By Louis R. Avallone
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Selling out is what you do when you don’t fully understand what you believe. It’s what you accept when you are more fearful than faithful. It’s the choice you make that’s less concerned with the greater good, and more interested in what feels good, right now. After all, if you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything, right?
And falling is what we have done a lot of in recent years: The falling number of employed Americans, lower home ownership rates, declining legal immigration, fewer manufacturing jobs, smaller wages, and fewer small business start-ups – all are in precipitous decline. Even though such devastation to our nation has resulted from poor decisions on both sides of the aisle, and from multiple sessions of Congress, and through many administrations occupying the White House, perhaps it is time, as Abraham Lincoln once urged all Americans, to “put your feet in the right place, and then stand firm”.
But that’s not the message, here at home, that Mary Landrieu’s campaign is sending out with their latest television advertisement, featuring a Republican who says he’s “with Mary”, and whom many feel is “selling out” because of fear.
Here’s the scripted part of the advertisement that is airing on television stations across the state:
“I have over 3,000 employees, and even though I’m a Republican and don’t always agree with her, Louisiana can’t afford to lose Mary Landrieu,” says ship builder Boysie Bollinger. “She’s chairman of the Energy Committee, the most powerful position a person can have for Louisiana.”
However, here’s the part that probably got edited out of the commercial, I would imagine, and got left on the video editing room floor, instead:
“I have over 3,000 employees, and even though I’m a Republican and don’t always agree with her, like when she:
•donated $10,000 to re-elect Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,
•or spent $10,000 supporting Senator Bob Menendez and legislation to repeal $24 billion in tax incentives for oil and gas companies,
•or when she voted in favor of the Affordable Care Act, even though 70% of the Louisiana people didn’t support her doing so,
•or when she said that The Affordable Care Act had some very good concepts and that she would support it again, including when she voted to fund it by cutting Medicare Advantage to do so,
•or that she votes in line with President Obama 97% of the time.
•or when she continues to vote 100% pro-abortion.
I could go on and on, of course.
But this Landrieu television commercial tells us everything we need to know about the Landrieu campaign, because it speaks to something far deeper inside all of us: The conflict between emotion and rational thought. Between what is good for us now, and the fear of what tomorrow may bring.
You see, Mary has chosen fear to inspire Louisianans to support her – not her passion, not her principles, but cowardly fear to motivate you to vote for her. After all, as the star of her campaign commercial warns us all, “Louisiana can’t afford to lose Mary Landrieu.” The question on every voter’s mind should be, instead, can we afford not to?
In a nation where our political leaders are more rudderless than ever before, choosing to focus on the insignificant, than on future generations, and more interested in their keeping their bags packed for an ego trip, than defending our ideas and institutions, this is no time in our nation’s history to choose fear over principles.
History is littered with the regrets of millions who did so, including Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler. By not choosing principles, or not standing firm, and selling out, we become no better than the one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
If you want to vote for Mary Landrieu, do it because she speaks to your purpose, your cause, or to some belief that inspires you to do what you do, but not because you are scared about what tomorrow may bring – even if it’s a U.S. Senate without her in it.