Bobby Jindal channels Kenneth the Page...

[Hoss]

This is hilarious.  Jindal is being raked over the coals since last night.  I guess the GOP better start grooming either Gov. Pawlenty, or (yikes!) Gov. YouBetcha...

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/02/jindal.html

[Conan71]

There's that bastion of hard-line conservatism, Andrew Sullivan, again.

[we vs us]

Jindal's got a major PR hole to dig out of, but it can be done.  Americans love to dole out second chances, and if he can present himself well, in the next couple of years he could very well be a front runner for the R presidential nod.

The problem, IMO, isn't with Jindal. It's with the platform he's spouting. The GOP needs to perform triage on its message or it's not going to matter how charming or smart Jindal really is.

[Hoss]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

There's that bastion of hard-line conservatism, Andrew Sullivan, again.

Hey, I could have cited DailyKOS but wanted to appear somewhat moderate.

[]

And I do agree with wevs; he can dig himself out of the hole.  The problem is, almost his entire party threw him under the bus.  Even Krauthammer and the Fox News guys essentially called the rebuttal terrible.

I think the issue is that this is a lot of peoples first look at Gov. Jindal, and you know what most people say about first impressions.....

[Conan71]

A lot of first-impression types thought Obama couldn't spoil Hillarity's coronation.  We all know what happened there.  

Debt, deficit, and Obama's failure to draw down troop numbers overseas-as promised are going to be the major campaign issues in '12 from the GOP.  Print and save this comment.  The GOP has already loaded their cannons for 2010 and 2012.  

I also predict that partisanship by that time will lead to a third party candidate who could be a truly legit contender cabable of garnering 35% of the popular vote.

[Townsend]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

I also predict that partisanship by that time will lead to a third party candidate who could be a truly legit contender cabable of garnering 35% of the popular vote.

Got someone in mind?  I'd be interested to watch that.

[guido911]

Here's a video of our boy Biden lying (again) re: Louisiana's employment stats:

http://www.ksla.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?ClipID1=3487238&h1=Reality%20check%20for%20VP%20Joe%20Biden&vt1=v&at1=News&d1=159267&LaunchPageAdTag=News&activePane=info&rnd=59061751

[rwarn17588]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

There's that bastion of hard-line conservatism, Andrew Sullivan, again.

Oh, he's definitely conservative.

Less than a week ago, he said this:

"They keep coming back to me as Republicans return to worrying about borrowing:

   'Deficits Don't Matter.'

"Those were Dick Cheney's words, according to the man they were addressed to, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. The exact same words came back at me in mid-2001 when I asked a senior Bush administration why the president was spending and borrowing and cutting taxes with such abandon so soon. It is good to see the GOP pretending to be fiscally conservative again, but could any of them - just one or two apart from Ron Paul - concede that Bush and Cheney are the ones responsible for our current fiscal nightmare? They drove us so deep into the ditch that we have almost no fiscal lee-way to counter the kind of crisis they stumbled into at the end of their term. If we had retained the fiscal health of the Clinton-Gingrich years into the new millennium, our range of possible actions right now would be far less dire."

The difference is that Sullivan is a conservative and not an idealogue. We need a lot fewer idealogues in this country and a helluva a lot more pragmatists.

Back to Jindal: The guy lost me when he ripped into volcano monitoring. There are something like 60 active volcanoes in the United States. Doesn't he think that monitoring them is prudent, considering that many are near population centers? (Think Mount Rainier near Seattle.)

I read somewhere that monitors' warnings about Mount St. Helens saved hundreds, maybe thousands of lives. To me, ripping into volcano monitoring is equivalent to ripping into the National Weather Service during tornado season. It's idiotic.

[guido911]

Jindal's point, I think, was that volcano monitoring is a spending issue (perhaps even pork) and has nothing to do with stimulating the economy. Can you tell me how improving volcanic monitoring will stimulate the economy(other than maybe giving a few egghead vulcanologists/geologists jobs)? The faux outrage you and others are demonstrating is a over this is deflection of the fact that it's not at all stimulus related.  Your focus should really be on how weak Jindal's delivery was.

[nathanm]

quote:Originally posted by guido911

Jindal's point, I think, was that volcano monitoring is a spending issue (perhaps even pork) and has nothing to do with stimulating the economy. Can you tell me how improving volcanic monitoring will stimulate the economy(other than maybe giving a few egghead vulcanologists/geologists jobs)? The faux outrage you and others are demonstrating is a over this is deflection of the fact that it's not at all stimulus related.  Your focus should really be on how weak Jindal's delivery was.

Spending money on almost anything (aside from debt repayment, unless it's a significant enough sum to reduce ongoing debt servicing outlays by a meaningful amount) is stimulus. In this particular instance, vulcanologists get jobs (thus having more money to spend), and companies that manufacture the equipment used by vulcanologists sell more stuff, too, which in turn supports the companies that make the materials that go into making the vulcanology equipment, which in turn supports the mining interests who dig stuff up out of the ground to be used in making various products.

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

There's that bastion of hard-line conservatism, Andrew Sullivan, again.

Oh, he's definitely conservative.

Coffee-spitting laugh of the day