Louisiana

Bill Kristol has mostly the right idea here:

That's why one has to be careful about what one wishes for. Republicans, newly liberated, need to resist calls to shackle themselves to prematurely announced agendas and already anointed leaders. This is the time for a thousand Republicans to bloom. Congressmen used to looking to the White House for guidance or approval--or fearing disapprobation--should show some healthy ambition and unleash their inner policy entrepreneur. Backbenchers need to come forward with heterodox ideas. There should be vigorous debate. Disharmonious disarray is in the short term much less of a danger than a false and stultifying unity.

When I floated the idea of an "ideas czar" several of my fellow contributors were disapproving, arguing that we needed exactly this sort of freelancing from the backbench. I would add a modifier to this line of thinking: don't look to backbench Congressmen for leadership. Look to sitting Republican governors who are already managing state budgets in the tens of billions of dollars and can actually enact some new ideas. Look to Tim Pawlenty, who wants to cut state business taxes, or to Bobby Jindal, or to Charlie Crist and Republicans in the Florida legislature who are refusing tax increases of any kind, or to Mark Sanford.

Republican governors in 22 states means 22 opportunities to show we can govern better than Obama, prudently cutting back on spending and cutting taxes, rather than massively increasing spending and creating a deficit a third the size of the entire Federal budget.

Qualifying for Louisiana's Fourth Congressional District seat doesn't officially end until Friday, but the race to replace outgoing Rep. Jim McCrery has heated up early with a revelation that McCrery's hand-picked successor was recently a steering committee member of presumptive Democratic nominee Paul Carmouche.

According first to The Rothenberg Report (subscribers only) and then picked up by multiple blogs including The Huffington Post, Thompson joined Carmouche's team prior to becoming a candidate himself.

For the Democrats, who have already taken over one historically GOP seat in Louisiana this cycle, this news is sure to be sweet.  For McCrery and the other Congressmen who have endorsed Thompson, a collective "uh-oh" is in order.

• Presidential stuff:
  • Bob Novak puts McCain ahead in the electoral college. Would this even be a race if we nominated anyone else?
  • McCain beats Obama in Michigan. Are these bitter, churchgoing, gun owning working class whites? MyDD notes that putting Hillary on the ticket would swing the state back to the Dems
  • McCain winning the foreign policy fight.
  • White women don't like Barack.
  • Barack has another pastor problem.
• Sarah Palin getting looked at by McCain.
• Senate races:
  • Wicker down by 1 in the MS Senate race. We need more info on this.
  • Rothenberg calls LA Senate a tossup. We need more info on this.
• Tom Davis unloads on VA GOP.
• Richard Cizik on evangelicals and global warming.
• Obama's first 100 days: an attack on 14% of the US economy.
• A Democrat lies in VA-11.