What we have for you is something which shows just how costly it is to allow someone to become the Speaker of a supermajority Republican House with Democrat votes, which is what Clay Schexnayder was able to pull off with the help of a Democrat governor a little more than three years ago.

Here’s a video. It’s of Kathy Edmonston, who announced herself as a member of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus just after its formation at the beginning of this year’s Louisiana legislative session, attempting to defend a bill she brought in front of the House Health and Welfare Committee. This clip only goes about 20 seconds or so, and you’ll need some context to fully understand it. We’ll provide that below…

Republican-on-Republican violence in #lalege pic.twitter.com/MBQAlGlLr4

— Scott McKay (@TheHayride) April 26, 2023

The bill is HB 372, and it’s a statement that the CDC and WHO don’t have jurisdiction in Louisiana and their demands for things like COVID lockdowns should hold no weight here.

It’s a majoritarian bill. The people of Louisiana have had a snootful of draconian COVID measures and want guarantees this kind of idiocy won’t happen again.

But the thing to remember is that the state’s House Speaker was never on board with lifting the COVID lockdowns. Schexnayder stood in the way of a House petition that would have re-opened the state, or specifically would have had Gov. John Bel Edwards been willing to follow the law.

There are people who will tell you that Schexnayder is completely bought and paid for by the hospitals in the state, who are, generally speaking, quasi-governmental entities now that there is some $25 billion per year or more flowing to them from the Louisiana Department of Health.

So that’s an applecart Clay Schexnayder wouldn’t want to upset. And HB 372 would upset it.

Joe Stagni is a Clay Schexnayder stooge. Stagni doesn’t have the stones to go after anybody in a committee hearing on his own volition. If he’s tearing into Kathy Edmonston it’s because somebody put him up to it.

HB 372 died in committee yesterday, by the way. The House Health and Welfare Committee is chaired by Larry Bagley, who’s a “moderate” Republican and a Schexnayder pal. Bagley made sure two members of the committee who would have voted for the bill, Reps. Raymond Crews and Chris Turner, were out of the room and then he held a vote on it. Then two other Schexnayder pals, Stagni and Wayne McMahen, joined with the Democrats to kill it.

This kind of thing happens all the time, and so does the attacking of conservatives by Schexnayder buddies in committee hearings. When Rep. Ray Garofalo was attacked by Rep. Stephanie Hilferty two years ago for having brought a Critical Race Theory ban in a committee Garofalo chaired, Hilferty wasn’t punished – instead it was Garofalo who the Speaker came down on.

This kind of fratricide doesn’t happen when you have a Speaker who supports his own party. You might well have Republicans who don’t vote for all of the Republican bills. What you don’t have is attacks on fellow members of the same party.

Instead, what we have is a Speaker who treats Republicans, and particularly conservatives, like second-class citizens. And he does it because he was elected with the votes of a small minority of Republicans and every single Democrat.

This can never happen again. It can’t be allowed to happen again. And Schexnayder’s political career – not to mention Stagni’s – needs to end in this fall’s elections.