Last week, Moon Griffon called to tell me that this Thursday, he had Sen. Bill Cassidy booked to do an hour on his show. Moon said he wanted Cassidy for the full hour because he wanted to talk about more than just Cassidy’s vote to impeach Donald Trump back in January of 2021.

And he said that Cassidy’s people had initially offered a 10-minute interview.

I responded that 10 minutes was hardly enough for the kind of in-depth interview that would do either Moon or Cassidy any good. Moon agreed, which is why he was demanding the full hour. And Cassidy’s people ultimately agreed.

At least for a little while. Because Monday, Moon related – and then went on the air to tell the story – that Cassidy’s people reverted to their offer of 10 minutes with the Senator. To which Moon declined, and told them to come back when they had an hour to spare.

Look, any time you’re a statewide candidate, much less a sitting statewide official, your time becomes precious. There are always more people to see than there are minutes for them. So carving out an hour during a day is going to be a challenge. Everybody gets that.

In a minute we’re going to talk about why that hour would be better spent as a guest on Griffon’s show than practically any other way, but first there was this, which appeared on Cassidy’s Facebook after Griffon told his side of the story on the Cassidy cancellation…

There is literally no worse message Cassidy’s team could have put out in the wake of the cancellation than this. As you might imagine, the ratio Cassidy earned in the comments was utterly brutal, and it was well-deserved.

Someone noted that “voters” wouldn’t have been the correct word to use. As Cassidy is a sitting senator, “constituents” is the correct term. By using “voters,” he’s casting the people he serves as suckers who need to be fleeced once again.

And far too many of those people see it that way.

What’s more, this doesn’t have the ring of truth.

I do Moon’s show generally once a week. It’s always for half an hour unless I’m jammed up on my end and then it’s 15 minutes. When Moon is trying to fill time slots on his show he never asks for 10 minutes. And with big guests like Cassidy, he always goes for an hour. Why would he only ask for 10 minutes with Cassidy? And why would he tell his audience it would be an hour?

“Clout-chasing?”

Probably not. Moon’s audience generally doesn’t like Cassidy. They’d probably rather listen to one of Cassidy’s opponents for an hour.

Could Moon make more news and/or more likely generate a viral audio clip with Cassidy than with Blake Miguez, Eric Skrmetta or John Fleming right now? Yeah, probably. But the chances are just as good that interview could become painful to listen to. He’s had people on who he gave ample time to state their case and what came from the opportunities was utterly and completely cringeworthy.

Moon wanted an hour and he held firm on that. If all he wanted was 10 minutes and that’s all Cassidy had to give him, he would have done the interview rather than canceling it.

He’s been in the radio business for 30 years. His show is his show. He’s not some fly-by-night guy who’s trying to make a name for himself by screwing Cassidy over.

So nobody is going to believe Cassidy’s story.

And to magnify what a stupid mistake this was, Griffon’s audience is exactly the crowd Cassidy needs to placate, and now those people and all of their friends and contacts who are like-minded will have a fresh reason to be disgusted with him.

Cassidy can’t get past that impeachment vote without a direct, head-on collision with it and it’s going to have to come in a venue like Moon’s show, where he isn’t allowed to talk past that vote.

Which is what he’s going to want to do.

The Cassidy pitch is that it’s only one vote and he’s been a pretty solid pro-Trump vote for the better part of a decade, and so people just need to get past it. Except that isn’t good enough, because the impeachment vote is the neon sign on the wall that says Cassidy will stick a knife in Trump at all the worst possible times and that he can’t be trusted.

Now he can’t be trusted to even schedule an interview with a conservative radio host, which brings this home in Louisiana, but what’s lost is something Cassidy should have done three or four years ago – which is to repudiate that impeachment vote and give reasons.

For example, to say something like “I’m a doctor, and so what I try to do is formulate my positions based on where the facts take me. But the more facts I see about what happened on January 6, 2021, the less confident I am that this was some sort of Trump insurrection. For example, I didn’t grasp that the President had the National Guard ready to provide security at the Capitol but Nancy Pelosi shut it down. I didn’t know how many federal law enforcement agents and assets were in that crowd, something which came out much later. I didn’t realize the extent to which those protesters were overprosecuted for what, in many cases, should really have been simple misdemeanor trespassing offenses.

“And lots more. So no, if I had to do it again that’s not a vote I would have made.”

My argument, which I’ve made before, is that it’s too late for Cassidy to revisit and revamp his position on that Trump impeachment. But whether I’m correct or not, I’m pretty sure he isn’t going to survive the GOP primary next year without resolving that issue.

I doubt this, but perhaps Cassidy could resolve it by defending that impeachment vote and laying out a fact pattern that most of the state’s Republican voters will understand. At the very least, I would argue that he owes us that accounting if it’s his position. I’d at least respect that he’s giving us an honest reckoning of the vote – after all, who would lie about that?

But by dodging Griffon, who we know wouldn’t allow him to sidestep and gaslight his way past that issue, what Cassidy is saying is that he isn’t interested in such a reckoning even at this late date.

And what that tells us is Bill Cassidy has had two terms in the Senate and that’s more than enough, and it’s time for somebody else to get a chance at that job.