By Jack Lovett
With the 2012 presidential election drawn to its conclusion, many politicians are already secretly looking ahead to snatching their party’s 2016 presidential nomination. Names are already arising, ranging from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, and San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro on the Democratic side…to names like Congressman Paul Ryan, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on the Republican side.
Of the two parties, the Republicans, as this year’s losing party, and in particular Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, have caught my attention. In retrospect, this was a dastardly race for the Republicans. In the primaries we heard from Herman Cain, a pizza company CEO, with his comments on “Uze-beki-beki-beki-stan.” We heard from Texas Gov. Rick Perry with his “oops” moment on stage and his shockingly out of touch add about homosexuality and religion that popped up on Youtube. We also heard from Newt Gingrich, a pathetic version of his former self, the 1990s power-broker of Washington D.C, who decided to talk about a moon base.
Now, if the Republican presidential primaries were not bad enough, it gets worse. We saw two Republican Senatorial seats get thrown away after Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Murdock of Indiana decided to comment on that magic word, “rape.” Richard Murdock is my favorite story. Campaigning as a radical Tea Partier, he unseated six-term moderate Sen. Dick Lugar, and won the Republican nomination just to hand over the seat to Democrat Joe Donnelly.
And, of course, who could forget Mitt Romney’s remarks on the 47 percent of Americans who do not pay income tax and enjoy milking society. To top that off, days after losing the election, Romney was caught telling donors that the only reason President Barack Obama won reelection was merely by handing out “gifts” to his supporters and base coalition.
After all the calamities that took place this year, I began to wonder how this is one of the parties in our American two-party system. Can the Republican Party even take itself seriously? Is this really the best competition conservative America can offer to lead our country?
That brings me back to Gov. Bobby Jindal. At 41 years of age, he has now been Louisiana’s chief executive for four years. A child of Indian immigrants, Jindal is the first non-white governor of Louisiana since Reconstruction, and apparently, he is irritated.
In the days after the Republican election loss, the governor spewed some harsh words addressed toward Mitt Romney and his party through the media. Jindal declared that it is time to end “dumbed-down conservatism.” Advocating softer stances on abortion and gay marriage, Jindal took multiple stabs at deeply held tenants of the Republican Party, including one at trickle-down economics. Jindal said, “We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything…We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”
Jindal went on to subtly rebuke ‘drill baby drill’ and said, “Our energy policy is outdated as well, stuck in old ideological arguments which harm our ability to create a more sustainable future where energy independence can actually be achieved. We have to change that.”
As a governor who has been working on upgrading his state’s educational system, Jindal wrote, “Our education system seems to be in the Stone Age and miserably outdated. It’s time to update traditional public schools, charter schools, home schools, online schools and parochial schools. Let the dollars follow the child instead of forcing the child to follow the dollars, so that every child has the opportunity to attain an education.”
Jindal went on to take another stab, this time at the people who spewed the offensive comments of the 2012 election season, by saying, “It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments – enough of that…It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party.”
Whether Jindal wants to take the Republican Party in a new direction, or simply wants to change the message they are selling without changing the realities behind the veil, is unknown. Nevertheless, with such comments, Jindal took a big punch at his party, got thrown under the spotlight, and is undoubtedly lining up for a shot at the 2016 Republican Presidential Nomination. The primaries are far ahead, but the Presidential Election of 2016 is destined to be an interesting one.
