The Democrat playbook for the South - support God and guns, avoid and obscure almost every other issue - it's getting a mite hard for Rep. Don Cazayoux to handle because the political party to which he pledges his fealty keeps reminding Louisiana voters it does not reflect their views and, as a consequence, neither can Cazayoux.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to schedule activity that could lead to increasing drilling for offshore oil, an activity with little environmental consequence that will send prices down in the short term through knowledge that future supply will be less constricted, and with that supply coming will keep prices down permanently. Understand the ideological imperative why Democrats back Pelosi on this - under the guise of environmentalism, they wish to provoke antipathy towards the private sector because of high fuel prices and to channel frustration into greater acceptance of government intervention. This suits their long term objective of empowering themselves by getting control of government and having government take control more and more of the people's lives and their resources.

So Pelosi won't back down, which supposedly disturbs Cazayoux so much that he fires off a letter criticizing the leadership for its varied phantom solutions to a simple regulatory/marketplace problem. And it provide another demonstration of Cazayoux's strategy to retain power - provide cheap talk but being unable or unwilling to follow through for his constituents.

Simply, Cazayoux cannot overcome the internal contradictions of what put him into office. He says one thing and does another, or complains about the very people he continues to allow to stay in power - both which highlight the fact that his talk is cheap and his constituents deserve far better than what he delivers. The impact of the letter doesn't so much convey he's fighting for his constituents but that he's impotent in doing so - by his own free will.

An intellectually honest lawmaker, rather than talk about, would try to act on his principles, in this instance either trying to oust Pelosi, or to switch parties. But Cazayoux won't because he agrees with most of what Pelosi and liberal Democrats believe which is the opposite of his district's ideology. This letter merely tries to deflect people from thinking otherwise and even for those who believe Cazayoux can be two incompatible things at once, it's clear that he has no influence in the party with this useless effort so what's the point in having a zero representing you?

The deception works only if the public is not alerted to it. That's unlikely to occur with a strong Republican candidate, state Sen. Bill Cassidy, facing Cazayoux in fall elections, ready to point our each and every inconsistency. (And, for good measure, Democrat-turned-independent state Rep. Michael Jackson will contribute here as well.) Cazayoux's high-wire act looks increasingly likely to produce a fall.

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