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Joseph Cao’s (R, LA-02) charming press release.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  October 16th, 2009 at 10:22 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Easily the best one that you’ll read all week.  The context: nobody can pronounce the Congressman’s last name properly – up to and including the President (this isn’t a slam: I was getting it wrong, too).  So Joseph decided to set the record straight with a press release:

My last name – Cao – is actually pronounced (drum-roll please…) “Gow.” It starts with a “G” and rhymes (as Amanda Carpenter quipped in the Washington Post) with “Pow.”

I can understand your reluctance to accept such an absurd variation – surely no “C,” in the history of language, has ever been pronounced as a “G.” And yet, through no fault of my own, my native Southern Vietnamese dialect evolved such that this absurd mockery of consonants is, in fact, reality.

The whole thing is worth your time; it’s good from start to finish.  All in all, I’d like to keep Joseph in Congress for a while: how about you?  Thanks to his position as a Republican legislator in a heavily Democratic district, he’s currently under a good deal of pressure to break ranks on health care rationing (he’s already taken hits from the Democrats for not budging for the ‘stimulus’ or cap-and-trade bills): he frankly needs all the help that he can get.

Moe Lane

PS: I keep calling him ‘Joseph’ because he said that we all could.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://impudent.blognation.us/blog kyle8

    I am filled with nostalgia. I remember when the Vietnamese moved into Louisiana in large numbers in the early 1980′s. I was working in the oilfield and I remember when they took over Intracoastal city and Henderson La.

    The running joke was that there was no further problem with stray dogs and cats after the Vietnamese moved in. I even remember an old Vietnam vet who could speak the language running a crew boat out to the rigs. He would get on the marine band shortwave and yell insults to them in Vietnamese.

    But the truth is that they have greatly added to our nation and our culture. I no longer live in Louisiana, but I wish Joe Cao the best.

  • aesthete
  • redtillimdead

    One of the men in my hunting club lives a few houses down from Cao. He says that he’s one of the best guys he’s ever met. I would love to meet Cao. He had a good fundraising haul in the 3rd quarter, I hope we can keep to Mo going into 2010.

  • Third Street

    I like Cao personally and am willing to give him a lot of latitude, given the nuclear-grade unlikelihood of a Vietnamese Republican holding the New Orleans congressional seat.

    But enjoy him now, because his chances of hanging on to the seat are about the same as those of Charlie Melancon knocking off David Vitter. In a November election against a black Democrat whose name isn’t “William Jefferson”, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion. (Jefferson himself would easily have survived if November ’08 had been a two-way race.)

    Still, with the power of incumbency, no Obama at the top of the ticket, and the likelihood of ’10 being an anti-Democrat wave year, it isn’t impossible that Cao might survive. But I sure wouldn’t count on it.

  • http://www.suvstrategery.blogspot.com SoFiMil

    Congressman Cao, while supportive of many aspects of the Democratic health care bill, is also a wonderful proponent of life in the vein of the late-Senator Bob Casey. There’s no way Cao votes for any bill that does not explicitly ban elective abortions. Thank God for people like Cao and the late-Senator Bob Casey who understand the most important things in life are non-negotiable.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-wells/no-on-abortions-yes-on-bi_b_306485.html

    http://www.cathnewsusa.com/article.aspx?aeid=15551

  • rick554

    I was at the evacuation of Saigon. I remember wondering what would happen to those little kids we were loading on the planes. Congressman Cao , you have MY support!! And if you dont get re-elected, we sure could use a good Representative up here in Ohio. Good luck Sir!!

  • Vladimir

    As much as the Dems want to wear the mantle of the Champions of the Little People, Mr. Cao shows what idealism, humility and dedication to his constituents’ interests look like.

    Both parties have been so overtaken by cynical pols that we had to find our Jefferson Smith in Vietnam.

  • Standlow

    Seldom has a donation felt as good as this one does, Thanks for the tip, Moe!

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    He’s got a future in Louisiana politics any which way. If he keeps the seat, he’ll probably keep it for a while; if he loses it, he’ll be available for a statewide position – and Jindal’s no fool; he’ll want to bring Cao in somewhere useful and visible.

  • janis

    run for higher office. I’ve said elsewhere that it’s the people from countries that were oppressed by communism and socialism that have the greatest love for freedom and the willingness to work for it.

    Or perhaps in years to come we can be watching the inauguration of a President Marco Rubio. I care not about the skin color or ethnic heritage, as long as the person values what America was founded upon and not what she has become.

  • Vladimir

    Washington is full of one-time idealistic Mr. Smiths who became Beltway monsters like Mssrs. Frank, Dodd, Rangel, Reid and the like. (I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt here on their original motivations.)

    Immigration is good for the country. Generation after generation the privileged class taking their privilege for granted is how we got to where we are now.

  • redtillimdead

    1. He can try to win it back in a re-districted district
    2. He can run for Attorney General in 2011
    3. He can run for Lt. Gov in 2011
    4. He can just stay put and travel around the state, getting his name out, and run against Mary Landrieu or in her open seat in 2014.

  • scarlos

    Seeing as the 2nd is really the only district the Democrats win, being able to reduce their majority there would be a huge asset to anyone trying to run for statewide office as a Republican.

  • scarlos

    Voting rights act guarantees that a state like Louisiana, which is substantially black, will have minority-majority districts relative to their minority population.

    Louisiana should have 2 given it’s percentage of African-Americans, but they can only really draw one (the 2nd) in a compact way.

    Any attempts to make it more Republican by adding whiter areas will run into a civil-rights lawsuit, and I don’t see it being redrawn in a way that will make a substantial difference in the politics of the district.

    Also, there’s not really enough Republican areas around New Orleans to make it very competitive anyway. If we averaged the 3 Eastern Louisiana districts in terms of partisanship, they would average roughly R+4, which would make it roughly as Republican as the state of Missouri.

  • Third Street

    The 2nd District skews the average big-time because it’s D+25. But the 1st and 3rd are strong GOP districts, at least in congressional races. The 1st is one of the most Republican districts in America. So it would be possible in theory to make the 2nd competitive, but God knows we can’t ever give Southern states autonomy in drawing their own districts no matter how many decades pass.

  • scarlos

    So it essentially cancels out the 2nd in terms of Presidential elections, and the 3rd is strongly republican presidentially, but not so much Congressionally, as it’s represented by a Democrat.

    And generally, Southern Districts that are competitive on the Presidential level are Democratic on the Congressional level, as the Closest district we represent right now in the Deep Southern States is Joe Wilson’s R + 9 Columbia-suburbs based district. Southern Democrats simply do well when they don’t have to take Liberal positions on things like Gun Control and Abortion.

    And as for the VRA, I think it’s really counter-productive in it’s goal. Drawing districts like that essentially isolates the Black and White communities politically. No Black politician has to care what white people think when his district is gerrymandered to be 65% Black.

  • Third Street

    Charlie Melancon is a fluke. He managed to squeeze in by the skin of his teeth in the 2004 runoff, after the two GOP candidates destroyed each other in the primary. In ’06 and ’08 he coasted on the strength of two strong Democrat cycles (drawing no opposition at all last year).

    But now Charlie can see his number’s up and the essentially Republican nature of the district is reasserting himself. That’s why he’s gambling on a long-shot Senate bid rather than risk finally facing a serious opponent in a district that’s about to be eliminated anyway.