Louisiana Voice

John N. Kennedy, the junior senator from the gret stet of Loozianer, obviously thinks of himself as a modern-day Will Rogers, given his plethora of pithy quotes from the floor of the U.S. Senate and from his book, How to Test Negative for Stupid.

Unfortunately, Kennedy has painted himself into such a corner that some might say he has tested positive for stupid. I would never say that, of course, because there’s no question that he is a man with a high IQ, but I have to admit he can come off the country bumpkin—not by accident, but by CAREFULLY-CONTRIVED EFFORT to sound down-to-earth and to shamelessly appeal to the Trump base. And that’s where I have a problem with the senator; he doesn’t seem to give a rat’s patootie about appealing to anyone else.

And, like most politicians who abandon principle for political expedience and existence, he’s not without glaring contradictions. Like House Speaker Mike Johnson and his efforts to manufacture cohesion between his own self-proclaimed Christianity and the obvious Trumpian lies, deceit and a total lack of morality, Kenney has likewise contorted himself into a human pretzel on the issue of economy and fiscal responsibility.

Of course, that should come as no surprise. When he was Secretary of the Department of Revenue and running for State Treasurer, he had a TV ad that said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “As Revenue Secretary, I cut required paperwork for small businesses by 150 percent.” While that isn’t as drastic as Trump’s cutting prescription drug prices by 600 to 1500 percent, neither is mathematically possible and for someone who was a candidate to handle the state’s finances, it was a pretty egregious error.

It was after he was elected Treasurer, however, that he set himself up for exposure as a typical politician instead of a sage philosopher.

Remember when Bobby Jindal was plowing through the state budget, making all those draconian cuts to mental health and education while slashing corporate taxes? It was Kennedy who pursed his lips, puffed out his chest and proclaimed, “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” He said that so many times it became ingrained in our psyche, like the lyrics of a bad song like Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer (an all-time horrendous effort). You can read his quote about spending HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

He even came up with this chart to display on the Senate floor (in one of those “speeches” delivered for the C-SPAN cameras before an empty chamber, by the way) that was critical of President Biden’s “spending bonanza.

Kennedy, speaking to an audience of….no one.

Yet, when it came time to vote on the 2025 Reconciliation Bill, aka Trump’s “BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL” that analysts agreed would add $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit and $5 trillion to the national debt, anyone want to guess how KENNEDY VOTED? As Harry Doyle (Bob Uecker) would say on the movie Major League, “Juuust a little outside” his previous field of fiscal rhetoric. Doesn’t give the appearance of fiscal responsibility much.

Ah, but that’s nothing. Let’s move on to the two positions Kennedy took on U.S. relations with Iran, depending, of course on who was president at the time.

“I don’t want America to be the world’s policeman,” he said just last October on an episode of Pod Force One. Yet, he’s ALL-IN on Trump’s decision to bomb Iran and risk war in the region—a decision that’s likely to send gas prices soaring at the pump as oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz are curtailed. He even manages to justify Trump’s circumventing the WAR POWERS ACT by sniffing, “We certainly don’t have time for Congress to spend months debating action on Iran.”

Wow.

Even FDR didn’t go to war with Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor until he first addressed Congress.

And what could almost pass for gallows humor, Kennedy in a March 2023 address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC) decried the Biden administration’s treating parents like “domestic terrorists.”

When one hears JD Vance, Krisi Noem and others in the Trump administration referring to anyone who objects to the shooting of civilians, the arrest of children or the deplorable conditions in federal detention centers as “domestic terrorists,” it’s no longer a joke.

Nor is John N. Kennedy nearly as clever as he thinks.

In fact, he’s only exposed himself as just another political hack who’ll do whatever necessary to hold on to his plush political office.

He really needs to work at a hand-to-mouth job like most other Americans and come down off that “aw, shucks” gibberish because, to use his own words, he sucks at what he’s doing right now.