Louisiana Voice

John Neely Kennedy is quick to disparage the so-called mainstream media yet he is equally adept at using that same MSM to get the widest possible exposure to his every Foghorn Leghorn utterance in his undying effort to appeal to this century’s political base.

For most of this century he has been a John Birchite Repugnantcan but before that he was a liberal Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for the US Sen. against Mary Landrieu and endorsed Democrat John Kerry for President in 2004. Like his hero, the former guy, he was even (gasp) pro-choice in another lifetime.

But after poking his finger into the political winds and discerning a significant shift to red in Louisiana, he hit rewind and switched tracks to right-wing, holier-than-just-about-everyone Repug.

For just about anyone else, that would’ve been like undergoing a warm buttermilk enema in political-speak, but for Kennedy, it came easy because he’s never really had a well-defined political philosophy. Opportunists and con artists rarely do.

The release of his latest reelection campaign ad is spread all over the MSM today and that is no accident. His political flacks have expertly spread the word about what a masterpiece it is – surpassing in wit and cleverness even his 2016 proclamation that he’d “rather drink weedkiller” than support Obamacare.

In this oh-so-sincere version of himself, he proclaims, “Always be yourself, unless you suck.”

Clever, no?

Well, perhaps he should take some of his own advice and be himself, whoever that chameleon may be.

This ad could backfire if exploited properly by the opposition (there are three Democrats running against him).

First of all, he supports increased military spending but recently voted no on a bill to appropriate funding for veterans whose health was compromised by toxic burning at military bases in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. So, send young men and women to war but abandon them when they return home.

It wouldn’t be the first time run an ill-advised ad backfired. In 1999, when he was the secretary of revenue (appointive) seeking the office of state treasurer (elective) he ran a statewide TV ad claiming that as revenue secretary, he reduced the paperwork requirements of businesses “by 150 percent.”

He may have graduated from Vanderbilt and Oxford universities, but anyone with a passing familiarity with math knows it’s physically impossible to reduce anything by more than 100 percent. But such is the nature of self-serving, if untrue, political campaign advertising.

Expedience, not accuracy, trumps (no pun intended) everything.

But Kennedy is one of those marathon runners who has made a career of politics. He’s run in several statewide political races, most unsuccessfully before finally getting himself elected for secretary of revenue and finally, the Senate – on his third attempt.

In gardening vernacular, he’s a perennial.

But he’s nothing if not calculating and conniving.

When he figured out that Louisiana was shifting from blue to red, he changed colors like that lizard. I hope he never tries to hide in a box of crayons; he’ll explode.

But consistency has never been his strong suit.

As senator, he voted for the National Defense Authorization Act but spurned sick vets.

He was quoted as saying, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” Yet, he voted to reject the results of the 2020 president election.

He all but accused President Biden’s nominee to head Treasury of being a communist in 2021, telling her he didn’t know whether to refer to her as “professor or comrade,” while overlooking his own furtive trip to Russia three years earlier over the July 4 holiday. He has steadfastly refused to explain the reasons for the trip, although he did walk back his initial claim that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that “interfered” (not meddled) in the 2016 election, claiming that he “misheard” the question.

I’m told that weedkiller can adversely affect one’s hearing that way.

Back in 2019, Kennedy was a guest on Faux News and used the occasion to take Democrats to task over their three years of “whining” about the results of former guy’s 2016 election over Hillary Clinton.

“We’re going into the third year that they’ve been throwing a tantrum over the election result. They need to leave the man alone, let him be president,” he said at the time, adding that if Democrats were dissatisfied with the results, they should “get over it” or campaign against the president.

“I wish I didn’t have to say this,” went on (he’s always going on). “There are some members of the House leadership whose only mission in life is to demonize the president.”

This from a guy who voted not to certify the 2020 results and who has spent nearly two full years “demonizing” the president.

Damn, it’s funny how your words can come back to bite you on the backside.