This morning, Monroe-based Louisiana political talk host Moon Griffon launched an attack on Republican Lieutenant Governor candidate Jay Dardenne, calling him unsuitable for conservative votes in November.

“Under no circumstances will I vote for Jay Dardenne for Lt. Governor,” Griffon, as quoted by the Dead Pelican, said. “I can’t look in the mirror if I vote for Jay Dardenne… We’ve got to get rid of the RINO’s in the Republican party!”

Griffon is perfectly welcome to stay home on Nov. 2, then.

Because while it’s a perfectly satisfactory sentiment for conservatives to seek to purify the Republican Party, if you haven’t accomplished that by the time the general election rolls around it’s too late.

Conservatives, if in fact Dardenne wasn’t an acceptable standard-bearer, should have galvanized around another candidate. There were options; Sammy Kershaw cast himself in a conservative light but for a few ideas he offered which sounded like public projects, Roger Villere ran a campaign based almost solely on the concept that he was a conservative alternative to Dardenne, Kevin Davis called himself a conservative though few believed him outside of St. Tammany and Jefferson Parishes and even Melanie McKnight sounded conservative notes. Combined, their vote was larger than Dardenne’s.

Let’s not forget that Dardenne garnered a lot of conservative vote as well, because while his record in the state legislature might have been mixed from an ideological standpoint Dardenne has contributed to the movement in other ways. John Robert Butler’s piece last week about his work to purge the voter rolls after Katrina, for example, is a must read – Dardenne helped to restore the integrity of the electorate and changed Louisiana politics in unmistakable ways, and he did it in a professional way without causing the kind of hue and cry one would expect from the Professional Left. It’s the kind of thing a competent, non-corrupt public official can accomplish, and that should have value to conservatives in and of itself.

But more than that, while a “RINO moderate” may be a maddening politician to have to support, the fact that he’s moderate means he can be influenced. The attitude that purging the party of moderates is a smart thing to do is misguided; the aim of such a sentiment is more properly described as insisting upon a set of principles to guide the actions of those the Republican Party elects. And such guidance doesn’t come just on Election Day, as Griffon seems to forget. If he wants conservative governance – and it’s unclear exactly how that would manifest itself out of the Lieutenant Governor, anyway – then he needs to stay in constant contact with those who need pressuring to provide it. Pulling a lever every four years is hardly sufficient to preserve the quality of our government.

The choice for Lieutenant Governor is quite clear. Whatever Dardenne’s ideological failings, he’s still a right-of-center or, at worst, a centrist candidate. And he’s in a runoff with the farthest-left candidate to have entered the race in Caroline Fayard.

Fayard is now running around with the line that she’s a John Breaux centrist or a Blue Dog Democrat, and maybe she is. Charlie Melancon calls himself that, and he votes with Nancy Pelosi 84 percent of the time.

So, who does a Blue Dog Democrat associate herself with? Well, one way to gauge that is to research candidates said Blue Dog donates money to. And in Fayard’s case, we don’t see a lot of centrism. From OpenSecrets.org:

FAYARD, CAROLIN DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	STUDENT	6/9/94	$1,000	Fields, Cleo (D)
FAYARD, CAROLINE NEW ORLEANS,LA 70115	SELF/ATTORNEY	7/13/10	$5,000	Democratic State Central Cmte/Louisiana (D)
FAYARD, CAROLINE SPRINGFIELD,LA 70462	FAYARD & HONEYCUTT/ATTORNEY	3/31/07	$2,300	Clinton, Hillary (D)
FAYARD, CAROLINE SPRINGFIELD,LA 70462	FAYARD & HONEYCUTT/ATTORNEY	3/31/07	$2,300	Clinton, Hillary (D)

FAYARD, CAROLINE NEW ORLEANS,LA 70185	LOYOLA SCHOOL OF LAW/ATTORNEY/LAW P	9/17/07	$2,300	Landrieu, Mary L (D)
FAYARD, CAROLINE NEW ORLEANS,LA 70185	LOYOLA SCHOOL OF LAW/ATTORNEY/LAW P	9/17/07	$2,300	Landrieu, Mary L (D)
FAYARD, CAROLINE SPRINGFIELD,LA 70462	FAYARD & HONEYCUTT/ATTORNEY	4/2/07	$2,300	Kerry, John (D)
FAYARD, CAROLINE SPRINGFIELD,LA 70462	FAYARD & HONEYCUTT/ATTORNEY	4/2/07	$2,300	Kerry, John (D)

Fayard also donated $1,500 to GOP congressman Richard Baker in 1993, when she was 15 years old. She was 16 when she threw $1,000 at Cleo Field’s 1994 congressional campaign. Amazing political involvement for a high school kid; you wouldn’t think that money actually came from her trial-lawyer father Calvin Fayard, would you?

But wait. There are a bunch of donations from a “Cathryn Fayard” which appear to be the same person…

FAYARD, CATHERYN DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70727	STUDENT	6/22/93	$500	Baker, Richard (R)
FAYARD, CATHRYN DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70727	GOLDMAN SACHS	10/18/00	$1,000	Democratic Senatorial Campaign Cmte (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	STUDENT	8/23/94	$500	Tauzin, Billy (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN C DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	N/A/STUDENT	2/4/03	$2,000	Kerry, John (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN C DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	STUDENT	5/10/96	$1,000	Fields, Cleo (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN C DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	STUDENT	7/21/98	$1,000	Jefferson, William J (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN C DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70727	GOLDMAN SACHS	3/5/02	$1,000	Strickland, Tom (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE NEW ORLEANS,LA 70185	SELF/ATTORNEY	9/17/09	$2,400	Sangisetty, Ravi (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE NEW ORLEANS,LA 70185	FAYARD & HONEYCUTT/ATTORNEY	9/22/08	$2,300	Moreno, Helena (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	FAYARD & FAYARD	11/12/97	$1,000	Kerry, John (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	FAYARD & FAYARD	11/12/97	$1,000	Kerry, John (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70727		11/3/02	$1,000	Landrieu, Mary L (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70727	GOLDMAN SACHS	10/18/00	$1,000	Clinton, Hillary Rodham (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	HOMEMAKER	4/21/98	$1,000	Hollings, Ernest F (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	HOMEMAKER	7/10/98	$1,000	Hollings, Ernest F (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	HOMEMAKER	9/8/99	$1,000	Hatch, Orrin G (R)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE DENHAM SPRINGS,LA 70726	STUDENT	6/30/98	$1,000	Hatch, Orrin G (R)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE NEW ORLEANS,LA 70115	SELF/LAWYER	6/29/10	$250	Sangisetty, Ravi (D)
FAYARD, CATHRYN CAROLINE NEW ORLEANS,LA 70185	N/A/HOMEMAKER	8/25/08	$250	Cazayoux, Donald J (D)

There are a few GOP donations in there, but centrists generally don’t give money to Dollar Bill Jefferson and John Kerry.

The Fayard family’s political donations are worth a post all to themselves. Caroline’s trial-lawyer father Calvin’s donations to Harry Reid in the current cycle, for example, would call into question the “centrism” of their political leanings; the outlays are reminiscent of the New Orleans fundraiser for Reid Mary Landrieu had planned in December – just after the infamous Louisiana Purchase on Obamacare – before public outcry forced its cancellation.

The point is that Fayard ought to represent the absolute worst candidate for conservatives to see on the ballot – she’s a trial lawyer, spawned by trial lawyers, who has been throwing money at lefty politicians practically since before she could drive. She’s also a former Clinton intern – and made enough of an impression that the former president came down to do a fundraiser for her this year, a Goldman Sachs apparatchik and a clerk for Federal Judge Stan Duval, who is perhaps best known for his injunction stopping Louisiana from issuing “Choose Life” license plates in 2000 (before Fayard clerked for him) and in so doing throwing the issuance of all personalized plates involving sports teams and schools, etc., in the bargain. That idiotic decision was overturned by the Fifth Circuit.

Regardless of what you might think of Dardenne, if you’re a conservative Fayard ought to give you the creeps. That’s a political career which needs to be strangled in its well-appointed crib before it results in terrible effects for the state; we can’t afford another Mary Landrieu or Kathleen Blanco in the Lieutenant Governor’s office.

And statements like the one Griffon made this morning make it clear that personal pique with Dardenne’s “unreliable” voting record is more important to him than the strategic failure turning the No. 2 office in state government over to a left-wing Democrat would be. This kind of idiocy shouldn’t go unchallenged.