Yesterday, Reps. Charles Boustany and Jeff Landry, battling for their political lives in Louisiana’s 3rd District congressional seat, finally had their long-awaited rhetorical showdown in person…

The result? Probably a draw.

Boustany and Landry both blasted out their talking points repeatedly.

For Boustany, those were unmistakable…

• Paul Ryan came to him to help redesign the health care system.
• Landry lies.
• He’s helped John Boehner cut spending in Congress.
• Landry lies.
• He’s cut a bunch of fraud and waste in Medicare.
• Landry’s missed 107 votes in Congress.
• Landry plays good-old-boy politics with the Washington special interests.
• Landry’s mandate for offshore oil rigs to have crew boats nearby at all times in case of another Deepwater Horizon-type mess will cost a bunch of jobs.
• One of those votes Landry missed was on embassy security, so Chris Stevens died because Landry didn’t care. Another vote was on the Keystone XL Pipeline.
• He’s the only guy in the race who voted against Obamacare.
• Oh, and Landry lies.

Landry’s talking points were pretty similar…

• He’s not a Washington insider like Boustany is.
• Boustany took a fortune from the American Hospital Association; who is he to hit anybody on special interests?
• He stood his ground on the debt ceiling rather than just cave to Obama like Boustany did when he followed Boehner into that dumb debt deal.
• The sequestration thing is Boustany’s mess for having voted for that debt deal.
• The crewboat mandate is nothing like what the Coast Guard wanted to do to the offshore oil industry.
• Boustany will say anything to get re-elected, and people like him are killing the political process; you can’t have an honest discussion when guys like him spend their time distorting everything.
• Boustany said he was for 80 percent of Obamacare (Boustany takes issue with that, as you might imagine).
• Landry wants to promote individual ownership of health insurance policies rather than have it run through everybody’s job.
• Boustany hasn’t done anything to save Medicare and Medicaid even though he’s had to know they were train wrecks.

Basically, the debate was a reflection of the race as a whole. Trench warfare. It wasn’t particularly enlightening or even entertaining; seeing as though it was on the radio you couldn’t see them scowling at each other.

Meanwhile, yesterday it surfaced that Boustany has managed to land on the United Ballot, one of those pay-for-play electoral tickets which circulates in the black community, and he’s right under somebody named “Barrack” Obama in the endorsement section…

This would be a benefit, one guesses, although considering Boustany’s name is on an endorsement alongside Obama for president, six local tax increases, a rejection of additional 2nd Amendment safeguards and a “no” vote on denying state benefits to crooked politicians.

One wouldn’t expect that Boustany is on board with all of that; he took issue when Landry called him a liberal in the debate. But typically, those endorsement ballots don’t include candidates until the checks clear, so unless something unusual happened he threw money at folks who are promoting a different ideological agenda.

Whatever it takes to get elected, one imagines.