New Orleans The one-trillion-dollar infrastructure bill is slowing moving along, inch by inch, in the Senate. The headlines say that the moderates in the center, Republican and Democrat, are holding still. In Louisiana, where the House whip, Steve Scalise, is a constant embarrassment, and one of our US Senators John Kennedy (don’t be confused) is literally a laughing stock, which seems to be the way he likes it, our other Republican Senator Bill Cassidy is somehow in the center of the pack, praise be!
We’ve had our OMG moments with the Senator. He’s a doctor, you might know, although that might surprise some of you given the weird arguments he often made during the debates on the Affordable Care Act, as well as some of his proposals for substitutes to Obamacare. Recently, though he’s ended up in some strange company for a deep red, southern senator. He was one of six senators who voted to investigate the January 6th insurrection at the US Capitol. He was one of the ten who worked on the infrastructure compromise.
Mi companera, unfailingly and unforgivingly, points out that some of this is “old school.” Senator Cassidy has a bridge in the what’s left of the bill and, also in my view remarkably, has money for New Orleans flooding in the package. In the rich tradition of southern politics, and, well, all Congressional politics, this is a guy who has his eye on the future, not the sound and fury of today.
All of which makes some of the moaning and rending of clothes by state Republican leaders something close to hilarious for those of us in the peanut gallery. The most knee-slapping remark was in the local papers recently where the head of the Republican Party, genuflecting to the false idol of Trump, said that Cassidy could look for a lot of opposition when he runs for reelection in 2026.
2026?!? He must be kidding? It’s 2021 right now, and Cassidy clearly knows that perfectly well. An election in five years is a political lifetime away. In fact, it’s even after the prospects of a Trump re-run and new defeat in 2024. Cassidy is as smart as the average bear and full well knows that he can go deep red from 2024 to 2026 when he has to run again if tragedy strikes the rest of us and Trump or a Trump wannabe is able to beat Biden or whoever the Democratic nominee might be then. With another Democratic president and a guaranteed tight Senate, dancing around from time to time with the Democrats in the middle of the Senate floor means that Cassidy can sashay about and deliver real benefits to his constituents who actually live in Louisiana and not somewhere in the ether of the internet, Facebook, and the Twitterverse. You would think that the head of the Republican Party would know that, but if not, Senator Cassidy will undoubtedly remind him or, more likely, his replacement when the calendar flips to 2026.