Right-Wing Revenge Plot Against Democratic Senator is Actually Full of Good Ideas

“All politics is local,” a phrase attributed to former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil, has come back into play in Louisiana this week. The endorsement of incumbent Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu in her reelection bid by the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association has brought out the typical charges of corruption and cronyism (Landrieu is on the Senate Appropriations and Homeland Security committees) and corruption from the state’s ever-growing population of RWNJ’s.

One man’s plan for revenge against the Sheriffs’ Association, for daring to endorse someone who isn’t a Republican, is actually filled with some very good ideas that, if implemented in all localities, may do more to enhance progressive values than a super-majority in both houses of Congress on the national level ever could.

Unlike most of Louisiana’s political offices at present, the Sheriffs’ Association is largely still overwhelmingly in Democratic hands: 39 Democrats, 18 Republicans and seven independents. Sheriffs in Louisiana have a lot of political power in most of the state’s municipalities. They control a very large portion of government funds especially in the more rural parts of the state.

Littered among the several articles on the joys of privatization and the “proofs” that liberalism is a form of mental illness on his daily blog The Hay Ride, Scott McKay has an article entitled “Is It Time To Rethink This Law-and-Order Conservatism Stuff?” Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association Endorses Mary Landrieu.” In it he brooches a plan to break the sheriffs of their power and also avenge the lost endorsement for Rep. Bill Cassidy.

…there are lots of things which are relatively popular with the public and represent very defensible public policy that the sheriffs really won’t like.

One example: local term limits, which was brought up and debated in the legislature this year, but killed by the LSA and the Louisiana Municipal Association. . . .

Another: decriminalization of marijuana, which the sheriffs blew away this year. There is evidence the public would definitely support decriminalization. . . .the sheriffs hate that like poison; marijuana arrests make for lots of revenue to local law enforcement.

And another: prison reform. The sheriffs make a killing off housing prisoners, but Louisiana’s prison population is so unbelievably high that our state resembles a Soviet gulag. Virtually everybody knows this can’t continue, and prison reform in Louisiana is inevitable. Perhaps it’s time for the Louisiana GOP, or legislative leaders within it, to put that reform on the front burner.

Whatever his motives they are all good ideas.

By: Eric Trommater

A liberal living in Northern Virginia. Father of Two great kids. Former sports writer and movie critic.