Associated Press
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) is understandably concerned about the future of his party, and told Politico this week he wants Republicans to "stop being the stupid party."
"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," Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. "We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys." [...]
"It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments -- enough of that," Jindal said. "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. We've also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters."
The Louisianan added that his party should "stop reducing everything to mindless slogans, tag lines, 30-second ads that all begin to sound the same."
All of this sounds quite sensible. After years in which Republicans have mocked arithmetic, science, intellectual rigor, and the "reality-based community," there's certainly nothing wrong with a relatively high-profile figure like Jindal urging the GOP to pick up its game.
My concern, though, is the depth with which Jindal is making this appeal. His advice has superficial appeal, but the governor runs into trouble just the below the surface.
Jindal says Republicans can't simply protect the rich "so they get to keep their toys." Does that mean he's open to slightly higher tax rates on income above $250,000. Well, no, actually, he's not.
Jindal says Republicans need to appeal to a broad national audience. Does that mean he's open to more moderation on hot-button culture war issues? Well, no, actually he wants the right to soften its "tone" while keeping the exact same policy positions.
Jindal says Republicans need to make meaningful inroads with minority communities. Does that mean he's open to comprehensive immigration reform? Well, when asked, he dodged every question about his position and refused to share details about his preferred approach.
Jindal says Republicans need to stop being the party of Wall Street. Does that mean he supports tougher regulations to prevent financial industry excesses? Well, he said he's open to the "Volcker rule," but doesn't appear to understand what the rule is.
Meet the Republican Party's new idea man; he's the same as the Republican Party's old idea men.
The idea of Bobby Jindal shaking up Republican thinking, pushing the party to start being creative and serious about public policy again, is heartening, but there seems to be a disconnect between the message and the messenger.
The governor wants new ideas, but isn't comfortable with new ideas. Jindal wants his party to move past mindless rhetoric, but he just spent a year attacking President Obama with rhetoric and tactics that can generously be characterized as idiotic.
I'm all for the end of "dumbed-down conservatism," but is Jindal really prepared to lead the way?
Leave a Comment:
Doesn't matter. All that matters is that the Villagers will be very pleased and excited and thrilled with this dramatic plea for a change in
the labels Republicans use to conceal their relentlessly pro-oligarchy agendatone.They need to change their ideology, not their tone. What difference does it make if they just don't say these stupid things, but that they still believe them? Nothing will change until the GOP platform changes....to the 21st century please.
@ Stevef00, recognize the sarcasm in the struck through words. Tone was the only thing Jindal delivered.
I'd really like to believe him if I wasn't so utterly convinced that he's looking for a presidential nod for 2016. I mean, just take a look at what he's done in our state.
I agree with that! He was supporting Mitt until he lost. Now he is free to shift his beliefs and ready to compete with Governor Christie, and that means trying to lead his party out of the darkness...but you have see the governor's work up close and would know best who the real Bobby Jindal is!
jindal is a smart guy. his days of pandering are waning. he wants to be important and is seeing an opportunity for change that counts.
the real problem is not just the rich - moreso the feeding suckerfish that use them as weapons of mass destruction to prey upon americans who are not a part of their feeding fenzy. you know - the repooplicons.
We will soon see if the Republican Brand can take self-criticism, or if any minute Jindal is swallowed up by the jowls of the Tea Party faction and gnashed into a thousand unrecognizable pieces, spat out and then stepped on! -Kevo
Betcha a quarter he did NOT clear this with elRushbo!
the latter
Jindal is in the pocket of big oil and evangelicals, and this is all about the need to "rebrand" rather than change policy prescriptions. Jindal's "reasonableness" is also about 2016.
"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
I agree...to me he's just paying lip service to the idea of being more inclusive and less extreme so he has a shot at 2016. They all saw how well "Moderate Mitt" started doing after the first debate (for a nanosecond, anyway). But I don't for a minute think it's for real and that they really will join the reality-based community.
I live in Louisiana, and am NOT impressed with him. He's destroying public education in favor of charter schools that teach the Loch Ness monster is a living dinosaur. He zeroed out the arts budget. He hasn't done anything good for the state, when he is actually here (not very often), as opposed to campaigning out-of-state. And who could forget the State Of The Union "Howdy Doody" speech, boys and girls. Can you spell "Self-serving conservative puppet?"
Two words: "Volcano monitoring."
(Okay, a few more words: "Solving" education by redirecting public school funding to "charter schools" that teach creationism and aren't subject to any measures of success. Pot. Kettle. Black.)
I was listening to NPR this morning where a younger generation of Republicans were interviewed and cited. It seemed to me that what Republicans learned in this election is not that they need to move away from the extreme and to the middle. They DID NOT learn that. What they "learned" is to stop sounding so much like dinosaurs and sound more palatable.
They insisted that they did not have to give up on their views on social issues, but to "redirect" conversation to their core values, which, this Harvard Republican said (yes, they exist), is smaller government and fiscal policies. During this NPR segment, they brought up a openly gay republican politician who lost the election because of this "bad press" for Republicans, in spite of being a openly gay, a marriage-equality supporter, and pro-choice.
In that the Openly Gay Republican was referenced might mean that they're scratching the surface of what they ought to learn, but barely. It still meant that they do not prioritize social issues because they don't see how social issues can affect fiscal growth and how big or small government could be.
probably. figures. just another conjob to get elected to keep picking the pockets of the people.
It is the same thing we've heard from all the Republican pundits since the election- "it isn't our ideas that were wrong, it is how they were presented"
And, like their ideas, that concept is totally and utterly wrong.
Exactly. He's saying that some of them made "...offensive, bizarre comments..." but those people were only expressing the party platform. Best to remain silent on such issues lest they "damage the brand." In retrospect, Romney's nondisclosure of his policy details and tax returns would be an example of such a strategy - imagine how much he would have lost by if he had disclosed them.
Jindal - is he the guy who approved text books that depict man and dinosaurs frolicking together in his voucher system schools? If so, is he one to talk about "stupid?"
yep, he's the one.
Don't forget that he's also the one who supported the voucher program to apply to religious schools-- so our Louisiana tax dollars can now pay for little Bobby to attend Evangelical Snake Charmer school.
Bobby contributed spectacularly to the Party of Stupid. He is trying to become the new Mitt, pretending that he never said any of the thoughtless things he has, in fact, said over the years. Doesn't he see that this approach doesn't work? Didn't he once refer to himself as a "pre-existing condition"?
what you are witnessing is the "science of gimmicks" - the sell-this-car-today tricks that american hardsellers have been practicing for decades or longer. sell. sell. sell. that's all the repubes are.... people with masks looking for a sale.
the democrats and others simply want a good operating environment - but the pimped out thieving repubers see what others have, target it, and want it all. it really is a twist.
democrats say "life is participation"
repubers say "life is what you can get"
it really is that simple and repubes - selfish as they are - have discarded their boundaries of what is good and right and having done so, have declared war on all who dont give them what they want. stalin did the same thing?
The Louisianan added that his party should "stop reducing everything to mindless slogans, tag lines, 30-second ads that all begin to sound the same."
"Anyone but Obama", great bumper sticker, piss poor way to chose a Presidential candidate. It was an election for them to lose and they did. Spectacularly!
Far as the rest of the article,
Slap a new coat of paint on the shack, mayhaps that will fool the rubes.
The GOP reminds me allot of General Motors in the 80's. Even though the writing was on the wall GM wanted to keep making large, full framed rear wheel drive automobiles. They wanted to make and sell what they wanted to make and sell because it's what they wanted to make and sell, and they left it to the MARKETING DEPARTMENT to make people think full framed vehicles is what they wanted.
GM's thinking almost destroyed them.
Now the GOP is going down the same path, they want to be what they want to be.
.
And frankly WE should let them be exactly who they want to be. Maybe they too will implode, a gal can hope (dream). Truth is until the GOP remove the evangelical, racists and crazy that they've courted from their midst, they can't even begin to address which direction they need to go towards as a party!
I agree with Zora, let them continue on the self destructive and ignorant path. I look forward to the day when the GOP eventually dies out. But it is important to have them here as a Party. I cannot condone all the beliefs of the the Far Left for it is not without flaw. I would hope to see some more Conservative Democrats and Liberal Republicans to help balance the two parties out a bit. Even further, I would like to see other parties emerge in this country which would include Socialist and Communist (we actually had a Socialist party once, look into where Social Security came from). I don't believe any of these parties is the end all beat all solution (especially Communism) but to have all points of view would be nice instead of two extremes only.
ditto!
If you wrap stupid up in a pretty package with a red bow on top, when you open it up, it's still stupid.
or put lipstick on a pig.
Lipstick...Pig...Sarah Palin joke?
Sarah who?
Mitt who?
Paul who ?
John Mc who ?
lol. ditto.
Whoa now, are suggesting that the right actually change their platform? Are you trying to force the racists to start their own party? Maybe even the evangelists could...uh wait they would join the racists.
Next you will expect the right to ask the Koch brothers and their tea party to STFU.
By the wat they are proudly telling each other that the founders were all rich white landowners and they never intended for we the people to vote.True in a way but ignorant in many other ways.
Call me cynical, but this sounds as though Jindal is just using the Romney template to begin his run for 2016...
...have extreme positions and actions, but say moderate things in public and hope that no one will call you on it or pay close attention.
good call. hadnt thought of that but sounds VERY RIGHT - pun intended
New lipstick, same old pig. It is no longer 'the inquisition' it is an investigation.
lol... the inquisition would be next with psycho repubes at the helm. remember the repuber jackass who wanted the mail carriers and meter readers to be part time nsa?
Yes, BUT. . . .It's a start, right? This is the first admission I've heard from a Republican that they lost in the 2012 election due to unforced errors. If we could weed out the Stupid Factor, maybe we could start an honest debate on the real issues. As Rachel says, we need both sides to bring legitimate arguments to have a grown-up discussion.
The point is, it's not a "legitimate argument" if it's just "we'll sound better and sell the same tripe."
Besides weeding out the "stupid factor" would mean no more GOTP....Two things you never really have "adult discussions" with: a temper-tantrum throwing 3 yr. old, and stupid.....
grown up discussion? with repubes? in case you havent noticed - they traded in their growup for a face mask and a gun.
And don't forget that Jindal's approach to improving education through charter schools probably wont help with the "stupid" bit.
Mother Jones's Deanna Pan dug through charter schools' official texts and discovered that Louisiana's publicly funded education system will soon tell some of its luckiest students that the KKK "achieved a certain respectability" by fighting bootleggers; "the majority of slave holders treated their slaves well;" dragons might be real; "dinosaurs and humans were definitely on the earth at the same time," and many other fun facts.
So Bobby, don't forget that stupid is what stupid does.
This is just the last great frontier for the profiteers. They already figured out how to use government taxing power to guarantee massive cash flows for military, health care, higher education student loans and mortgages. That leaves only public K-12 education as an "untapped market." It's got to be really profitable to put thirty kids in a classroom and stick a DVD in the video player. Even better if the "teacher" is a true believer doing God's work at very low wages.
This guy is an absolute embarrassment to all Indian-Americans like myself. Louisiana isn't known for its good education system- and including this kind of garbage will result in high-school grads well equipped for college and beyond? Bobby's still looking to trick the electorate with the same old stupid ideas in a shiny package, and that Bobby, is an insult to our intelligence. We knew better, we voted better, and you guys lost. You lost because you stink, your ideas stink, your politics stink, your donors stink- and you all got what was coming to ya. What a joke.
You know, for an omnipotent being (The Omnipotent Being) God sure does seem to need a lot of help from us lowly carbon-based life-forms. At least that's what I've heard. But maybe I've been misinformed.
lmao! yeah... ol' bobby mighta be fishin' fer suckers in his own potty.
But this is Bobby Jindal, the guy who pushed charter schools so hard that taxpayer money is being used to teach children that Jesus road a dinosaur. When the Republicans invited him to give the weekly Response to the President used it as an opportunity to lambaste the use of tax money to pay for basic science research; his example was volcano studies, and two weeks later Mount Redoubt near Anchorage halted all international travel over Alaska.
Bobby Jindal cannot escape the fact that he is the stupid in the stupid party. Deep, desperate, and depravedly stupid.
Thanks for pointing this out - when I was reading Benen's post, I was thinking, "isn't Jindal the one who OK'd those brain-dead charter schools?"
And here's some more detail about that:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/07/bobby_jindal_possible_vice_presidential_pick_but_has_a_creationism_problem_.single.html
we have seen this christian crunch conjob for centuries - tried to force that crap on teh indians - the original human beings. prelude to war as i see it.
Wake up, Mr. Jindal. The Republicans are just going to use you to feign being open to people of color. They are going to parade you around and lead you to believe you are of value to them. Then, at the last minute, they will drag out Paul Ryan, the great white hope, and they will avoid you like a bad neigborhood on a dark night. If you are smart, which I hope is true, you will abandon the conservative den of theives and go progressive. You are still young, get out while you can.
He *may* be book smart, but he's life dumb, at least when it comes to the lives of the real people who live in his state.
lol... i can see that! put his face on the other side of their 2-face-ted flag.
We've also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters
In other words, be Democrats.
yeah - thats the flip side. but the coin is completely counterfeit.
Where was all this latent wisdom during the silly season? And how can you not be the party of big corps, biz, and international money, when you are clearly the party of big corps, biz, and international money? Jindal needs some good voodoo.
yeah - it's a scam. or a sham. or a con job with a flim flam.
This was expected lol Faux Nooze
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/11/15/1195241/fox-jobs-number-conspiracy/
This is the guy who has personally destroyed public education in Louisiana, talking about not being stupid?
private education is all about recruiting and training by racist thieving genocidal maniacs who want to purify the country. did i say purify? as in PURITAN?
As is the norm for Republicans, Jindal pays lips service to ideas he has no intention of embracing. It will take at least one more major election day thumping before the GOP moves back to the center.
move back to center? i dont think so. i think maybe they just buy more expensive masks.
what Jindal said aka "But but it's the Tea Party's fault"
Please do fall upon yourselves.
lol. these self-inflicted paranoid psychos will run for cover first - into their bunkers where they have a stash of guns and ammo. imagine - so many americans in 30's? bought into the martian landing in nj. what i see is some rwnj radio clown like beckie or limpalong announcing "grab your guns and get going there is now an open revolt in the streets and the liberals are at the edge of town!". bet me.
Pardon my French, but Jindal's solution seems to be: The GOP must become the party of kinder, gentler a-holes. Keep screwing people over, but let them know it's not because you want to screw them, per se, it's just that screwing them just happens to be for you own good.
Just like when your dad used to punish you for back talking by taking away your television for 2 weeks. Except in this instance, it's not your dad, you've done nothing wrong, and instead of losing TV, it's your right to choose or your job to China or money out of your pocket to pay for tax cuts for richer people or your Social Security or or or...
There, isn't that better? Let's get that petition out, Jindal in (18)'16!
lmao. "what we need is a better blend of crude!"
I'd rather the headline read: Exorcist man to GOP: Stop being stupid.
roflol... exorcist man indeed! so jinny can thn get paid to have exorcised the entire party - santorium will love that one!
"Stupid Party"? How about a racist party - pure and simple? Certainly not all of them are racists but a significant and loud angry block of them are. If the right-wingers are so down on their party faithful, many of whom did not get out to vote for Romney, their counts will be further eroded in 2016 when race in all likelyhood, but certainly not out of the question, probably won't be a factor.
"the truth does not become them."
"the truth does not become them."
"the truth does not become them."
...
Jindal's remark about no longer being the party of Wall Street made me do a double take!
Obama's campaign was about people by people (mostly volunteers) which is what my idea of democracy is. Romney and the National Republican Party hired a corporation to do their out reach and look what it got them.
Democracy is about people, not money. If people are working and happy the money will take care of itself. We have seen this happen under Clinton.
I had left the Democrat Party to be an UNaffiliated in North Carolina. I felt the party had left me behind when they, too, headed in the right wing direction and forgot about their liberal roots.
OK, Obama, I have re-registered as a DEMOCRAT! I can, again, be comfortable with being socially liberal and fiscally conserative in the Democrat Party.
Or, in other words, you're a Libertarian. The Republicans have been great at claiming the slogan of the Libertarians: "small government". Unfortunately, they haven't been so good at governing that way.
got my sympathies there. did a DT as wll - really.. had to read it twice - then check to make sure i hadnt missed a word, a negative ending, a possible missprint, etc.
i am independent - but also a socialcapitalist.
I always say..
Rubio/Jindal 2076, time enough to mature.
Like fine wine, nah....vinegar by then!
lol... vingar alright
lol... vingar alright
I'm hoping that they keep it up, actually. It's working out well for Progressives. It keeps their hypocrisy, racism, sexism, religious nuttery and homophobia out in the open where all can see it. I've been paying attention since JFK, and I swear this is the most ridiculous I've seen them be. Clinton built the bridge to the 21st century, and the GOPTP spent the next 8 years blowing it up. We just need to clean the HOUSE now in 2014 so we can get this country heading for the 21st century again.