By their quotes ye shall know them

So, while the Louisiana Democratic Party is busy trying to smear GOP gubernatorial candidate Bobby Jindal by taking his published words on religion several zip codes (at least) out of context -- that is, when not flat-out lying about what the man wrote -- what have Jindal's two biggest Democratic opponents been doing?

Apparently, hoping dirty tricks can accomplish what their lagging campaigns haven't been able to.

According to The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune:

The two leading Democratic candidates also refused to denounce the commercial, even as they moved to disassociate themselves from it.

"I have not seen the ad in question. However, if the quotes about various religions attributed to Mr. Jindal are in fact his writings, I firmly believe that he should retract his comments," state Sen. Walter Boasso, D-Arabi, said.

Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell also said he hasn't seen the ads but said he has little sympathy for Jindal if the words used in the ads come from the candidate's own writings.

"If he said that and it's documented, then he's going to have to live with it or sue the Democratic Party and make them stop it," Campbell said.

He accused Jindal of putting out false commercials of his own, citing an ad that premiered this week accusing Boasso and Campbell of being soft on government ethics.

"He's put ads out on me that says I haven't done anything on ethics. I don't think that's fair because I have done something on ethics," Campbell said.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, the problem with Louisiana -- and let's not kid ourselves, here, with America as well -- is that we put up with it when politicians campaign as mountebanks and poltroons but then are horribly shocked and disillusioned when we find out they govern as mountebanks and poltroons, too.

What Boasso and Campbell need to do is cut the crap. They knew some smear ads against Jindal were in the works -- if they didn't, and if they didn't know what the ads would say, they are too flippin' incompetent and stupid to be governor of an American state.

And Lord knows, Louisiana now suffers horribly from just that.

FOR TWO WEEKS, Jindal has known that the state Democrats were about to reach into the bottom of the septic tank for something stinky enough to maybe stop the Republican's electoral juggernaut. For two weeks, the media have known that the state Democrats were reaching into the bottom of the septic tank for campaign ads.

Hell, for two weeks I've known the state Dems were trolling around the bottom of the political septic tank in an effort to smear Jindal and use his Catholic faith as a bogeyman to either scare the bejeezus out of Protestants and secularists or, alternatively, make them crazy mad. And I live 1,100 miles from where the action is.

I don't know . . . maybe Walt Boasso has been cleaning out those shipping containers with paint thinner or somethin'. And maybe Foster Campbell is just Uncle Earl: The Mandeville Story.

Not that it really matters what the Dems' standard bearers' deal is, whether they're lying or whether they're just stuck on stupid. Neither scenario seems to me to be an attractive trait in a gubernatorial candidate -- standing back, doing nothing as evil is committed on your behalf or loping gape-mouthed through your campaign promising hard-up Louisianians, in effect, "DUUHHHHHHH!"

"DUUHHHHHHH!" they have plenty of now. Not to mention the sheer evil they've put up with from their crooked-ass political class forever. Or so it would seem.

Is that what Louisiana voters really want? More morally-challenged leaders who'll do anything to get elected, or turn their heads and feign ignorance as others do anything to get them elected?

Do Louisiana voters really think Boasso and Campbell -- given their lack of scruples in the face of a moral and political outrage committed in their names -- represent what's needed to bury a toxic tradition of civic outrages against the citizenry by its "servants"?

Well, looking at the gubernatorial polls, you'd hope they don't think so.

Then again, I was pretty hopeful New Orleanians wouldn't be gobstopperingly stupid enough to re-elect Ray Nagin, either.