Democrats Lose "Capital"

As Robert Tracinski might put it, "This (lawyers, media, and exposure to better government) will kill that (a corrupt and incompetent Democrat machine)."

Via Instapundit is a very interesting post at Varifrank on how a long-term consequence of Katrina's wrath might be the destruction of one of the Democrats' last bastions in the South.

What the Mayor, The Governor and every official in Louisiana above "city dog catcher" is looking at is the one thing they have rarely seen in their careers and that is scrutiny by the press, by lawyers who will be crawling through every transaction looking at every relationship, trying to find every bit of corruption they can find. Insurance companies as well as a whole host of Federal agencies are about to lose a great deal of money and its always been my experience that people will leave you alone so long as you don't mess with their money, but if you mess with their money, they will make it their lifes work to see that you pay for your error.

Once the Lawyers start finding corruption it will be very much like the effects of a second flood only this time, it's a flood that will sweep away the Democrat political machine that has run Louisiana since the Civil War.

To the Democrat party, its as if they just lost a capital city in their domain during wartime. Think of it like the impact of the fall of Atlanta on the Confederates during the Civil War. Louisiana just lost its last solid Democrat voting districts, and any part of the existing Democrat machine that is still standing is about to be tied down in a Gulliverian web of lawsuits and Federal corruption charges which will surely come as a result of the floods.

And he rightly points out an important consequence:

30 years ago, Texas was Louisiana. Today Texas is an economic force that is capable of the highest growth out of any state in the union. An economy so strong that its taken to supporting 150,000 people from Louisiana in the blink of an eye. A large number of those people will go on to stay in Texas after the waters have been removed from New Orleans but all will be impacted by what they saw in Texas, and some will begin to expect it of their own government when they finally return to Louisiana [italics added].

The combined exposure of the corruption with a new, personal familiarity on the part of a significant portion of the electorate with the real-world consequences of doing things differently -- which is in this case to say "better" -- will change a fact I noticed in some of my earlier ruminations on the disaster. (And it answers a question I have had about the below: Why has the corruption been tolerated for so long?)

[I]t is important to remember that we live in a republic. Our government, insofar as who an electorate will regard as acceptable, is a reflection of the broader culture. So yes. New Orleans has a corrupt and incompetent government, which is failing it at its darkest hour. But who tolerated this state of affairs and for so long? The citizens of New Orleans.

In this day and age, with so many sources of information available to so many on the internet at the click of a mouse, it is difficult to see how anyone could any longer tolerate the kind of corrupt and incompetent government New Orleans has so much of as to be famous for it. But remember that many of the most dependable voters for the Democratic Party are the extremely poor, who will not, as a rule, have access to many sources of information besides the conventional, propagandistic, leftist, main stream media.

In light of this, I can't help but wonder whether the poverty pimp I despise the most, Jesse Jackson, might have had this in mind when he was interviewed at a recent appearance at the Astrodome.

Jesse Jackson, accompanied by U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green, both Houston Democrats, questioned suggestions of temporarily resettling people in far-flung parts of the country during his visit to Houston.

"It's a long way from where they have lived, where they were acculturated," Jackson said.

The real trauma, regardless of where the hurricane refugees end up is the months-long separation from one's home. For some, that home wasn't much to lose and the relocation represents an opportunity (scroll to very end) to start over. For others, I don't think it matters where one is displaced so much as the fact that one is displaced. If some poor New Orleanians get a new start in Houston and thrive, great! I think they'd be happy to "acculturate" to the prosperity they never had. So what if they keep voting Democrat? It just won't be in New Orleans.

Aye, there's the rub, you see, for Jesse Jackson. I suspect that you could rephrase his above quote as, "Keep my niggas on the plantation where they belong." He fears two things: (1) a dilution of black voting strength in New Orleans resulting from countless decisions to remain elsewhere, and (2) a demonstrative education on good government for the black voters who do return.

All dictatorships survive by preventing their people from learning what life without the dictator could be like. Consider this fact in light of what the welfare state does to black America:

The general impression ... that white Southerners have is that the Democratic Party taxes them to buy the votes of blacks, while at the same time making blacks into a government-dependent underclass who have no incentive for self-improvement. This underclass breeds criminals, who are not held accountable for their actions. White Southerners see a vicious circle of crime and dependency perpetuated by the Democrats and paid for at their own expense. Believe it or not, many of us would really like to see blacks succeeding in life. But we wonder how this can happen in general when big government removes the incentive to learn how, runs lousy schools, and permits criminals to infest black neighborhoods [italics added].

To the vicious cycle of poverty and government dependency, then, add ignorance (achieved systematically by poor education and incidentally by poverty) and you have what is effectively the dictatorship of a people within a freer society.

Might Katrina, for all the misery, death, and disease it has engendered, ultimately be a breath of political fresh air for Louisiana? I certainly hope so.

-- CAV