anger in play right now. And voters seem to have a surprisingly long memory.
Conventional wisdom in pundit circles says Americans have no political memory. Yesterday’s vote called that bluff. Louisiana Republicans waited five years, walked into the booth, and made Cassidy pay for every vote he cast against Trump. Cassidy voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial, cheered on the certification of the 2020 results, and condemned January 6 — earning himself a censure from his own state party in the process. Louisiana Republicans remembered every bit of it. The kicker: Cassidy and his backers burned through a total of nearly $22 million trying to save him. Voters tossed him out anyway. They didn’t forget. They didn’t forgive. They settled the score.
I DO actually think a “never Trump” label on a Republican politician is more than a bit of a death sentence. Because it shows that a politician is willing to sell out his or her base, to NOT act in their interests.
I mean, the vast majority of people want the SAVE act to be put in place. And yet, there are a group of RINOs who stand in the way of that. They have substituted their own desires for the will of the people who elected them. They superciliously think that they know better than the hoi-polloi who elected them. THAT is how they frame it, and that is what they appear to believe.
Well, Bill Cassidy has now paid the ultimate political price for this kind of thinking. He is politically a dead man walking.
The signal to every Republican on the ballot this November couldn’t be louder. Trump loyalty isn’t optional — it’s the price of admission. It is a requirement.
On the other hand, apostasy comes with a pre-printed pink slip, and Cassidy just got handed his. Every Republican who quietly broke with Trump — on Ukraine, on the debt ceiling, on anything — watched yesterday’s results with their stomach in their throat. The chilling effect was already underway; Cassidy’s humiliation just turned up the voltage.
…Ask Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, who crossed Trump repeatedly and, as a direct result, faces his own primary firing squad two days from now. He’s already picking out his blindfold.