I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. The Louisiana Democrats are the same bunch that mismanaged the NOLA levees for years and then planned out much of the politicization of Hurricane Katrina before it ever made landfall, calling in Clintonistas like James Lee Watt to help them craft an anti-Bush message. They failed to use the dozens of school buses all over the city, then screamed for buses from the feds. They kept the Red Cross out of New Orleans and then blamed the feds for the lack of supplies for the stranded. They spread rumors of riots and looting, but couldn’t send their ghost police force, many of whom had deserted their jobs, out to maintain law and order. Of all the cynical and corrupt Democrats in the country, the ones in Louisiana are certainly among the most corrupt and that breeds an unhealthy amount of cynicism to go along with it.

So now they’re attacking GOP front runner for governor, Bobby Jindal, on his religion. The aim is to make Louisiana Protestants fear or loathe him enough to hand the election to yet another machine Democrat. How tolerant.

The Rothenberg Political Report has seen the ad described in the story. The ad itself isn’t online anywhere I could find.

In one of the hardest hitting – Republicans will undoubtedly say “dirtiest” – television ads aired in history, the Louisiana Democratic Party is accusing Rep. Bobby Jindal of being anti-Protestant.

The bizarre charge is delivered by an unidentified woman in a new Louisiana Democratic Party TV ad produced by Carvin/Seder Communications, a Louisiana-based consulting firm whose clients have included former Governor Edwin Edwards (D-La.), Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (D) and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (D).

In the TV spot, the announcer charges that Jindal wrote articles that “insulted thousands of Louisiana Protestants,” and she holds up an article in which she says Jindal “doubts the morals and questions the beliefs of Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, Pentecostals and other Protestant religions.”

The ad directs interested viewers to a website, www.JindalonReligion.com. (However, unless you are a subscriber to The New Oxford Review, you won’t be able to read Jindal’s entire articles.)

That’s clever. Most viewers who do go to the site won’t bother to pay for the subscription or buy the articles individually. But they will see that there’s a real set of articles with Jindal’s by-line on them, so they’ll conclude that the ad had some substance to it without actually reading what Jindal wrote.

Democrats would scream bloody murder if anyone, say, attacked Keith Ellison for being a Muslim, and many have screamed at the mere hint that Barack Obama was schooled in a madrassah as a child. But in Louisiana they’re playing the religion card in a devious, underhanded, desperate way. Hopefully Jindal will make them regret it.

Update: Influence Peddler has the ad and a link to one of the articles that the Democrats are using to bludgeon Jindal. Surprise, surprise, the Democrats are mischaracterizing what Jindal wrote in the now 13-year-old article.

Update: Captain Ed bought the article in question, and finds some not at all surprising intellectual dishonesty at work.

Update: A reader sends in a link to Jindal’s Wikipedia page. It currently includes this paragraph.

A new Democratic party strategy has raised concerns regarding essays Jindal wrote discussing his religious views of Protestants. In a New Oxford Review article Jindal writes that Catholicism has more merit than all other religions. Jindal furthers states that Protestants and other non-Catholics are burdened with “utterly depraved minds” and calls individuals who ignore the teachings of the Catholic church intellectually dishonest. [10]

The footnote links to title of the article that the Democrat ad mischaracterizes, and the paragraph itself takes the position that the Democrat ad takes. So yes, it looks like the Democrats have edited Jindal’s own Wikipedia page to smear him.

Update (AP): Here’s the ad.