This morning on Jeff Crouere’s radio show, Louisiana Republican Party chairman Louis Gurvich suggested that Republican elected officials, Republican voters and Republican business owners in the New Orleans area ought to withdraw any future support for WDSU, the NBC station in that market.

Meaning, no GOP officials should accept interviews from WDSU’s reporters. No GOP-owned businesses should advertise on that station. And No GOP voters should watch.

Why advocate such a drastic step? Because WDSU denied access to a debate it held last night to Claston Bernard, the LAGOP’s endorsed candidate in the 2nd District congressional race. The debate, such as it turned out to be, is scheduled to air tonight.

It turned out that Troy Carter, the presumed favorite in the race, refused to participate. Carter, in an email his campaign put out yesterday, said he didn’t take part because he thought all of the candidates should be invited. That was pretty dishonest, and it certainly wasn’t Carter taking up for Bernard – Carter released a poll last week in which his pollster deliberately left Bernard off the list of options. What Carter was doing was concocting an excuse not to put himself in front of the voters because he thinks he has first place locked up and if Karen Carter Peterson, against whom he’s running attack ads trashing her for voting in favor of making the New Orleans public schools charter schools while her husband Dana got a job with the school system he’s made over a million dollars (over more than 15 years, which isn’t all that scandalous), doesn’t have an opportunity to confront him in person she can’t overcome his lead over her.

The perception is that Peterson can’t beat Carter in a runoff, because she won’t get a single white vote. That’s probably true.

But the goal where Carter’s camp is concerned is to keep Bernard out of the runoff. Not because they think Bernard can beat Carter. Because the absolute last thing these people want is the perception that the Republican Party is an option, or something worth considering, among the black community in New Orleans and elsewhere.

And Claston Bernard is the kind of messenger who – maybe not now, but certainly over the long haul – could wedge that discussion open.

New Orleans is probably one of the last places where you would see a GOP resurgence among black voters. Nobody votes on economics at all in that city, and they haven’t for a very long time, unless by “economics” you mean “free stuff from imaginary sources.” The Republican Party’s outreach to the black community is based on economics, and specifically how catastrophically the Democrat Party’s failure in governance has been in urban America in terms of that failure’s economic effect, plus an appeal to social conservatism.

But New Orleans is so far down the line toward Sodom and Gomorrah that a social conservative appeal comes off like fantasyland.

There are other places in the state where the black community will actually listen to such an appeal. In Monroe a majority black electorate elected a Republican businessman mayor, though he ran as an independent. A black state senator from Monroe, Katrina Jackson, is a frequent author of pro-life legislation.

Monroe isn’t the only such place. But New Orleans is a whole lot tougher nut to crack. Particularly since the power structure in that city is bound and determined to keep it that way.

So WDSU, which slavishly protects the power structure in New Orleans, conducted its invitations to the debate it held last night based on secret criteria. Bernard has polling showing him in the teens, in third and climbing just a couple of points behind Karen Carter Peterson, and Bernard has raised well more than $100,000. There is zero justification given those numbers not to include him in the debate.

But they didn’t. And for their trouble they ended up with Karen Carter Peterson and Gary Chambers competing to outdo each other in spouting radical-Left rhetoric. No diversity of ideas whatsoever.

You can’t make the case that such a pathetic show is in WDSU’s interest to put on the air. Literally nobody who isn’t a card-carrying communist would feel like it assists them in doing their civic duty to watch the Gravy/KCP Mao-athon.

That’s not just a shot at Claston Bernard, it’s a shot at the entire Republican Party. It’s an attempt to cancel half the political spectrum.

Actually, more than half.

WDSU’s viewer market is composed of a lot more than just Orleans Parish. It also includes Jefferson, St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, St. James, Lafourche, Terrebonne, St. Tammany, Washington and Tangipahoa. And this is what happened in that market in the presidential election in November…

Parish	Trump	Biden	Other	Total	Trump %
Orleans	26664	147854	3301	177819	15.0%
Jefferson	105949	84477	3307	193733	54.7%
St. Charles	18233	9800	484	28517	63.9%
St. Bernard	11179	6151	320	17650	63.3%
Plaquemines	7412	3414	188	11014	67.3%
St. John	13582	7538	312	21432	63.4%
Lafourche	36024	8672	692	45388	79.4%
Terrebonne	34339	11198	703	46240	74.3%
St. Tammany	99666	37746	2698	140110	71.1%
Tangipahoa	37806	18887	968	57661	65.6%
Washington	13307	5970	236	19513	68.2%
St. James	5954	6510	126	12590	47.3%
TOTAL	410115	348217	13335	771667	53.1%

We’re being told that the decision-making on this wasn’t being made in the WDSU newsroom but rather in New York, where NBC’s headquarters is located and also where can be found the HQ of Hearst Television, who owns the station.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter. Gurvich is right. It’s time for Republicans in that station’s viewing area to unleash as much hell and ruin on that station as possible.

Because these are the new rules, and cancel culture goes both ways. Deplatforming our candidate for Congress isn’t an offense that can be tolerated.