This week’s battlefield, for me, is in my head.

I am, at the moment, electioned-out. I suspect a lot of our readers are as well. We’ve just gone through a statewide primary cycle in Louisiana, with the backdrop of an endless 2016 presidential cycle, and yet we’ve still got a runoff of massive importance coming in three weeks.

Ugh.

I’d say I don’t care any more, but if you’ve read this site this week you’ll know that not caring about the Louisiana runoffs isn’t an option. John Bel Edwards can’t be elected governor if this state is to resist a collapse into the failed policies of the Edwards/Blanco era. The truth is, this Edwards despite his utter lies about supposed conservatism is far further to the left than Edwin Edwards or Kathleen Blanco. It’s worth questioning whether St. John Bel isn’t further to the left than his predecessors as Democrat gubernatorial candidates Cleo Fields and Bill Jefferson.

We know that he’s bought and paid for by Richard Trumka, who by our count has delivered some quarter-million dollars to his PAC through giant checks by AFL-CIO affiliates. You cannot be a Republican voter and think it’s an acceptable result to put the AFL-CIO in control of Louisiana’s governor’s mansion.

You also cannot call yourself pro-life and support John Bel Edwards, who has twice openly supported the most pro-abortion president in American history, called abortion “the freedom of choice” in a VoteSmart candidate questionnaire and fought against defunding Planned Parenthood earlier this year.

You cannot say you’re for growing Louisiana’s economy and support John Bel Edwards, who sought out an open, nasty and personal fight with the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry when it was not necessary to do so.

And in case you’re somehow swayed by the insistence among some of Edwards’ supporters that LABI merely represents the interests of big business and Edwards’ attacks on them merely show he’s for the little guy, that argument hardly squares with the fact that later today the National Federation of Independent Business is announcing their endorsement of Vitter. NFIB is the little guys; they’re no more interested in John Bel Edwards than the big oil and gas companies are – or even the small independent oil and gas companies, as the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association’s endorsement of Vitter earlier this week shows.

But Edwards does have some support. In fact, he’s up in DC cashing in on it today, attending a Democrat Governors’ Association reception at James Carville’s house in Alexandria, Virginia at $1,000 a plate. He’ll be raking in donations from Carville’s Clinton crony crowd.

Mike Johnson has a post up here at the Hayride this morning about how a principled, Christian conservative comes to an endorsement of David Vitter. It’s a must-read.

I obviously share his opinion from a more libertarian, bad-Christian conservative perspective. I’m not going to sell you on the idea that David Vitter is any more virtuous than the rest of us; he might actually be, but that’s really not so important. What’s important is that we are limping along as a state in recovery from decades of Longite socialism, and the return to that style of governance amid the coming bankruptcy our underfunded pensions will surely deliver, the overbuilt higher education system and the bubble it has created, the impending economic damage our barely-competitive and overcomplicated tax code will surely inflict as our neighbors seek to chisel away more of our jobs and capital, and the massive project backlog our inefficient and declining transportation infrastructure’s ineffectual model of funding, construction and maintenance has put on us…going back to a big-government, high-tax and union-centric model would inflict destruction on this state that can’t even be countenanced.

At this point I’d give a four-year term to Mephistopheles himself to avoid the devil I know will be a John Bel Edwards administration. We simply cannot sustain that kind of damage. Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas, among others, will pick us clean in no time.

So if you want to complain about Vitter’s past marital infidelity, or the rough-and-tumble nature of his campaign tactics, or the cut of his suit, I’d ask that you wake up. You don’t have to have a beer with the governor, and it doesn’t affect your life one bit if he’s a nice guy. What does affect your life is the kind of governance he offers. Vitter offers aggressive conservative reform virtually across the board, built on a foundation of the same relative friendship to business, pro-growth policies, educational choice and reined-in government growth that Bobby Jindal, whose lack of engagement in his second term merits his current poor odor with the electorate, nevertheless brought to the table.

The Democrats are touting an Anzalone Liszt Research poll which has Edwards leading by a 52-40 margin. I would counsel that Anzalone was Charlie Melancon’s pollster, and we covered their incessantly poor quality of polling back in 2010. The fact is, Anzalone is known as one of the most aggressive push-pollers in the business, and they were brought in by Melancon’s former campaign manager Trey Ourso, who runs the trial-lawyer funded Gumbo PAC, to make the case that Edwards is pulling as many Scott Angelle and Jay Dardenne supporters as Vitter is. This is being done because Gumbo PAC is now running an ad showing clips of Dardenne and Angelle attacking Vitter’s character during the primary debates; the whole thing is essentially an influence operation attempting to convince Angelle and Dardenne voters that it’s acceptable for them to break ranks with the GOP and vote for a leftist.

It isn’t. And it’s important people understand that it isn’t.

But I’m conflicted about all of this, and the fact I’m writing about it. Because I’m electioned-out.

 – Thank you to Sen. Bill Cassidy for voting against the terrible budget deal. Ted Cruz pointed out how awful it is last night before it was passed thanks to the “yes” votes from 18 of the usual terrible Republicans – Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, Orrin Hatch, John McCain, John Cornyn…you know who they are.

 

 – Vladimir Putin is now the leader of the free world and he’s not even part of it.

 

 – Let’s be Sweden, Bernie says. Sure. Let’s be Sweden. That’s a great idea.

 

 – Or Denmark. Funny how the Danes don’t even want to be Denmark anymore.

 

 – Did I mention Ted Cruz? Yes, yes I did.

Here. I’ll mention him again.

 

 – She’s terrible, and she’s unelectable. Do not fear her.

 

 – A society not in decline would be rounding up these people and deporting them back home to Pakistan. Sadly, the British are in an advanced state of decline.

 

 – Finally, on Wednesday we passed the 10 million page views mark here on the Hayride, about a month short of our 6th anniversary as a site. That’s not half bad, as far as I’m concerned, and I’d like to thank our readers for helping to make it happen. We’re hoping to get the next 10 million out of the way in far less, time, though, so keep on clicking. And tell your friends!