Yesterday was a fairly significant day at the Louisiana Capitol for a host of reasons, but probably the most important of those was the overwhelming passage of HB 800, a bill by Rep. Beau Beaulieu (R-New Iberia) that would begin a constitutional convention to replace the half-century-old, failed Edwin Edwards-era document virtually everyone knows needs to go.
HB 800 posted a very big number on the House floor yesterday…
We took a big step today to move Louisiana forward! Thank you for your hard work! pic.twitter.com/pCydwamw6J
— Governor Jeff Landry (@LAGovJeffLandry) May 7, 2024
Before it did, House Speaker Phillip DeVillier took to the podium and delivered a short, but heartfelt speech outlining why throwing out the Edwin Edwards constitution, which is the subject of never-ending amendments thrown in voters’ faces at practically every election cycle and which has presided over Louisiana’s abject humiliation in relation to all of our Southern neighbor states since its passage, is such an important project for him…
I decided to go to the well once. #lalege pic.twitter.com/lgjWo8GuYl
— Phillip DeVillier (@SpkrDeVillier) May 8, 2024
The state’s constitution is so junked-up and it entrenches so many worst practices of government that it’s really surprising it hasn’t been thrown out until now, but as we discussed yesterday it took the repudiation of the old status quo Democrat mob Edwin Edwards signified and was idolized by before a new constitution could become a reality.
After all, DeVillier’s predecessor as Speaker Clay Schexnayder called himself a Republican, but Schexnayder did everything he could to accommodate the former governor John Bel Edwards, who wasn’t related to Edwin by blood but could have been his political clone (minus the glib jokes and sex appeal to loose women).
Now that the political guard has changed and conservatives are more or less in charge of the Capitol – or at least they’re a hell of a lot louder voice than they’ve ever been – the time has come to reopen the books and put something together which better reflects the governing majority’s interests and preferences.
Because elections have consequences.
But the caterwauling on the Left in favor of Louisiana’s status quo that yesterday’s vote set off was really something to see.
Here was New Orleans Democrat Matthew Willard before the vote, interrogating Beaulieu on behalf of the status quo…
Rep. @MattWillard97 makes clear some of the important aspects of the state constitution not protected by HB 800.
There’s a lot at stake for the working people of Louisiana in this Constitutional Convention. #Lalege #LaGov pic.twitter.com/cZJ99zG1bB
— Louisiana House Democratic Caucus (@LAHouseDems) May 7, 2024
And here was another New Orleans Democrat, the obnoxious Candace Newell, screaming that her district won’t “get the representation” it deserves because the bill calls for 27 gubernatorially-appointed delegates to the convention which, together with the House and Senate members, would comprise the convention’s body…
Rep. @RepNewell99 raises concerns about constituent input and outside influence on the proposed constitutional convention. #LaLege #LaGov pic.twitter.com/iMvizF2GSC
— Louisiana House Democratic Caucus (@LAHouseDems) May 7, 2024
And here’s some fear-mongering about all the “freedoms” a new constitution might take away…
Rep. @jordan4justice and @RepJasonHughes make it abundantly clear that protections included in HB 800 mean nothing once the constitutional convention starts. #LaLege #LaGov pic.twitter.com/XUI5p5sN3W
— Louisiana House Democratic Caucus (@LAHouseDems) May 7, 2024
Rep. @jordan4justice points out that the protections for certain rights provided by HB 800 go out the window once the convention gavels in.
As Rep. @votelandry says, “It’s a pinky promise.” #Lalege #LaGov pic.twitter.com/3KK6i1Ds2K
— Louisiana House Democratic Caucus (@LAHouseDems) May 7, 2024
And here’s the disgraceful Denise Marcelle attempting to say that if you take something out of the constitution and relegate it to the level of statute, that somehow that’s an attack on democracy…
Rep. Denise Marcelle points out that removing something from the constitution and putting it in statute makes it easier to override the will of the people. #LaLege #LaGov pic.twitter.com/CXq5mWLQN2
— Louisiana House Democratic Caucus (@LAHouseDems) May 7, 2024
Meanwhile, outside of the Legislature you’ve got the Left absolutely freaking out over the concept that a new constitution would be written that they don’t control…
The constitution – and all its many amendments – is there to protect the people of Louisiana from their legislators. The people need a much bigger voice in this rushed, secretive process. #lalege #lagov https://t.co/sIXadMXf3V
— Jan Moller (@jmollerLBP) May 7, 2024
But the best of all is Louisiana’s Abortion Barbie Mandie Landry, whose district in Uptown New Orleans and the Garden District is a mix of very rich and very poor generally unlike the vast majority of the working-class and middle-class districts the vast majority of the Louisiana House is made up of, trashing her colleagues as a bunch of rich white men who don’t represent the people of Louisiana…
https://twitter.com/LAHouseDems/status/1787963935032836258
This is so stupid and insulting that it deserves a bit of comment.
We wish we had the video of our buddy Mike Bayham, a freshman House member from Chalmette and a frequent contributor here at The Hayride, following Landry to the microphone and absolutely excoriating her for the insulting and misandrist attack on the body her speech constituted. It was pure gold.
The fact is that for all of the howling by these people, the voters of Louisiana completely and totally repudiated their ideological position in the last election. They want to scream about how the constitutional convention wouldn’t represent the people of Louisiana, but THEY’RE THE ONES WHO DON’T REPRESENT US. What they represent is a bunch of districts drawn mostly to ghettoize Democrat voters according to race.
And yes, Republicans drew those districts to do just that. But guess what? They did so with the active assistance of…these same Democrats who are screaming about representation.
Denise Marcelle and Matthew Willard aren’t unhappy about the districts they represent. Marcelle’s district is 75 percent black, which is more than twice as black as Louisiana’s population is, and more than 50 percent more black than the population of East Baton Rouge Parish. As for Willard, his New Orleans district is 74 percent black.
Those districts are drawn so that Marcelle and Willard will never, ever get voted out in favor of a Republican.
And neither will Landry. Her state party ran somebody somewhat to the right of her last fall, and that didn’t work at all. There are no Republicans in her district to speak of.
So this is a collection of outliers whose party isn’t capable of winning or even making a competitive showing in statewide races, and they’re going to lecture the rest of us on representation?
Go and whine a little.
Here’s another outlier, the crypto-gay Green New Deal communist Davante Lewis, he of the Louisiana Public Service Commission thanks to some $2 million in out-of-state campaign dollars spent in a district specifically drawn to insure that a black person would represent it, screeching about the constitutional convention bill…
We must thank & applaud those @LAHouseDems who stood up for Louisiana today. They drafted amendments, asked the right questions, and did everything they could to stop this power grab.
We saw you, we heard you, and we THANK YOU! The fight for our state will continue on…
— Commish. Davante Lewis (@davantelewis) May 7, 2024
Except there are more than 27 Democrats in the Louisiana House. So what happened?
What happened was that four of them – Roy Daryl Adams, Chad Brown, Robby Carter and Dustin Miller – voted FOR the convention, meaning that this thing didn’t just have overwhelming support but BI-PARTISAN SUPPORT. Two more were absent.
And what does that get those four Democrats willing to reach across the aisle? It gets them potentially censured by the state Democrat Party, at least if this nutter gets his way…
At the risk of sounding self-important, an official statement from me regarding HB800.
As a member of the Louisiana DSCC, I am prepared to submit censure resolutions for each Democratic legislator that votes in favor of HB800 and enables this dangerous farce. pic.twitter.com/HraLYeKoZI
— Jackson Voss (@jacksonvoss) May 7, 2024
Of course, the complaint is over the possibility of a constitutional convention filling up the final two weeks of the current legislative session and starting in 12 days. That won’t actually happen now, as the proposed convention would happen in August.
But it doesn’t matter to them. What matters is they’re angry, and they’re screaming. These are the screams of an impotent, irrelevant, discredited and disgraced minority which has had its day governing Louisiana and proceeded to fail on every possible level. The Left in Louisiana is watching the edifice of their political power at that capitol being stripped away, brick by brick, and – incapable of the introspection a time in the wilderness should engender – they’re whining and raging.
Well, let them whine and rage. We’re long past the point of caring what they have to say, other than to derive entertainment from it. And it’s our hope that DeVillier, Beaulieu and the rest of the House GOP majority and the other convention delegates should the Senate pass HB 800 will ignore them at every possible turn as this process continues.