In the humid, moss-draped theater of Louisiana politics, where the humidity is only matched by the thickness of the corruption, the latest act of the Great American Purge has finally hit the stage. Julia Letlow, a congresswoman whose primary qualification in the current era appears to be her ability to receive a digital head-pat from the orange deity of Mar-a-Lago, has officially declared her intent to primary Senator Bill Cassidy. This is not a campaign in the traditional sense of debating policy or addressing the fact that Louisiana consistently ranks at the bottom of every metric that makes life worth living. No, this is a ritualistic sacrifice, a political exorcism designed to remove the last vestige of independent thought from the state’s GOP delegation.

Cassidy, a man who still clings to the quaint, dusty notion that one’s oath of office might occasionally supersede the whims of a reality TV host, is the target. His crime, for those with the memory span of a goldfish, was having the audacity to vote for conviction during Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial following the January 6th performance art piece at the Capitol. In a world of sanity, a physician-turned-senator looking at the evidence and making a decision based on facts would be considered 'doing his job.' In the modern Republican Party, however, it is considered a terminal illness for which the only cure is a primary challenge from a more obedient vassal.

The endorsement Letlow received was described as 'complete and total,' a phrase that usually precedes a cult initiation or a hostile corporate takeover. It is the gold-plated seal of approval that tells the Louisiana electorate: 'Here is a candidate who will never trouble you with a conscience of her own.' Letlow is leaning into this subservience with the enthusiasm of a drowning person grabbing a lead weight. She isn't running on a platform so much as she is running on a permission slip. The irony of the 'rugged individualist' right-wing demanding absolute, mindless fealty to a single man is, as always, lost on the participants. They don't want a leader; they want a mirror that reflects their own grievances back at them in a slightly more polished form.

Meanwhile, Bill Cassidy is left to wander the political wilderness of his own making. He is a doctor who failed to diagnose the most obvious pathology of his career: the fact that his base no longer values his medical expertise or his legislative record. They value blood. Cassidy’s vote to convict was a moment of fleeting integrity that he likely realized would be his political suicide note the moment the ink dried. He thought he was being a statesman; he was actually just providing the motive for his own professional execution. There is a certain pathetic tragedy in a man like Cassidy—someone who clearly believes the system still rewards 'character'—realizing too late that the system has been replaced by a gladiatorial arena where the lions are fed anyone who fails to bow fast enough.

The Left, of course, will view this with their usual brand of performative hand-wringing and smug superiority. They will hold up Cassidy as a 'principled Republican' for five minutes—conveniently forgetting every other policy position of his they’ve spent decades loathing—simply because he provides a useful foil to the Trumpian wing. They don't care about Cassidy’s integrity any more than Letlow cares about the Constitution; they only care about the optics of the internal GOP civil war. It is a feast of hypocrisy where everyone is invited and the only thing on the menu is the carcass of functional governance.

Louisiana voters are now faced with a choice that is no choice at all. On one hand, you have the incumbent who committed the ultimate sin of thinking for himself once in a six-year term. On the other, you have the challenger who promises to never think for herself at all. It is the perfect distillation of the American political project in the 21st century: a race to the bottom where the prize is the right to do absolutely nothing for the people you represent while spending all your time tweeting for the approval of a man in Florida. The Bayou deserves better, but let’s be honest—it’s probably exactly what it’s going to get. As the two sides prepare to spend millions of dollars in dark money to scream at each other about loyalty and betrayal, the state’s infrastructure will continue to crumble, the sea levels will continue to rise, and the people will continue to wonder why their lives never seem to improve regardless of which brand of parasite they send to Washington. It’s a farce, it’s a tragedy, and it’s predictably exhausting.