BAYOU SNAFU
Two or three months ago Republicans in Louisiana thought they had a
shot had knocking off Sen. Mary Landrieu due to
the odd general election laws there: if a candidate doesn’t get
better than 50 percent, she’s forced into a runoff with the second
highest vote getter. Thinking that Landrieu was ripe to be taken
down due to her low — indeed, contested — election numbers last
time out, the state GOP recruited three candidates to run against
her, including Rep. John Cooksey. But Cooksey
hasn’t done the job, and trails Landrieu badly in the polls.
The Louisiana situation recently caught the attention of White
House senior adviser Karl Rove, who was mulling whether or not it
would be worth it to have current Louisiana Gov. Mike
Foster throw his hat in the ring to take on Landrieu. All
signs now are that it won’t be. “It’s not as easy a decision as you
might think,” a Republican National Committee staffer had said last
week. “It’s kind of late in the game to mount a campaign, we’d have
to be pretty sure that Foster wasn’t burning a bridge that might be
open to him further down the road.”
There is little or no chance that Foster would take on the other
Bayou senator, John Breaux, who remains popular in
state and with this White House. Louisiana wasn’t thought to be a
serious state in play six months ago, but as Republicans have
watched Senate races tighten up in Texas and Tennessee (once
thought safe for Republican re-election), and uncertainty in
potential swing states like Minnesota and South Dakota, they know
Landrieu’s seat could loom large in the battle for Republican
control of the Senate.
RAISING THE BARR
Rep. Bob Barr is not letting the grass grow under
his feet. Just a week after losing a bitterly fought Republican
primary to the equally conservative Rep. John
Linder, the first congressman to call for Bill Clinton’s
impeachment is on his way to…get this, Switzerland. No, he is
not in Switzerland to ferret out Swiss bank accounts belonging to
the Clintons or the Hubbells. Barr flew to Switzerland Thursday to
make good on a long-standing commitment to address European
conservatives on the threats to the rule of law extant on both
sides of the Atlantic. The group he is addressing is one whose
conservatism mixes libertarianism and conservatism much as it is
mixed in America. Barr’s appearance before it is an indication of
his plans for the future.
Since his defeat he has been working with others to establish
offices in Georgia and Washington from which he will be, as he puts
it, “working on the issues I have been championing in Congress.”
Barr, aside from being a card-carrying conservative, is a strict
civil libertarian; and he plans to work ardently for civil
liberties, particularly issues of privacy.
As his campaign against Linder made clear, Barr is a favorite
among conservative leaders. Such eminences as David
Keene, Kenneth Starr, Grover
Norquist, and Charlton Heston flew into
his contested district to support him. Now he is energetic to bring
his issues to the rest of the nation. He will be active among
conservatives on behalf of civil liberties; and, through his
friendship with responsible types in the American Civil Liberties
Union, he will be influencing liberals.
Not daunted in the least by his defeat in Georgia, Barr is
looking to national vistas. He says he “may now have more of an
impact” out of Congress than in. Good news for the haters!
