Bobby Jindal, who is feverishly pondering and implicitly prattling about running for president in 2016, this morning told "Fox and Friends" that "Anybody on the Republican side even thinking or talking about running for president in 2016 ... needs to get their head examined."
Sure, he's merely leaving his scent, trying to spook the other fat-cat-bankrolled wannabes. But somehow the infinitely awkward, mousy image of that 2009 SOTU First Responder just won't quit. And what Bobby Jindal has in charisma Al Capone had in charm; thus, lacking a personality, he might want a message. A real one--something other than the tedious headfake of "we're not presenting our ideas," which is in fact what they've done all too well, and why they are where they are.
And where they're staying, even according to Jindal's latest "small-government" speech before the Republican National Committee, which sounded remarkably like his 2009 SOTU response, which brought this punishing reproach from David Brooks, on 'PBS Newshour':
To come up at this moment in history with a stale, government-is-the-problem, we can't trust the federal government--it's just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic now.... [T]he idea that government is going to have no role, that the federal government has no role in this, in a moment when only the federal government is big enough to actually do stuff--to just ignore all that, and just say government is a problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending, it's just a form of nihilism....
I think it's insane. I just think it's a disaster for the party.
And so it goes.
But I thought it was their hero St. Ronald of Reagan who said that? Now his words and sentiment are "stale"? Is he no longer the patron saint of the modern "conservative" movement? But maybe Bobby Jindal has a point: Maybe they should do a better job of getting their message out. That not even vast sums of money and state level election rigging will be able to save them next time.
Posted by: AnneJ | February 04, 2013 at 10:25 AM
Off Topic: Speaking of Al Caponeand charm,
"You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun."
Al Capone
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | February 04, 2013 at 10:57 AM
I can't get past the thought of you sitting through "Fox and Friends" this morning.
Posted by: Beulahmo | February 04, 2013 at 11:01 AM
To my mind the most fascinating aspect of the Republican civil war is the new front opening on the PAC fundraising side. I think we may be privileged to witness the most vicious internecine primary wars the US has ever seen. What will they call this battle? Referencing the post below by PM on Richard shall we call this the War of the Turd Blossoms. My Kingdom for a Bundler!
Posted by: Peter G | February 04, 2013 at 01:26 PM
It was David Brooks's rare Moment of Clarity.
Too bad nobody listened.
Posted by: MinneapolisPipe | February 04, 2013 at 06:46 PM
I would love for the republicans to "get their message out" to as many Americans as they can. I want them to blast it from sea to shining sea and watch the majority of Americans recoil in horror that in the 21st Century we have such individuals making decisions for us at all levels of government. This is one case in which I'm in complete agreement with Bobby Jindal.
Posted by: majii | February 05, 2013 at 12:29 AM