First of all, let me say that I don’t have anything against Julia Letlow. I’ve actually never met her. My friends who do know her say she’s fantastic, and I have no reason to doubt that. So what I write here is based on the best objective analysis I’ve got and nothing else.

And between Saturday night, when President Trump sent out a Truth Social post endorsing Letlow, and Tuesday morning, when Letlow announced she’s running in the quite-crowded GOP primary race for the U.S. Senate, my phone has absolutely blown up with people reacting and asking questions.

Yesterday, Jensen Young had a short piece here at The Hayride extolling the virtues of the congresswoman and expressing his support. Nothing against Jensen, but honestly I didn’t see anything compelling in his piece – nor have I seen it anywhere else – telling me that Letlow getting in this race is game-changing.

Nathan Koenig is working on a post here at the site, which will be up presumably tomorrow, or maybe later today, which is going to take a counter position to Trump’s. Nathan’s opinion of Letlow is that she’s a RINO, and he comes about that opinion based on the fact that her scorecard numbers particularly in the 2023-24 congressional term, were pretty terrible. Overall, her scorecard numbers generally hover around 75 percent from a conservative standpoint (they’ll vary a bit based on which votes are scored); that’s pretty much exactly where Bill Cassidy sits.

So what’s the point of replacing Cassidy and his seniority with Letlow if she’s going to vote just like Cassidy does?

I said this morning on Brian Haldane’s show on Talk 107.3 FM in Baton Rouge that I know why Trump put out that endorsement. The thinking goes like this – the polling in the race has John Fleming as the only candidate drawing any real numbers against Cassidy right now, and Fleming hasn’t raised any money, he’s too old and it seems like Trump isn’t much of a Fleming fan seeing as though he had Fleming working in the White House during the first term but didn’t appoint him to anything in the second term.

To the Fleming people, don’t yell at me. I’m simply saying this is likely why Trump’s people had him send out that endorsement message of Letlow. I’m not saying it’s anything other than the perception in DC or that it’s correct.

And Trump likes Letlow. Of course he does. She’s easy on the eyes, and everybody knows Trump is a fan of that. That people who know Julia Letlow further testify that she’s fantastic probably seals the deal for him.

Fleming’s camp counters all this by putting out results yesterday from a poll by JMC Analytics showing that Fleming beats Cassidy 44-27 in a head-to-head race. The idea that none of the opponents can beat Cassidy and that’s why Letlow has to get thrown into the race, says Team Fleming, is wholly unsupported by the facts.

I’d have to say they’re right. I’m not at all convinced it’s going to be Fleming once the race really gets started, and I still think they’re right. I don’t think Cassidy can get to 50 percent in a Republican primary runoff no matter who his opponent is, and there is no chance of the Democrats winning that seat.

Prior to Saturday it was expected that Trump would simply wait to see which of the challengers made the runoff and he’d simply endorse that one against Cassidy. He really ought to have stuck to that strategy.

Is Letlow’s entry a game-changer, in the sense that it knocks the other challengers out of the race? I don’t see any reason to think so.

The first one everybody is going to look at and expect she’ll drop out is Julie Emerson. But if I’m Julie Emerson I’m not taking a back seat to Julia Letlow. I waited a good long time for Letlow to get into the race and she didn’t, and then I got in. Now she gets in and I’m supposed to throw away all the effort I’ve made over the last few months? Somebody had better be offering me something good for that. Besides, if I’m Julie Emerson I’ve got a very good argument that I’ve generated a hell of a lot more yardage as a state legislator and made a lot more good policy than Letlow has in Congress, and so I’m a lot better candidate for the Senate.

Nobody seems to be giving Eric Skrmetta much attention lately, but if I’m Skrmetta, Letlow getting in doesn’t phase me much. Like Emerson, I’m going to say I’ve done a hell of a lot more to fight the good fight for conservatism in the 18 years I’ve been battling on the Public Service Commission against global warming communists, rent-seeking crooks and other ne’er-do-wells trying to feed off ratepayers’ wallets, and that experience makes me the best-qualified opponent to Cassidy from not just a standpoint of understanding how economic, energy and regulatory policy affects your take-home pay but also how the crooks worm their way into the halls of power. And politically, I’m still the one candidate from the New Orleans area; Julia Letlow is absolutely unknown in my neck of the woods, so her getting in only dilutes the vote in the other parts of the state and actually increases my chance of stealing a seat in the runoff.

And if I’m Blake Miguez I’m selling myself as the Freedom Caucus conservative legislator in the race. I can say I ran afoul of Gov. Landry because I insisted on dumping the state income tax and cutting the budget rather than getting cute with tax swaps and other shenanigans, I can say I’m just about the best politician in America when it comes to the 2nd Amendment and pro-life issues, I’m just about perfect on every conservative scorecard and if you’re looking for somebody who’s different than Establishment Bill Cassidy, I’m much more that than Julia Letlow is. Not to mention I’m sitting on the biggest stash of campaign cash outside of Cassidy, and I’m raising more all the time. There is no way I’m going anywhere. Once I open the spigot and start running ads and my name ID goes through the roof, I’m the one who’ll be in the runoff.

And if I’m Fleming, I’m going to ruthlessly burn Julia Letlow to the ground. It might end up as a political murder-suicide, but I’m going to dispatch people all over social media to hammer her on a host of things. I’m going to push the narrative that she’s just another congressional insider-trader on stocks, owing to a report making its way around X that she pulled off a 375 percent return on a stock investment and failed to report it timely. In fact, X is absolutely loaded with accusations that she’s broken the law on disclosures of stock trades, and I’ll hammer her on that. I’m going to call her a RINO and cite those scorecards. I’m going to talk about how Letlow sided with the public health bureaucracies amid the COVID disaster – those doctors turned out to be wrong in every particular and they did a ton of damage, not to mention Julia Letlow is a widow thanks to COVID, so how on earth can she side with the medical establishment? Do not be surprised if Team Fleming also throws out the fact that Letlow is engaged to Kevin Ainsworth, the former LSU outfielder (Kevin is the older brother of Kurt Ainsworth, the superstar pitcher and former Major Leaguer), which is really cool except that Ainsworth is a lobbyist at the Capitol in Baton Rouge and that’s going to look a lot like the political class closing ranks against the people. Or at least, if I’m Fleming and I give no figs about political niceties that’s exactly how I’ll frame it.

Those arguments may or may not work, and they may or may not have merit, but we already know that Team Fleming couldn’t care less about Reagan’s 11th Commandment, the one about speaking ill of a fellow Republican. If they were willing to burn up their relationship with the Louisiana Freedom Caucus by trashing its members over carbon capture, when the Freedom Caucus are the guys who have actually had wins on that issue from an anti-carbon capture perspective, just to get at Miguez… what do you think they’ll do to Letlow?

The above aside, Cassidy is sitting on a war chest of more than $11 million, and now he’s going to start spending it to knock Letlow down.

Again, all of this might not work. But the thing is that Julia Letlow hasn’t had a race like this. She was Luke Letlow’s widow running in Northeast Louisiana the last three cycles. It was completely out of bounds, unfathomable even, that she  would get attacked. But this race? There will be some awfully mean crabs in that bucket she’s throwing herself into.

It’s not that Letlow can’t win, or that she shouldn’t. It’s that this isn’t some done deal. There isn’t a clear-cut case that Letlow changes the race just because Trump endorsed her. She still has to outrun the field to get into that runoff, and she’s pretty late getting in. She doesn’t have statewide appeal. She’s been talked about as a candidate in this race for a whole year and didn’t get in, which tells you this isn’t something she was dying to do – and running for statewide office is a massive grind that you’d better really, really want to do if you’re going to be successful at it.

Obviously I’m missing something. I just don’t get this at all. I think it was a mistake for Trump to stick out his neck like this when there is a very good chance his endorsement won’t fundamentally change the race. And it feels like Letlow is being pushed into the Senate race without really wanting to be in it, making this a bad move for her personally.

Maybe I’m wrong. Like I said, I don’t know her. I guess we’ll find out, though.