‘Bill Cassidy Sucks’ – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

A quick prelude before I dive into the substance of this column: the regular readers of items in this space, and much of my other writings, will recognize that I often return to what I call the F0urth Era theory and revivalism in describing the political world. This column is about that subject.

And to make it make sense to non-regular readers, Fourth Era theory holds that we’ve had three major political eras in American history. The first era began with Thomas Jefferson’s “Revolution of 1800” and ended with Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860, the second lasted from Lincoln’s presidency until Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first election in 1932, and the third era ended with Donald Trump’s second-election vindication last year.

The differences between Third Era politics and this new age we’ve entered are colossal, and the changes are coming so fast that the book I’m trying to write about them, The Revivalist Revolution, has become difficult to write. Practically daily, something happens that supersedes what I’ve already written.

Obsolescence is a very real thing in this new Fourth Era. Third Era politicians in both parties are finding that out to their constant chagrin. And next year’s midterm elections promises to be a cycle making clear that Third Era politics simply does not work anymore.

One example of this is in Texas, where longtime senator John Cornyn, a classic Bush Republican of the late Third Era whose timidity and status-quo affinities have rankled Republican voters in the Lone Star State, finds himself down in the polls by 20 points or more to Attorney General Ken Paxton, an avowed enemy of the political class with the scars to show for it.

But another, which is of particular focus here, is in Louisiana, where Bill Cassidy is also in deep trouble in a Republican Senate primary against a growing field of MAGA/Revivalist challengers.

Louisiana abandoned its old jungle primary system for federal elections last year, and the 2026 midterms will be the first modern test of the new, more conventional system which has closed, or mostly closed, party primaries and a runoff to produce candidates for the general election.

Cassidy fought as hard as he could to keep the jungle primary in place, because he attempts to style himself a moderate conservative. In Third Era parlance, this entailed currying favor with mass media outlets – Third Era political wisdom had it that the newspapers and broadcast TV Sunday news shows were the venues where consensus was made and distributed – and working across the aisle with liberal Democrats to forge “workable” solutions to civic problems. From his perspective, the broad middle of the political spectrum was his base vote, and he could leverage it against both conservatives and Democrats in a supremely red state to be comfortably elected.

This worked for Cassidy in 2014, when he was able to get the state GOP apparatus to back him over a firebrand neophyte conservative in Rob Maness in the jungle primary and then took out the hated Democrat Mary Landrieu in the general election. It worked again for him in 2020, when no major conservative challenged him — no Democrat of any competence or charisma challenged him, either — as he aligned himself with Donald Trump and claimed to be a Trump ally on the way to an easy re-election.

But shortly after the 2020 election Cassidy betrayed that advertised loyalty and voted for the post-presidential impeachment of Trump, and that vote clings to him like burning napalm.

It marks Cassidy not just as a traitor to the MAGA movement he told Louisiana’s voters he was aligned with, but as an obsolete Third Era political-class drone. Cassidy thought that by sticking the knife in Trump he would forever be a darling of the Washington DC lobbyist class and the broadcast and print news elite, and the money and messaging power those entities could confer would protect him from the voters back home.

But it doesn’t work that way anymore. Polls show Cassidy’s re-elect numbers routinely under 40 percent and the GOP primary field is beginning to grow with MAGA revivalists entering the fray.

State treasurer John Fleming, who was a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus and also worked as a deputy White House chief of staff in the first Trump administration, has been in the race against Cassidy for more than six months now. Fleming would be the favorite to win but for one negative frequently voiced by Louisiana Republicans: he’s going to be 75 years old on Election Day next year, and that’s a little long in the tooth for a new senator.

And then last week, this happened…

Today, I’m announcing my candidacy for the United States Senate. I’m running because the American Dream is worth fighting for – and DC phonies forget that. Bill Cassidy betrayed our state, our President, and our principles.

As your next Senator, I won’t bend. I won’t break. I’ll… pic.twitter.com/ZYXiDP9tl9

— Blake Miguez (@BlakeMiguezLA) June 17, 2025

That’s Blake Miguez, a state senator from the Cajun heartland of New Iberia and a member of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus. Miguez might be the most articulate and steadfast revivalist conservative in the Louisiana legislature, so much so that he’s incurred the wrath of the state’s governor Jeff Landry for having questioned the vigor of the latter’s tax reform efforts last year. Miguez has championed Second Amendment legislation, he’s a budget hawk, he’s fought for school choice and welfare reform, against illegal immigration, election integrity, and coddling criminals … you name it and Miguez has checked that box.

Moreover, Miguez is younger — he’s right at the tail end of Generation X — and a lot more aggressive than the old GOP pols you’ve come to hate. He’s very much in the vein of a Mike Lee/Ted Cruz/Josh Hawley Fourth Era revivalist.

And in just a few days since entering the race, Miguez already has well into the seven figures’ worth of campaign pledges.

Cassidy’s response to Miguez entering the race was … testy:

.@BillCassidy responds to the challenge from @BlakeMiguezLA ‘The more the merrier.’ #lasen #lagov #YLEH #Louisiana https://t.co/DL98dMrSvF pic.twitter.com/SEePz9mjt5

— John Walton (@John_Walton_) June 17, 2025

His camp insists that he’s been a consistent vote for Trump’s agenda, and that’s true — as far as it goes. What’s also true is that Bill Cassidy cannot afford to depart from Trump’s agenda. Absolutely no one believes, for example, that Cassidy — a gastroenterologist whose patients before he became a Senator were almost exclusively Medicaid recipients and a reliable ally of Big Pharma — had any real desire to vote for the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as HHS Secretary, but he did so out of self-preservation and now holds up that vote as proof of his Trumpian loyalty.

But what the people remember is that two days after Cassidy voted to declare the post-presidential impeachment unconstitutional, he voted for the unconstitutional impeachment.

And now they’ll remember, courtesy of Miguez, that Bill Cassidy sucks.

Miguez’ launch video was more of an attention-getter than a true attempt at branding. He also put out a longer and much more substantive exposition of his candidacy that ranks as one of the more powerful things you’ll see…

It’s far too early to know what effect Miguez will have on the Senate race in Louisiana next year. The field in that race is far from set, with at least one and possibly several more entrants to come.

But what’s clear is that Louisiana’s Republican voters, and most of the state’s voters overall, are on board with a MAGA or revivalist agenda, and very few buy into Cassidy’s attempts to cast himself as aligned with it.

The Fourth Era isn’t a friendly time for a throwback pol like Cassidy. He’ll need all that DC money and as much help as the legacy media can throw his way if he wants to survive.

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