Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny
 |
| Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal |
I have previously posted on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal as being one of the forward thinking politicians (and bright lights) in the present rEpublican party. A party that frankly IMNHO is essentially void of new ideas and blind to the reality of changing demographics and national concerns. I was pleased to see Governor Jindal getting the press he needs and deserves from the Washington Post.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will deliver a forceful denunciation of his party’s Washington-centric focus in a speech to the Republican National Committee on Thursday evening, arguing that the GOP is fighting the wrong fight as it seeks to rebuild from losses at the ballot box last November.
“A debate about which party can better manage the federal government is a very small and short-sighted debate,” Jindal will tell the RNC members gathered in Charlotte, N.C. for the organization’s winter meeting, according to a copy of the speech provided to The Fix. “If our vision is not bigger than that, we do not deserve to win.”
Jindal’s speech — and his call to “recalibrate the compass of conservatism” — is the latest shred of a growing amount of evidence that the Louisiana governor is positioning himself to not only run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 but do so in direct (or close to it) opposition to his party in the nation’s capital.
In the speech, Jindal will repeatedly caution that Republicans in Washington have fallen into the “sideshow trap” of debating with Democrats over the proper size of the federal government.
“By obsessing with zeroes on the budget spreadsheet, we send a not-so-subtle signal that the focus of our country is on the phony economy of Washington, instead of the real economy out here in Charlotte, and Shreveport (La.), and Cheyenne (Wyo.),” Jindal is set to say at one point in the speech. At another, he will argue that “Washington has spent a generation trying to bribe our citizens and extort our states,” adding: “As Republicans, it’s time to quit arguing around the edges of that corrupt system.”
Running against Washington — and the Republicans who inhabit it — is smart politics for Jindal. Congress, viewed broadly, is at or close to all-time lows when it comes to approval ratings. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted earlier this month, just 24 percent of those tested approved of the job that Republicans in Congress were doing.
Even more stunning, among self-identified Republicans only 39 percent offered a favorable rating for their own party’s representatives, while 58 percent viewed their own elected officials in an unfavorable light.
Jindal is far from the only 2016 Republican hopeful to use his party’s Washington contingent as a foil to bolster his own political prospects. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) rant against House GOPers for failing to bring up a funding bill on Hurricane Sandy – an instant classic — was another prime example of congressional GOPers being triangulated by their party’s future leaders.{Read More}
If the rEpublican party is to avoid complete irrelevancy it will need to listen to, understand, and act upon the message Jindal and others are sending. In as much as the dEmocrat party does not have all the answers to the nation problems it is unquestionable that the rEpublican party has failed to fill the void of leadership.
Via: Memeorandum
