The GOP will have its best possible spokesman, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, give the response to President Obama’s sort-of State of the Union. This is excellent news. Jindal is the perfect counterpoint to Obama, he’s outside DC, and his selection ducks the issue of whether to tab one of the 2012 presidential contenders for the job (I’m sure Jindal’s running eventually, but he has to run for re-election in November 2011, which makes a presidential campaign essentially impossible, plus he appears to be committed to staying in Louisiana until he has made a whole lot more progress in reforming the state’s famously criminal political culture.
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Rumor has it that Jindal won’t deliver a conventional speech, but rather will perform a live-TV exorcism trying to rid the nation of Obama mania.
I agree that this is great news, and that he’s the best possible person to do this. I don’t think he’s the best possible spokesman in the abstract, since there are others in the GOP who are better speakers than he is, but we don’t live in the abstract, and the other reasons you mention push him to the top of the list in my book. Plus, anything that highlights Gov. Jindal and the work he’s doing in Louisiana helps the GOP (not least because he’s not going to be back working on the national scene for a while; he has a lot of work ahead of him down there). Truly an inspired choice.
“Rumor has it that Jindal won’t deliver a conventional speech, but rather will perform a live-TV exorcism trying to rid the nation of Obama mania.”
Presumably, Jindal only does that after Barack McCokespoon smokes crack from the podium. The left really is terrified that Jindal might become a serious challenger, aren’t they?
As for this speech – who cares? Does it matter one way or another? The response to the SOTU (or the faux SOTU) is the most boring, irrelevant speech possible. The only way I’d care is if Jindal really did something different.
Agree that Jindal is a good choice. However, those speeches (meaning the responses) are so predictable very few people watch them and you only hear them discussed the next day if there is a screw up. He’ll say we agree on some of the problems facing our nation but we disagree on the best methods of fixing those problems. Blah, blah, blah.
Terrified of Jindal? Bring it on, in fact add Palin in the mix and we could have the first all-exorcism presidential ticket in history. A landslide of epic proportions in the making.
The fixation on the exorcism story almost always comes from people who haven’t bothered with the facts.
Crank its the usual libnesia. Their guy goes to a racist church for 20 years, donates large sums of money to said church and supports and thinks of the racist pastor as a father figure and that all goes in the liberal memory hole. But anything alleged about a Republican and their faith, oh boy they are on it like Clinton on an intern.
Facts? Jindal himself wrote the review article discussing the exorcism. Please put that tool up as your new spokesman, I’m begging you.
It’s little short of amazing how rapidly Obama has shown his weaknesses. Not even Jimmeh Carter slipped so quickly. Even I, who always considered BO an empty suit, didn’t expect such openly demonstrated incompetence. It’s possible he’ll begin to learn the job, of course, but starting with no base of experience, it is bound to be difficult for him. But he has, at least, quickly gotten Biden’s measure.
Jindal, on the other hand, is a doer rather than a talker. Whether that ensures a sterling SOTU response is uncertain.
Have you actually read a word of the article? Jindal didn’t participate in an exorcism. He attended, he was troubled and moved by what he saw, and he wrote about the difficulties of coming to grips with that experience. Do you challenge the factual content of the article? Do you contend that a politician should be barred from holding office unless he renounces the concept of exorcism, which happens to be a doctrine of the Catholic Church? There are, as Hamlet said, more things on heaven and earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy. Jindal had to come face to face with one of those.
Crank-heads up- Obama’s solicitor general nominee during her nomination hearing apparently agreed with the evil Chimpy Bushhaliburton policy of indefinite detention of non enemy combatants/terrorists or as the left would call them innocent beet farmers deprived of their human rights.
Irony, hypocrisy-whats the best term?
Yes actually I think exorcisms are bunk and the last thing we need is a president who believes in voodoo as his finger hovers over the nuclear button.
So, Catholics are out, period?
Good thing the US Constitution explicitly states there should be no religious tests to hold any federal office.
Crank isn’t amazing how much modern “progressive” liberalism is mirroring its fellow leftist ideologies of Nazism, Socialism and Communism with its hatred and intollerance of religion and people of faith?
As I have argued before, the Constitution’s religious test ban doesn’t apply to the voters. Nonetheless, it’s diagnostic to see how the reaction to Jindal shows complete intolerance for Catholics who actually believe in the doctrines of the Church; the mere fact that he did not disbelieve his own eyes or reject those doctrines out of hand is cited as a defect far exceeding the horrible things Obama spent years nodding along to. The more we see of Jindal, the more of that bigotry we Catholics will see.
I also hear that Catholics and others do this thing called “praying” where they speak to this unseen spirit called “God”. They also believe in “virgin births” and that they can commune with their “God’ by eating what appears to be bread and wine, but is in fact their God’s body and blood. I heard they also believe that if you follow the rules of their religion, you will be rewarded with an eternal afterlife.
Man that all sounds like voodo or magioc to me. Dangerous wackos. Can’t have anybody who believes in any of that as President.
“Yes actually I think exorcisms are bunk and the last thing we need is a president who believes in voodoo as his finger hovers over the nuclear button.”
Yes, much better to have a crack smoker.
” ‘Yes actually I think exorcisms are bunk and the last thing we need is a president who believes in voodoo as his finger hovers over the nuclear button.’
Yes, much better to have a crack smoker.”
Oh man. Ouch. That’s the loudest I laughed all day.
Yes, I can’t wait for “Jindal the Doer” to explain how he plans to close the multi-billion dollar budget deficit over which he presides. Like Princess Sarah, it is easy to look good when oil is over $150/barrel and your tax base comes in on a silver platter. Let’s see the Boy Wonder makes some decisions now.
And, for all you Obama-Haters, do you recognize any responsibility for W, who wasted trillions on a trumped-up, unnecessary war and presided over the worst eceonomic disaster since Hoover?
Jindal has many challenges ahead of him; no one said it would be easy. He has faced challenges before. He’d be in much worse shape now if he’d spent his whole life as a backbench legislator and was just now facing these issues while learning how to run things.
I agree with Magrooder — the solution to W wasting trillions of dollars is to double that waste — that will fix everything!
Nice to see your other “shooting star” Eric Cantor put out a profane, elitist web ad comparing all AFSCME garbage workers to mafiosos. I’m sure you’re all secretly chuckling at the same time you’re preparing your next bogus talking point about Obama hating PWT’s in Pennsylvania.
“Eric Cantor put out a … web ad”
Let me correct your sentence
“Eric Cantor’s press secretary forwarded a … web ad to some journalists”
There, better now. Would not have wanted you to misrepresent the facts.
Thanks for the clarification Crank, I guess that clerical buffer gives him the plausible deniability to distance himself from the elitist profanity.
Here’s to hoping both Jindal and Obama kick ass in the next several years. I’d love to see a 2012 election between 2 guys that I have the utmost confidence in leading the country.
Until then, I’d be satisfied with them both being good at their jobs.
Crank,
I’m sure Cantor was shocked, shocked to discover that his press secretary communicated with the press. Who could have given him that authority? Cantor is responsible for what his office does.
Tom, you’re right. Obama should be like Bush and just pretend everything will ge tbetter because he is “working hard.”
“Elitist profanity”? What does that even mean? Something like this?
I think the point is, this wasn’t something produced by Cantor’s office, it was a video a guy forwarded to some people. But I am thankful to Magrooder for the clarification that Cantor is responsible personally by everything done by Cantor’s office. I’m sure we’ll hear that from you regarding Obama as well.
You gotta love the Italian stereotyping in the video too, with the goombah accent superimposed on the images of the garbage workers doing their thing. Elitist profanity…obvious disdain for union members of AFSCME who dared to campaign against Cantor, with a swear word every 5 seconds or so.
And Crank your lame attempt to shield Cantor from being “personally responsible” for the actions of his media director sounds a lot like Ron Paul denying that he wrote or had knowledge of the racist screeds published in his newsletter in the early 90’s. Such a conservative assumption of individual responsibility to hide behind a bureacratic shield.
So, seriously, is it your position that every Member of Congress personally approves every email sent by every member of their staff?
Really?
What, then, is your reaction to this?
I never said Cantor approved the e-mail; i said he was responsible for it. That is so because the e-mail was sent pursuant to the job for which the person was hired and that responding to the press is within the authority of a communications staffer.
Strickland is responsible for formerly employing a this guy, but I presume pimping was an activity outside the scope of his authority.
Perhaps this will simplify it enough for you. If you rob a bank, your law firm is not responsible for your actions, but if you misapprpriate funds owing to a client of the firm, then the firm is repsonsible. Didn’t they teach agency law at Harvard?
Finally, you aren’t attacking catholics here, are you?
I fail to see how agency law and the example you used applies to whether someone is “responsible” for everything their staffers do. Perhaps legally responsible, but clearly, this discussion is about who is politically responsible for something, not legally. It’s a completely different situation.
The distinction matters when you are talking about circulating a video that was at worst impolitic and mildly offensive to a few people. In that situation, the fact that this was just something emailed on by a single staffer pretty much ends the controversy.
“Mildly offensive to a few people”? Then why did Cantor’s office feel compelled to issue a public apology on the matter? Every Italian and union member is put down by that video, not to mention conservative folks who dont like profanity being used to attack, or mock, one’s political opponents.
In a word, Robert? Politics. There’s a flap over something incidental, you apologize.
Politics? There is a huge flap over the whole run up to the Iraq war but you dont see Cheney or Bush apologizing, and you’re right there cheering them on. What Cantor did …yes Cantor, the buck stops with him…is indefensible even on ideological grounds, invoking mafia stereotypes to slam AFSCME. I havent heard from a single conservative willing to admit…publicly…that on its merits the video was inoffensive.
The Iraq War was a policy decision. You don’t apologize for policy decisions if you think you got them right. You apologize for a guy sending an email somebody didn’t like.
The Iraq War was a policy decision. One that this country will be paying for for a VERY long time.
Speaking of which, to hear Conservatives suddenly get religion about our deficit is rich (pun intended) coming from those who supported (and continue to do so) the greatest financial clusterfu** in the history of the nation.
Crank, as much as you’d like to protray Cantor’s staffer as a lower level nobody, here are the facts, as of July 9, 2008:
“Deputy press secretary, House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich (R-Ohio), May 1999-December 2000; West Virginia director of communications, Bush-Cheney 2000, July-November 2000; deputy associate director for press advance, the White House, March 2001-August 2003; media coordinator, Bush-Cheney 2004, August-December 2003; manager of media relations, National Restaurant Association, March 2004-July 2005; communications director, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), July 2005-May 2006”
Cantor is fully responsible for everything this guy does in terms of press communications.