(By Representative Jessica Domangue) — I want to unpack the brutal Republican Senate primary by looking into the psychology of how we have gotten to this point.

I have concerns about where our Republican Party goes from here.   I have been in the Federation of Republican Women for years, and there are ladies with decades-long friendships who are no longer speaking over this election cycle.    I have seen numerous folks state they are voting Democrat for the first time in their lives.  I am not so sure President Reagan would be proud of where we are in this moment.

The ingredients in this election cycle were already simmering for a few years, and they aren’t going away.   The Fleming campaign coalesced a network of self-anointed gatekeepers of conservatism—if you dispute their issue du jour, you are labeled a “RINO” or even a socialist or communist.

Their tactics line up perfectly with the far-left, Marxist strategies outlined in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals—a manual for political leftists like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have used for years to seize power. 

It sets up a battle between the “Haves” and the “Have Nots” with the goal of chaotically ripping apart the Republican Party.   To the Fleming campaign, the “Haves” were the enemy: a majority of Republican members of the legislature, Governor Landry, and even members of Congress like Higgins and Scalise who all were secretly compromised by so-called dark money PACs.   The “Have Nots” are those self-anointed gatekeepers… in other words, Alinsky’s classic enlightened and righteous “us” versus “them” dynamic.

At its core, Alinsky’s philosophy rests on a single principle: “Does this particular end justify this particular means?”

Here’s what those rules look like in practice.

Rule 1: Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.

These self-anointed gatekeepers are a small fraction of the Republican Party, but they amplify their numbers by creating a myriad of interconnected fringe organizations.   Can’t get elected to your parish’s Republican Executive Committee or the State Central Committee? Create a non-profit or “assembly” or women’s club and connect with the other few outlier radical voices that think like you on Facebook.

Organizations like Save My Louisiana, LACAG, and We The People-Bayou Community share overlapping leadership, coordinated messaging, and a distinct brand of political strategy usually only seen by far-left liberals.  Some of them even have direct financial ties to John Fleming’s U.S. Senate campaign. LACAG’s principal, Chris Alexander, has been paid over $56,000 by the Fleming campaign. These aren’t fringe actors operating independently. They are, by every indication, part of a coordinated political operation.

Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.

They will label someone a “RINO” faster than Al Sharpton will call someone a racist.   But, in this “good” versus “evil,”  it got much darker than silly name-calling.

I want Louisiana voters to understand what that operation looks like up close. Sometimes it looks like anonymous threats. Sometimes it looks like targeting a state legislator’s spouse. And sometimes it looks like dismissing those threats when they’re reported, then turning around and posting vulgar content on Easter Sunday. It looked like an AI-generated deepfake video mocking a widow’s grief over her late husband.

Rule 9: The threat is more terrifying than the thing itself.

In the Fleming race, the issue du jour was carbon capture and sequestration.   They took a standard business activity and turned it into a “life-or-death” issue fueled by misinformation, deception, and ignorance. If you pay attention to their content long enough or attend their events, you’ll hear about children dying, land being seized, and even nuclear-style catastrophes occurring as a result of CCS. None of it reflects the reality of a proven technology that has been safely deployed and regulated with decades of successful real-world use.

Reasonable people can disagree and debate on the merits of CCS and whether it’s good for Louisiana, but the self-anointed gatekeepers are the furthest thing from reasonable. They have fearmongered their way around this state and dishonestly ginned up vitriol based on lies and misinformation.

What’s more, any person who disagrees with them is instantly dismissed, insulted, shouted down, and in some cases threatened. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a PhD scientist, engineer, or even congressional leader – if you don’t toe their line, your opinion is invalid… and you’re a “RINO.”

For instance, Congressman Higgins published this reasonable, balanced op-ed on the topic and was summarily dismissed. This has been the same experience for any honest person taking a measured approach to the issue. 

Going forward, it appears they are tele-graphing the next issue du jour will be data centers.  But fortunately, Alinsky does offer us a great idea in how to deal with this situation.

RULE 12: “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?” 

Regardless of your opinion on the particulars, you have to admit it is a fact that Governor Landry and his economic development team have laid out a clear vision for the economy with a goal of stopping our outmigration epidemic –  and it’s already working! It may not be a silver bullet, but we are trying to unwind a century in the shadows of Huey P. Long; maintaining the status quo is not an option any longer.

To date, the self-anointed gatekeepers have never had to answer for their alternative vision for Louisiana. They proudly run off billions of dollars in investment and thousands of jobs, but they never present a constructive alternative. 

It’s time to press them. If they cannot offer viable solutions to move Louisiana forward, then listening to these people will be the reason Louisiana continues to fall behind other states in the South.

Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. An important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract.

The specific vitriol toward Letlow’s fiancée Kevin Ainsworth stems from this rule.  The attack was not against a random oil company or some abstract energy policy group—Ainsworth becomes the personification of CCS.

John Fleming shared and refused to take down an artificial intelligence video that lied about Congresswoman Julia Letlow and invoked the death of her husband Luke for a cheap political effect. Governor Landry called it “shameful,” and it led Congressman Clay Higgins to endorse Congresswoman Letlow. Majority Leader Steve Scalise said it could be illegal and demanded it come down immediately. Fleming kept it up anyway.

It is well-studied that a natural, psychological response to Alinsky’s methods is the dehumanization of the enemy.     The people who fail to even recognize a bare minimum view that it was in “poor taste” have been desensitized by a year of Fleming campaign tactics…. Yes, this particular end justifies this particular means.

If we’re going to constructively move forward, we must reject the toxic Alinsky tactics and recall the words of President Reagan, “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor.”