Just two days day before the No Labels group announced — as I feared would happen — that it is not going to run a ticket in the presidential campaign, I wrote this column about Louisiana’s U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy.
(April 2, 2024)
For no discernibly timely reason, former President Donald Trump last night erupted against Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), calling him a “total flake” and a “stiff.” Cassidy should return the favor by running for president on the No Labels ticket.
Dr. Cassidy, a gastroenterologist, isn’t a nationally known figure and he doesn’t ooze with charisma, but he is a sensible, thoughtful, impressive senator and repeatedly has proved to be a disciplined campaigner. Cassidy is a solid but not extreme conservative with a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 80 and a liberal Americans for Democratic Action rating under 10. This philosophical profile makes Cassidy perfectly positioned to attract citizens too rightward to ever consider voting to reelect President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris but too protective of democracy to be comfortable voting for Trump.
As the No Labels group reportedly has been worried that its candidates might pull more votes away from Biden than from Trump, it needs a consistent right-center candidate such as Cassidy to head its ticket. Indeed, No Labels should worry less about having one candidate from each party on its team and instead consider taking both from the nominally Republican side, as long as each candidate is a anti-Trump reformer comfortable with most of the No Labels “Common Sense” policy booklet.
Because conspiracy theorist candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. has chosen to move decisively back to his natural leftward home while calling Biden a “much worse threat to democracy” than Trump is, No Labels should see that its only hope of forging a broadly center counterweight is to recruit a Republican such as Cassidy to bear its standard…. [The full column is here.]
