If you’re a Republican voter in East Baton Rouge Parish, you may have gotten this lengthy text message from Ted James’ campaign, starring former state representative and current James minion Scott McKnight…

We could focus on the fact that Scott McKnight has clearly done a deal with Ted James which puts McKnight in a position to have some sort of political power in a James administration.

We saw with Jay Dardenne’s turncoat routine, which put a Republican stamp on John Bel Edwards’ ruinous eight years in office in which the state’s budget doubled while its population declined, that anyone who believes it’s in a Republican voter’s best interest to give GOP politicians subservient positions in a Democrat administration is a fool.

In other words, this is Scott McKnight singing for his supper. He’s trying to get Republicans in Baton Rouge to put our imprimatur on giving him some cush job working for Ted James.

That ought to be immediately distasteful to Republican voters.

Yes, but this is practical, don’t you know? Because as McKnight says, a Republican can’t win and so Ted James must be the candidate. Otherwise Sharon Broome will be re-elected.

We’ve addressed this in detail, and you can go through all of it here. I’ll summarize the points already made on this:

• There is zero evidence that Ted James is the second coming of Kip Holden. Ted James’ voting record in the Louisiana legislature was absolutely awful. Holden’s, by contrast, was garden-variety-Democrat bad.
• James, unlike Holden, has been a pretty ugly racist throughout his political career, so much so that his social media accounts once carried side-by-side pictures of Trayvon Martin with Emmitt Till.
• He’s also Kamala Harris’ state chairman. If you think that confers some sort of political moderate label on him you’re literally a moron.
• So it’s not in evidence that Ted James represents any ideological break from what Sharon Broome has given Baton Rouge. To the extent there would be a difference it’s quite likely Ted James would be to her left, rather than her right.
• And if James were to win this race you’ll now be fighting to ward off his politics, if not get rid of him, for the next 12 years. With Broome, she’s gone four years from now thanks to Baton Rouge’s three-term limit.

The point being that Scott McKnight, who has some sort of personal stake in a James administration, is promising that Ted James will be something the evidence shows he isn’t – namely, an improvement over Broome.

Then he says East Baton Rouge Parish doesn’t vote Republican, while dismissing the fact that there are Republicans who hold parishwide offices. He says those are old farts who’ve been in office a long time, as though that makes a difference – they’re Republicans who demonstrate that Democrats, and black Democrat voters in particular, will at times vote for a Republican.

He says Steve Carter losing 57-43 in the runoff in 2020 was proof a Republican can’t win. Anybody who followed Carter’s campaign knew that it had zero energy at all and he was cooked in that runoff. This election is almost certainly going to be significantly different, if for no other reason than on the December ballot in St. George is a measure that would officially redirect a two-cent sales tax from the city-parish to the city of St. George – something Broome has refused to do, probably illegally. Even voters who didn’t support St. George are going to come out for that vote, because now that St. George is a city it’s going to have to get revenue some sort of way, and if that two cents isn’t moved it’s almost certain they’ll have to pass some other sort of tax to fund the city.

The point being that the December electorate in East Baton Rouge Parish is likely to be the most Republican-friendly in recent history. So the idea that Sid Edwards is doomed to Carter’s electoral fate isn’t really valid.

Then he says Sid Edwards losing to Broome by nine points in a poll demonstrates it’s impossible for Edwards to win. That’s a ridiculous statement. Edwards is still just getting started. He hasn’t even had his big campaign fundraisers yet (one is coming up next week), and yet he’s already five points better than Carter was at the finish line.

One would assume Edwards would gain support, rather than lose it, as his campaign goes along. One would especially assume that if one were a Republican.

Instead, Scott McKnight offers us this guidance: surrender.

We’re reminded of Henri-Phillippe Petain, who at one point in French history was a respectable political figure. Petain was a general in the French army in World War I and something of a national hero. But when the Nazis broke France’s defenses in the spring of 1940 and overran the country, they occupied the northern third of France and created a vassal state in the rest, with its “capital” at Vichy. Petain was put in charge of that rump state, which did Hitler’s bidding in terms of rounding up Jews, Gypsies and other undesirables and sending them off to camps, tyrannizing the population and generally serving as an ugly blot on France’s national escutcheon until American and allied troops landed in Normandy and spread out to liberate France. Petain and the other Vichy collaborators were put on trial and things generally didn’t go so well for them. Petain was convicted of treason and sentenced to death, though that sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was eventually released after losing his mind while incarcerated.

Petain isn’t all that famous anymore. Most French would love to forget him, because it’s a painful memory to see a once-beloved political figure turn his coat and collaborate with tyrants.

Why anybody would want to be Henri-Phillippe Petain is puzzling. But then again, you never know what deals get cut that make people do what they do.