Current news reports say that Harry Reid will allow a vote on the Keystone Pipeline so that Mary Landrieu can register her support, and thus improve her chances in the December Senate election in Louisiana, even as the Democratic majority votes it down.

The theory behind this move is the usual Democratic assumption that voters are dumb, and will not realize that the Senate vote is a charade, designed to fool them into believing that Landrieu actually supports Keystone and is not in cahoots with Harry Reid and the enviro-zealots and billionaires who back and bankroll the party.  (Even if the vote succeeds, it will represent a Democratic calculation that they will be beaten on the issue in Congress during the next session, and should retreat to the trenches of administrative delay.)

To inoculate voters against this ploy, the Republicans should revisit Landrieu’s 2002 campaign.  At the time, President Bush had nominated the distinguished lawyer Miguel Estrada, a Honduran native, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C.  The assumption in political circles of both parties was that the president regarded Estrada as a potential Supreme Court Justice, and wanted to give him judicial experience to add to an already impressive resume.

The Democrats fought the nomination on racist political grounds.  They did not want Bush to be the one who named the first Hispanic Justice of the Supreme Court.

The Dems won.  They stalled the nomination process for two years and finally filibustered it to death in 2003.

Landrieu’s stance was duplicitous. During the 2002 campaign, her campaign paid for a Spanish-language radio ad asserting her support for Estrada.  After she won the election, she supported the Senate filibuster, claiming that her supporters had misinterpreted her position, which had been one of “neutrality.”

Of course, these supposedly ignorant “supporters” were “Friends of Mary Landrieu,” which was the name of her principal campaign committee, and she had not corrected them during the campaign, when it mattered.

After the filibuster, Jeffrey Mazzella of the Center for Individual Freedom said: “Certainly, lying to your constituents for the ultimate political gain – reelection – will be remembered by Louisiana voters next time around.”

He was wrong, and Landrieu won again in 2008.  But the voters now have another shot, and any Louisianan who regards Keystone as important should remember the Estrada affair, and assess Landrieu’s Keystone support accordingly.

James V. DeLong is the author of Ending ‘Big SIS’ (The Special Interest State) & Renewing the American Republic.