So Much for Bobby Jindal

Earlier this week, Gov. Jindal sold out the unemployed people of Louisiana for the sake of his own political career. Well, folks, all indications are that Jindal’s career is pretty much over now. He’s still governor of Louisiana, of course, but his performance last night delivering the GOP rebuttal to President Obama’s speech was so bad even the Right is embarrassed by it.

As Tbogg says, if even the rightie blogger Ace of Spades is calling you a dork, “There’s not enough Bactineâ„¢ in the world to make that sting go away.”

The Faux Nooz panel panned Jindal’s delivery, although not what he said. David Brooks, on the other hand, was embarrassed by what Jindal said:

Today Michael Gerson has a puff piece on Jindal in the Washington Post, indicating that the GOP was planning to promote him as the future of the party. Well, kiss that off. He’s toast.

Some of the most interesting, in an anthropological sense, responses are on R.S. McCain’s site. McCain (in short, “He’s no Sarah Palin”), wrote,

A big wiffle-ball swing and a miss for the consensus favorite 2012 candidate of Republicans who look down their nose at Sarah Palin.

And the first commenter said,

I think she has bigger balls. Seriously, this guys burnt Milquetoast.

I think McCain may be right that Jindal was being groomed by the faction of GOP insiders who consider Palin a disaster for the party. And I also think the commenter is right that Jindal fails to manifest the macho swagger so essential to a true movement conservative leader. The candidate who makes their extremities tingle is one who reflects their resentments and fears and sasses back to the scary, dark world with style and lots of ‘tude. Whether the candidate can find Canada on a map is irrelevant.

See also:

John Cole, “The Morning After Look at the Jindal Response

Greg Veis, “Epic Fail, SOTU Rebuttal Version

12 thoughts on “So Much for Bobby Jindal

  1. I wouldn’t write him off too quickly.
    Remember, everyone wrote Clinton off after his long and winding (boring) speach at the ’88 Democratic Convention.
    On the other hand, as crazy as he seems to the rest of us, he’s not batshit crazy enough for the red-meat right-wing. They could tell that this past week was an act.
    I think he failed his audition.

  2. My only exposure to Jindall was last night’s speech, and even allowing for a perhaps uncharacteristically poor delivery, the guy just creeps me out. He has this weird, sinister huckster energy that he uses to try and emulate the GOP’s “you can do it!” (‘cuz right wing government surely won’t) message. He remins me a bit of the guy who went around collecting and blinding orphans in “Slumdog Millionaire” to make them better beggars.

    The candidate who makes their extremities tingle is one who reflects their resentments and fears and sasses back to the scary, dark world with style and lots of ‘tude.

    Noonan suggests Jindall/Palin in 2012 – I would flip the candidates around. Sarah fills this profile perfectly, and would be at the top of the ticket. Jindall is from Venus, Sarah is from Mars. A really weird conservative counterpoint to the Obama/Hillary dynamic we saw this summer.

  3. Republicans have really lost whatever wrappings they once had. If you’re going to send out a brown counterpart to a black/white president, at least program him well.

    That said, since Brooks is on your post…he declared last night that Obama has only accomplished 2 percent of what he is promising to accomplish. Where did that figure come from…from Brooksey’s cache of make-believe of course.

  4. [Warning, Warning: the following will beconsidered blasphemy by all the rabid right wingers who worship St. Ronnie.] I think before Obama’s first term is up that he will have out-communicated the “Great Communicator.”

  5. Do see this DailyKos diary about how New Orleans is still a wreck, and how the diarist caught Jindal flying first class and told him off (air marshall started to reach for his gun). Says he managed to rattle Jindal.

  6. Oh, the disappointment in Jindal! He was to be their savior…
    It’s funny, but Obama has painted conservatives into a corner, and they can’t figure a way out.
    They’re panicking because they sense a tectonic shift away from Reaganomic’s to Obamanomic’s. A back to government movement.
    They ignored Obama early on, focused on Hillary, and then, when Obama pulled out ahead, they were clue-free as to how to defeat him. That’s true to this day.
    They tried Rev. Wright, but Obama checkmated them with his great speach on race. They tried Ayer’s, but he proved to be slim pickin’s. Nothing stuck. Why? Because he was genuine. The read deal, so to speak.
    And so, they tried to appeal to women with Palin. They depended on the PUMA’s. But women, as usual, were smarter than conservatives.
    They tried the birth certificate BS.
    Now, they try the socialism angle. To anyone younger than me, that means nothing. It’s a term your parent’s or grandparent’s threw around.
    He has them flumoxed!
    His outreach to them in a bipartisan way, mistake or not, has bitten the Republican’s in the ass. They look like clowns when they deride the stimulus package, vote against it, and then go home to trumpet it’s success in bringing jobs to their district’s.
    Trying to put a new paint job on an Edsel doesn’t make it a Benz.
    Try a Woman? Palin, didn’ work out.
    After 6 count’s, try a black guy! Micheal Steele is a joke. The know it, the American people know it. When you say government creates no jobs, but the only jobs you’ve ever held are in governement, you kind of look like a fool.
    OK! We’ve got it! He’s a first generation brown guy (maybe it’s a fad the country’s going through…) with a name like Bobby. He’s smart, a die-hard conservative, he’s performed an exorcism, and he’s a Rhodes Scholar, so he’s really smart.
    He’ll save us.
    Except his speach rang no bells. It was almost as if he didn’t see or read Obama’s speach. On another blog, someone (rightly, I think), said that he gave the speach that he wanted to give at the Repbulican Convention, but wasn’t able to because of the hurricane that his LA.
    Republican’s: Whither wander thou now?

  7. I watched Jindal front to back and do not remember a single word he said. I don’t know if it was the delivery that put me into a coma, or if the volcano-monitoring bit blew out too many brain cells at one time. Like drinking a years worth of tequlia in one sitting, maybe.

    This is the GOP’s prescription for what ails the country? This is the GOP’s answer to Obama in 2012? Please.

  8. Jiminy Cricket, Jindahl was so bad he even forced the Cabbage to make sense. He actually used the word “insane” about a Republican. Wow.

    Busted flat in Baton Rouge, complaining about a train.

    And about ‘something called “volcano monitoring”, as if the concept of that was hard to understand, and as if the allocation wasn’t for the entire US Geological Survey. As Bugs would say, “What a maroon!”

    His only hope now is a guest appearance on ’30 Rock’ as you-know-who’s Indian half-brother.

  9. Olbermann says it looks like Jindal did, as I suspected, make up his story about walking in on a sheriff dealing with bureaucrats who were trying to keep him from sending out rescue boats. Jindal was apparently not even in the parish in question at the time. Sadly, the sheriff in question has since died, so he can’t be asked what happened.

  10. Dear Maha…Please to remember that after the Calofornia gubernatorial election in ’62 we weren’t: “Gonna have Nixon to kick around anymore”…

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