(February 5) In voting for President Donald Trump’s most outlandish executive branch nominees, U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana blew it.
For the electorally pressured Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, doing the right thing, counterintuitively, might also have proved to be the politically savvy thing. Instead, he chose the short-term political salve of bowing to Trump — especially by voting to confirm horrendous Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — rather than following what his conscience and long experience as a practicing physician should have dictated.
The senator is in an obvious political bind. Facing a perilous Republican primary in April 2026, Cassidy is an effective, traditional conservative who is being pressured by MAGA radicalism.
Conventional wisdom holds that Cassidy, who has a record of at least some independence from Trump, has no more margin for error. If Cassidy had voted against any of Trump’s nominees, or if otherwise crosses the president in any public way, then most pundits think his political doom would be virtually sealed.
Conventional wisdom, however, may be wrong.
If apostasy from Trump is a political killer for Republican officeholders, then Cassidy is already a walking dead man despite his campaign’s $6.6 million cash on hand. By pundits’ reckoning, a senator already censured by his own state party’s executive committee for failure to toe Trump’s line in 2021, when he was less powerful and popular than he is now, would be hard-pressed to win a Republican primary anyway against a MAGA torch-bearer already holding statewide office. Assuaging the fury of MAGA voters would be nearly impossible….
if he had voted against a nominee who then makes a grievous error, Cassidy would have become the rare standout with the courage and foresight to have stood athwart MAGA-world saying, “Stop!”
If that sort of approach won’t work, then Cassidy isn’t going to be reelected anyway. Cassidy’s brand is that of steadiness and studiousness, and it’s too late now to change it….
Much more should be written about how appalling a choice RFK Jr. was, but no intelligent person should believe his confirmation-eve conversions on vaccination and other issues on which Cassidy himself expressed deep concern. And nobody honestly believes Dr. Cassidy believes it. He should not have betrayed his earlier, correct skepticism.
In the long run, Cassidy can never out-MAGA a Louisiana opponent…. [The full column is here.]
