in, it might only take something like 20 percent of the vote to get into the runoff.  If Duke does that (and he could do it!), the Democrats might be steal their second consecutive statewide election in as many years.  Stay tuned.

Qualifying is closed for Day One

Here's the Advocate's run down.  So far no sign of David Duke. But the purpose of his name having been floated at all was to make Steve Scalise talk about him so that's mission accomplished already. Bonus points for making him talk about Duke and Trump at the same time.

One of those leaders, U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, the Jefferson Republican who ranks as third in the House leadership, said the reason is that voters are frustrated with the direction of the country. He said Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, if elected, would overturn regulations that has hampered economic growth.

Scalise also called David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who is flirting with a challenge to him, a racist with anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic views.

Also of note in this article, Kip Holden and Cedric Richmond don't like one another. 

Holden, who is term limited and must leave office in January, says he has been approached by a number of constituents who felt that Richmond was not doing his job, like attracting business to the district.

“If there wasn’t a problem, I wouldn’t be running,” Holden said, “The people of Baton Rouge have mostly been in the lost and found section” for Richmond.

Richmond suggested that Holden should resign as mayor of Baton Rouge if he planned to run for congress. The tensions that have grown from the police shooting of Alton Sterling followed by protests and the murder of three law enforcement officers requires the focus of a full-time mayor.

Richmond, whose district includes north Baton Rouge, said Gov. John Bel Edwards showed real leadership during the crisis this month “because the mayor was locked in his house.”

At the same time, though, we learned that both Richmond and Holden fully support abusive police tactics in Baton Rouge so what difference does any of this even make?

.@RepRichmond says police response to #AltonSterling protests was "for the most part, very reasonable". #LA02

— Julia O'Donoghue (@JSODonoghue) July 20, 2016

Other things happened. Joe Cao is running for some reason. Derrick Edwards qualified for Senate instantly negating his own declaration, "I am not a politician and I will never be a politician."

Also this libertarian flavored investment banker VP of the New Orleans Business Alliance is running.  

My name is Abhay Patel, and I’m a candidate for the United States Senate. I’m a proud Louisianan, and I have the ability, experience and vision to serve the people of this great state. If elected, I vow to stand for limited government, individual liberty and local empowerment.

Oh dear. Here is Patel at the Trump Convention this week talking about trickle-down economics and "job creators and such.  And here he is telling the Advocate about himself.

Abhay Patel, a New Orleans businessman, also qualified to run for the Senate as a Republican. “I’m the only candidate who never run for office before,” he said.

But this is already a lie because of the day's one true bombshell announcement. 

Kaitlin Marone, of New Orleans, qualified to run without party affiliation, saying nobody is paying attention to the race right now and she didn't want the Republican Party to appoint whoever they want to the post.

Marone is a local comedian who we're pretty sure has never run for office before. [UPDATE: Confirmed!]  Here is her first campaign ad (that we're aware of, anyway.)

Finally, an election in the news

It's Qualifying Week for Senate candidates.I hope Charles Boustany Facebook Lives his filing.

We're also watching to see if that David Duke threat to run for Steve Scalise'so House seat is real. It isn't.  But we'll officially know that at 4:30 pm on Friday.

Storm(front)y Daniels

Remember back when the brainy pranksters got together and pushed a porn star to run against David Vitter? Yeah, this is pretty much the same thing but tailored for Steve Scalise's problem.

David Duke says he is getting ready to run for Congress.

The former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and ex-candidate for Louisiana governor told The Daily Beast he is heavily leaning towards challenging Rep. Steve Scalise. Scalise is the No. 3 Republican in the House who reportedly once called himself “David Duke without the baggage” and spoke at a white nationalist group that Duke founded.

“I’ve very seriously set up an exploratory committee to run for the United States Congress against Steve Scalise,” Duke said. “I expect to make a decision in a few days” ahead of the July 22 ballot deadline.

Don't worry. Much like Daniels before him, Duke won't actually run. The PR stunt is cute, though. 

Telling the truth about David Duke

In 1989 John Treen lost his bid for a Jefferson Parish based Louisiana House of Representatives seat to David Duke.  Treen's strategy during the campaign had been based on "telling the truth about David Duke." Those quotes are just from my own memory of watching Treen talk to TV reporters on election night. I can't find a direct source on those exact words. But here's an LA Times article that comes pretty close.  

Treen, a Metairie home builder and brother of the state's former governor, David Treen, called Duke "a disaster for our area."

"I know what this man really is," he said. "The public . . . doesn't or they wouldn't have voted the way they did. He's a master of deception. He conned them into believing he is something he is not."

Treen had been operating under the assumption that Duke voters just didn't have enough information about him. Surely if they had only had the facts; if they had understood "what this man really is" they would have behaved differently.

But the problem with David Duke was never that he was hiding some awful truth. The awful truth was out in the open. It was, in fact, the source of his appeal. As it turned out, it was Treen who didn't understand the awful truth about the voters. This is from a New York Times report just days before the election.

If some of his support reflects blatant racism, much of it comes from working people convinced that politics as usual has failed to serve the white working class. 

''He is appealing to a frustration that is pretty deep,'' said James Boulware, a state court administrator in Jefferson Parish, which includes the 81st District seat Mr. Treen and Mr. Duke are seeking. ''They're angry about minority set-asides, affirmative action, busing. I think they feel the fairness of society is being tampered with.''

Thankfully, frustrated white working class voters who "feel like the fairness of society is being tampered with" are totally irrelevant in today's political landscape. So there's really no point in trying to learn anything from the David Duke experience. But, just to continue with the point for a second, John Treen was wrong. Duke voters understood exactly what that man really was.

For instance, two contractors, Jon Procell and Charles Worth, were at the bar together when Mr. Duke strode into Martine's, television cameras in tow. 

When asked why he supported Mr. Duke, Mr. Worth said, ''I don't like John Treen, and I don't like n__s.''

Doesn't seem like those guys needed a whole lot of supplemental instruction from John Treen. But, again, there is clearly nothing like that situation happening anywhere in today's politics. So there's no lesson anyone could possibly learn from John Treen's failed campaign strategy of just making sure the voters know "what this man really is" rather than offering them any sort of positive alternative.  We'd really hate to see someone make that mistake in an election that affected more than just one Louisiana house seat, right?

Out-conned

It probably won't cost him today but Trump's mishandling of the David Duke endorsement is worse than just the prima facie stupidity of blaming the earpiece.



It's strange that Trump, whose great strength in the polls derives from his being perceived as the bane of a corrupt and moribund GOP establishment, who has scored points during debates by calling out "lobbyists" booing him in the audience, would not have thought to simply ask how much the RNC or Karl Rove or whoever paid Duke for the endorsement. That way Trump wouldn't have to "embrace or renounce" Duke and could instead use the situation as a means to swipe at the faceless minions of.. whoever.. who are out to get him.

Besides, it's probably true.  David Duke is a hate propagandist first. But professionally speaking he is also a con man among con men dabbling in tax evasion and mail fraud and "fundraising" off of his own infamous brand.  There is practically zero reason to believe Duke's endorsement of Trump wasn't paid for by somebody.  It's remarkable that Trump wouldn't immediately recognize Duke's grifting style for what it is.  I mean, it takes one to know one, right?

Reliable sources say

Remember back when a bunch of reporters and pundits went out of their way to "debunk" the wild claims of some blogger trying to smear the good name of Steve Scalise?  They based it all on the word of this guy.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has charged Kenny Knight, a longtime associate of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, with running a “pill mill” out of a New Orleans East pain management clinic.

A federal judge Thursday unsealed a 22-page criminal complaint that accuses Knight of conspiring with Dr. Barbara A. Bruce to dole out prescription painkillers to friends and patients without conducting the required medical exams.

Knight’s business, the Axcess Medical Clinic on Lake Forest Boulevard, took only cash and attracted addicts who traveled for hours to get to it, according to the DEA.

So here's Lamar today with a little bit of I-Told-You-SO as well as this extra point. 

One question that continues to remain unanswered is whether Cameron Henry, now a top Republican in the state legislature, had accompanied Steve Scalise to this hate group meeting when he served as an aide to the then-State Rep. Scailse; Henry, thus far, has refused comment.

Don't worry about Henry. He'll be okay just the same way Scalise is.  This is because there's always a critical mass of establishment press willing to give "the benefit of the doubt" to the most obviously horrendous people in the name of 1) sucking up to power and 2) maintaining the "he said/she said" pretense of their lazy, cowardly trade.   It might be burning cross, but "others are calling it a 'T' post" Because "both sides" say a thing, who knows what's true?

Bobby Jindal's national tax hike

Bobby Jindal thinks poor people don't pay enough taxes.

Mr. Jindal’s plan seeks to compress the current seven tax brackets to three, with those in the lowest rung paying a 2% rate. It would also eliminate most deductions, including those that allow millions of Americans to pay nothing in federal income taxes.

Mr. Jindal takes a different tack on taxes than his GOP rivals, particularly those looking to shield more Americans from paying federal income taxes at all, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and real-estate developer Donald Trump. Mr. Bush would nearly double the standard deduction and estimates under his plan that roughly 15 million additional Americans would “no longer bear any income-tax liability.”

Mr. Jindal’s proposal would eliminate the standard deduction and the $4,000 personal exemption. That means a family of four would pay taxes on at least $28,600 in income that is now protected from the Internal Revenue Service under the current tax code. Mr. Jindal proposes a nonrefundable tax credit that could replace some of these deductions for households with children under the age of 18, or people older than 65 who make less than $5,000. He didn’t offer specifics on how this might work.

See, this way we can get more people "rowing the boat." 

In the release announcing his plan, Mr. Jindal acknowledged it would be controversial for exposing lower-income Americans to taxation. “It re-establishes the idea that, in America, everyone is expected to help row the boat,” he said in the release. “Independence, not dependence, is the root of the American dream. It’s time we had the guts to say so in public.”

Note that is different from getting more people "pulling the wagon" in that it is a metaphor neither Bobby, nor his protege Scott Angelle, nor even former State Rep. David Duke has used before to make the same argument.  Note also, that Bobby's reason for wanting more people to row has absolutely nothing to do with getting the boat across the water before he deliberately sinks it.

Mr. Jindal estimates his changes would reduce the federal tax revenue by $9 trillion, or 22%, over 10 years. He also predicts the gross domestic product would grow at more than 4% a year, and that wages would grow at more than twice that pace. Mr. Jindal has said he plans extensive budget cuts.

It's interesting to see Jindal bring up this plan now.  Remember a few years ago he tried to do something similar to the tax structure in Louisiana. But his"tax swap" plan which would have repealed the state income tax in favor of higher sales taxes, was so unpopular, even with the conservative Louisiana Legislature, that he ended up "parking" it with no further action.

At the time, Mark Moseley wrote in The Lens that the whole exercise had really been about positioning for the 2016 race.

This is a priority for Jindal, not Louisiana. It’s a policy motivated by personal ambition and couched in talking points instead of sound economics. The state deserves a better, more informed debate. Not about a particular “plan,” per se, but about Jindal’s views on economics.

In short, Jindal-nomics conform to supply-side ideology, appeal to establishment Republican kingmakers and would allow Jindal to posture as a Bayou Reagan in advance of the 2016 presidential race. That’s what he wants, and if Tidmore is right, that’s what he’ll get.

The Chris Tidmore reference in that quote is regarding a column where Tidmore reported that Jindal was still determined to achieve an income tax repeal despite having set aside the "swap" plan. At the time, Moseley concluded that Jindal would need a win there in order to outflank his GOP opponents to the right on tax policy in Iowa.  Today it looks like Jindal is going for it anyway.  But this is even more blatant.

In the "tax swap" scenario Jindal was trying to sell a net tax increase on poor and middle class people behind the smokescreen of a "repealed income tax."  In this new plan, he's just coming out and saying, look, poor people are moochers, and I'm gonna make them pay by any means necessary. It's the same basic policy except a bit meaner in tone this time.  But when the tone is set by Donald Trump as the frontrunner for an entire summer, this is what happens.

Wagon Train

Public Service Commissioner, Blue Heron Award honoree, and long time Friend of Bobby, Scott Angelle is running for Governor. You might have seen his advertisements displayed on one of the many viewing screens in your life.  Here's one of them now. Angelle tells us about the "wagon" of state, who is pulling it, who is riding in it and how that should go, ideally.



When I saw this, I was sure I had seen it before.

If we don't we will have more people riding in the cart than pulling the cart and America will go the way of Europe.

— Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) July 1, 2012

Jindal is using "carts" instead of "wagons" in that version. But he's talking about Europe so it must have something to do with cart being a  metric unit. Anyway he's used this image lots before.  This was brought to our attention a few months ago when Oyster pointed it out.

He only mentioned it then because I had noticed someone else throwing it around.

Bring the baggage

Won't happen, of course, but, for what it's worth, David Duke briefly entertained the notion of running against Steve Scalise (AKA "David Duke without the baggage") on a radio show yesterday.

Meanwhile, Duke said he’s considering an electoral challenge to Scalise.

“I am not registered to vote right now. I have legally been able to vote for years but I haven’t registered right now and I’d be able to vote for, but I might just register,” he said. “Just so, I might have to run against Steve Scalise because you know, I really might. I mean, I’m definitely going to consider it because its so disgusting to me to see…he got elected on false pretenses.”

Duke added that “the Republican Party’s issues are my issues,” but said “the difference with me in the Republican Party is that I didn’t betray them when I got elected.”

He's not even registered to vote.   Anyway, if there's anything we can do to encourage him to pursue this fantasy, then let's get on that.  Running Duke against Scalise is very much like running Stormy Daniels against David Vitter.. except, people will actually pay attention to this.