Despot's Death Untimely From Political Standpoint
Within a month of Despot's death, Democratic Governor Charles E. Roemer, III switched his allegiance to the Republican Party. Roemer's switch did not unite the feuding wings of the GOP. Because he supported abortion, the right-to-life contingent of the party rejected Roemer and coalesced around Congressman Clyde C. Holloway of Rapides Parish. But few other Republicans would support Holloway, won won a preference poll among Republicans attending statewide endorsement caucuses. Also running for governor was the candidate who was anathema to party leaders: State Representative David Duke of Jefferson Parish. When all the smoke had cleared, Duke eliminated Roemer from a general election berth, and Edwin Edwards staged a fourth-term victory over the unpopular Duke.
Thereafter, the bottom fell out politically for Despot's favorite, the first President Bush. Challenged from the right by Pat Buchanan and plagued by a troubling economy, Bush failed nationally and in Louisiana as well in the 1992 elections.
Both of those developments would have been especially troubling to George J. Despot had he lived.
Despot's Republican Party papers are in the archives section of Louisiana State University at Shreveport.
| Preceded by John H. Cade, Jr., of Alexandria |
Louisiana Republican Party State Chairman
George Joseph Despot of Shreveport |
Succeeded by Donald G. Bollinger of Lockport |
Read more about this topic: George Despot
Famous quotes containing the words despot, death, untimely, political and/or standpoint:
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)
“To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there; also a real estimate of what one has wished, drawing the sum of one’s life—all in opposition to the wretched and revolting comedy that Christianity has made of the hour of death.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the untimely loss of your noble son, our affliction here, is scarcely less than your own.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who’s out in front of nobody?... Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)