"Veer"
In Louisiana, Republican and stalwart protector of his bodily fluids Rep. Bill Cassidy is a serious threat this year to Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. This is partly because, well, Louisiana, but also because it is impossible to be too silly a person to be taken seriously as a Republican, and so silliness and statesmanship have become perfectly interchangeable. Which is lucky, because silliness is easier to come by.
Which brings us to today's dispatch from Crazytown, in which Rep. Bill Cassidy argues to town hall meeting attendees that when it makes it to the likely Dec. 6 runoff between him and Landrieu (because Louisiana just likes being different), the world will be watching.
"If I’m elected there will be 51 Republicans and the people of Louisiana have cast the deciding vote. For 30 days the entire world will be looking at Louisiana and that sounds a little bit like rhetoric but think about it. You don’t think Vladimir Putin is going to look to see if the Senate remains Democrat which is to say a rubber stamp for Barack Obama or if there is a Republican senate which would insist upon a strong military? The Chinese, the Iranians, the Israelis, they’re all going to be watching Louisiana for those 30 days."
We may have this all wrong. Conservatives may be acting the way they do not because it makes any rational sense or follows any particular agenda, but because they are continually making desperate bids for Russian heartthrob Vladimir Putin to notice them.
Comrades, Putin will say,
who is this American by name of Bill Cassidy, and is he manly man? Truly, American state of Louisiana is force to be reckoned with. Now our plans are doomed.
"I like to think of the historian. She will be writing about this race 100 years from now and she will write about it and she will say in 2014 the country made the decision either to keep going to the left because Louisiana reelected Mary Landrieu 30 days after everyone else was elected, or she will write in 2014 the country made the decision to veer back to the right because Louisiana elected Bill Cassidy."
All right, "veer" is never a good word to use if you're a politician. Saying you are going to make historians 100 years hence take note of how you made the country "veer" sounds like a drunken friend telling you he just learned how to do a barrel roll in his Miata so hold his beer and watch
this. Nobody likes to "veer" anywhere.
Anyway, we should probably not be keen on this new crop of would-be senators that harbor fantasies of Vladimir Putin needing to pay attention to them. They tend to act out on those beliefs, and Pay Attention To Me diplomacy never works out very well for anyone but the defense contractors.