This is the first of a series of posts that will examine potential future leaders in the Republican Party, many of which will find their way into a more coherent piece later. --AS
Bobby Jindal was interviewed by David Shuster the other night to plug his conservativism and pitch his solutions for the country. In seeking to invent its own Barack Obama, it seems any ethnic minority will do for the GOP, as Jindal has some serious skeletons in his closet.
On the surface, Jindal is an impressive figure for the Republican party: a young Ivy League educated politician with a very conservative voting record. But Jindal has some extremely sketchy views that make him completely unelectable should anyone do their research.
In 1994, Jindal authored a bizarre article for the New Oxford Review (a hard-right Catholic magazine) about an "exorcism" he and his friends performed on another friend apparently in need. Here's a bit of the horribly disturbing piece:
And some think this guy is going to be President? Are the Republicans serious, can they be that desperate?
It shows you how completely screwed the Republican Party is if they have to rely on hard right religious zealots like Jindal, who might be electable in blood-red Louisiana but certainly not nationally.
The GOP is having a very hard time finding legit politicians who can to peddle their failed policies, and guys like Jindal are their last hope.
They've tried Sarah Palin, and the public saw straight through the gimmick (although there are an alarming amount of Republicans who actually want her to run in 2012) and they'll keep churning out young people, women and minorities until they realize that the politicians aren't the problem, it's the strategic principles and the tactical organization, as I've noted before.
Just take a look at Jindal's scorecord on key social issues and you'll find pretty quickly that this guy is definitely a Rove nut, not a Reagan-myth Republican (to use terms from a previous post).
Smart and young as he might be, he has a very limited future in national politics as a successful challenger to the new-Democrat coalition.
But I could be wrong. Click here for MarcsGChat's slightly different take on Bobby Jindal.
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4 responses:
You are a racist looser. Jindal rocks!
the analysis is hardly racist, its a mere reference to the facts. as that link shows, bobby jindal's record is extremely conservative and that weird article he published in 1994 adds in a discouraging religiousity factor.
i think in terms of what the post is suggesting---that jindal might play well to the base but not necessarily succeed nationally---is true. jindal's record looks pretty conservative to me, and tilts more in the direction of bush/rove conservatism than reagan conservatism. i think that's a problem nationally for both jindal and sarah palin.
Oh honey there is almost too much for me to respond to here considering how much work I have to do for class. But defending my main man Bobby is going to have to come first tonight...
In the beginning of your piece, you do all but disregard Jindal's education. I am sorry if Brown just isn't quite good enough for you, but I know you are smarter than to truly believe it is not a legitimate institution for higher education. And you forgot one minor detail about his education: Jindal was a Rhodes Scholar! He did not earn that honor by being a backwater hick from the South with no worldly outlook. I may add that he was accepted to Harvard Med and Yale Law before he went on to do Rhodes, so it is absolutely absurd to argue or imply that the man is unintelligent or uneducated.
And the strange religious practices and ideas from his university years? If we are going to assume those things are true, I think we should keep in mind that, as they say in more than one South Park episode, "There is a time and a place for everything, and it is called college." College is a time and place for young people to experience all kinds of new things, be it with spiritual practices (or lack thereof for many) or substance use and anything in between. Mr. Obama is an excellent example of that, as you know. Jindal converted from his familial Hinduism to Catholicism while in college, so this was obviously a time where he was exploring his faith and beliefs. He was trying to help a friend who he thought needed it...perhaps the practices seem strange from our point of view, but he did not have any bad intentions. Jindal was simply doing what he thought could help his friend through the faith he was new to, and probably trying to fit into, and I think it would be irresponsible for us to say he cannot be President of this nation simply because of that. By that logic, our President-elect should not be legitimate because of his history with hard drug use. I doubt Bobby still tries to rid people of demons, just as I am confident that Obama as stopped blowing coke as he matured.
You also decided to play your old name-calling game in this piece. Like I have said before, using terms like "loon," "nutjob," and "imbecile" really don't get us anywhere. You can disagree with conservative politics, just as I agree with liberal ones, without being disrespectful. No ideology has a de facto intellectual or moral superiority over another, and using such patronizing and condescending words pollutes any forum of legitimate discussion. I find it unfortunate that such terms are resorted to in the place of more in-depth assessments.
Towards then end of your piece, you essentially state that the problem for the GOP facing this "new-Democrat coalition" is not the politicians, but Republican policies and organizations. I cannot disagree with you that the Republican Party needs to clarify its message, make changes in leadership, and tighten the way we run major campaigns. The Obama campaign was very well-run, and I do not think any Republican would argue that ours was comparable in that respect. However, the RNC is not the problem: the McCain campaign was the problem. The RNC has its game together, knows how to raise money, and knows how to get people elected. No one can deny the fact that the current political climate is incredibly negative for Republicans, so the RNC itself could only do so much. The problem in 2008 was that the McCain campaign did not want to work with the RNC, and communication was horrible, if not non-existent, through much of the campaign. With their hands tied behind their backs, the RNC could only do so much to help Johnny, and the rest is history on that. I could go into more detail later, but I don't want to stray too far for now...
As for the "new-Democrat coalition," I would like to know what you mean by that. Yes, more new voters came out to the polls this year. And yes, the Latino vote went for the Democrats. But keep in mind that almost every proposition in this country leaned towards the more "conservative" outcome (a la Prop 8, among numerous others). The Republican Party is very badly wounded, and the Democrats have the tide to their favor in the present, let there be no doubt about it. But we are still a center-right nation, and it will be interesting to see how a President Obama steers the ship.
To come full circle, I do not think that Governor Jindal is going away any time soon, and the Democrats must take him seriously if they are going to find a way to beat him in 2012 or 2016. He has passed significant ethics legislation in the dirtiest political environment in this nation, has showed leadership in handling natural disasters unlike his predecessors, and is an incredibly intelligent and charismatic individual. You do not have to agree with his politics, but he is a man to be respected if nothing else.
-TML
I see your points, but you also mistook some of my kidding around for serious critique. I'll respond to both.
1) Bobby Jindal is probably one of the smartest people in the country, I was just giving him some crap for going to Brown, one of Columbia's rivals. Nowhere near OSU-Michigan, but it was in that spirit. Didn't mean to come off in any other way.
Name-calling is a darkside of the of the blogosphere and I admit I got carried away. It doesn't get us anywhere, you're absolutely right. Just look at how that "domestic terrorist" Barack "Hussein Osama" got elected...
2) I disagree that experimenting with hard drugs in college is the same as experimenting with crazy ideologies. I still understand your point, but let's remember that President-elect Obama didn't submit articles to High Times or peddle dope when he was 23 years old. Jindal was not only interested in a disturbingly extreme form of Christianity, he was motivated to write about it.
3) The problems with the GOP are both strategic and tactical. Read my previous post which begins to explain why I think that is. In a nutshell, the country is tired of the religious right. The GOP can resurrect itself, but it needs to break those connections to evangelicals and rediscover a platform that ties back to the Reagan-myth of small government, trickle down, no taxes, etc.
Now, I'm not saying that it will work a la 1994, I'm just saying that those are prerequisite steps to becoming remotely competitive again.
The question of whether or not the American people will buy into that is a different question. 11/4/08 was a referendum on the economy and small government lost. It seems the social safety net is here to stay, and many Republicans are even acknowledging this. A Republican Congressman from NH said as much on Larry King Live last night I believe.
That being said, the demographic most certainly seems to be shifting left. This is absolutely a progressive country.
4) The new-Democrat coalition is hard to define because it includes so many groups and so many areas. Suffice to say that it is, right now, the product of the old Democratic party plus most working class folks and extraordinarily high turnout of those demographics.
The ballot initiatives that passed to which you refer are all Gay Marriage related and are still far to the left of the Democratic Party. Barack Obama didn't even say he supported gay marriage during the election. I think their passage was somewhat expected, except in California where more older voters turned out than usual.
I think that in the coming years though when, and this may sound harsh, older voters are, er, "no longer voting," that their younger replacements will push this initiatives through.
The fact that they didn't pass now is not, to me, proof that the country is anything but left-leaning.
5) Finally, I don't think President Obama needs to worry about any challengers in 2012. Its' 2016 which will be interesting.
Moreover, Jindal may be a smart guy, but if the American people don't vibe with his Rove-right religiosity or his "on your own" economic policy that denies reality, I think he might be better suited for the Senate than the Oval Office.
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