Thanks to reports about the Romney campaign’s internal polling problems, disastrous get-out-the-vote schemes, and some of the inevitable internecine finger pointing that follows the loss of a presidential election, the dust hasn’t yet settled on the Romney campaign’s post-mortems. But as the soul searching begins to shift to judging the GOP on the whole, Bobby Jindal would like that judgment to be harsh.
The Republican governor of Louisiana, a popular 41-year-old reformer with a reputation for competent management and policy expertise, unloaded on the Republican Party in an interview with Politico. Jindal criticized Romney’s “47 percent” remarks, but made clear he understands that the right has a branding problem it cannot lay at the feet of its nominee this year:
“It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that,” Jindal said. “It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”
Calling on the GOP to be “the party of ideas, details and intelligent solutions,” the Louisianan urged the party to “stop reducing everything to mindless slogans, tag lines, 30-second ads that all begin to sound the same.”
Jindal, who was a frequent suggestion for vice presidential nominee this cycle and is expected to at least consider running in 2016, was critical–but on target. Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan are both energetic policy-oriented politicians, which explains in part why they ran ahead of the party’s Senate candidates. Some of those Senate candidates imploded–both Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost surefire GOP seats by making comments about rape–but what about the rest of the candidates?
As the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake wrote last week, nine other Republican candidates ran behind Romney, even in states Romney won. That means the scenario many conservatives feared–that Romney was a lackluster nominee who would hurt Republican enthusiasm and thus down-ticket candidates–was flipped on its head. Romney and Ryan energized conservatives to the point the right thought it was sailing to victory, while Republicans running in down-ticket races underperformed even with GOP enthusiasm. (You could even make the case that the “rape” comments and the like fed an anti-GOP narrative that hurt Romney.) Here’s Blake:
In five races, the GOP candidate under-performed Romney by at least nine points. This includes Reps. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) and Rick Berg (R-N.D.), who both lost in states that Romney carried by at least 13 points. (Maine is a bit of a special case, since there was a third-party candidate in the Senate race.)…
But even if you look at only the open seat contests, the GOP under-performed in most of those races — up to and including two people who won: Rep. Jeff Flake (R) in Arizona and state Sen. Deb Fischer (R) in Nebraska.
Jindal took a reform-minded tone in his interview with Politico, advocating tougher regulation of the big banks (an idea gaining steam on the right), reforming the tax code, a comprehensive approach to energy production, and school choice. The latter two are areas of particular expertise for Jindal, who recently enacted his own education reform in Louisiana and expanded offshore oil drilling.
He was, however, lukewarm on the subject of immigration reform, suggesting the newfound support on the right for policies once derided as “amnesty” is far from universal, and would also pit Jindal against some of the other GOPers thought to be viable 2016 candidates. Nonetheless, Jindal’s comments indicate a recognition that although President Obama won reelection convincingly, he did so while leaving major issues–education, energy, immigration, financial regulation–on the table for creative, reformist Republicans intent on rebranding the party in their image.
Why, after so many years of advocating certain policies, would some Republicans suddenly decide to do a 180 and declare those policies were wrong? That makes it sound like they are only interested in willing elections and have no core principles. Little wonder so few people trust politicians!
In fairness, it's possible to have some core principles without having a solidly held core principles driving every single policy position. In such cases, it's generally better to amend your less solidly held positions in order to get elected so that you can champion the issues you actually care about. If you fail to get elected, then you wind up getting nothing that you want instead of only (the important) part of it.
Conservative policies aren't up for review… We have too many RINO's in the congress now. I also think that the GOP needs to do a better job getting our message out… All this gloom and doom is an over reaction. The GOP doesn't need to lurch to the left.
The Republicans are already as Far Left as the Democrats. Just about different things. n nIt all starts with "Government should…….."
Good points and also good points by the posters. However, the core argument is sound: how could so many of our senatorial candidates run so poorly? It is unimaginable that the republicans candidates in BOTH North and Montana lost ! This is truly astounding!! Add to that that Allen lost in Virginia , Brown in Mass. and you have a deeper problem than just Romney. He could have won in a normal year- but this year was not normal,not only in Obama's re-election (actually not that surprising) but also in the senatorial defeats. Contrast that the House and you start seeing a pattern- House seats are tightly formed and therefore easier to defend- the Senate covrs a state and it is there that the Republicans lost ground-to hispanics,women and youth. That is where we must start the renewal.
Hopefully Senator McConnell will not threaten to make Obama a two-term president. n nYou have no idea how much McConnell's statement about making Obama a one-term president hurt the GOP. It reinforced the myth of GOP as the obstructionist Party of No. n nIs Grover Norquist MIA? n nA Brand that once owned "fiscal conservatism" can not defend the irresponsible tax cuts + expanded government that is Bush43's legacy. n nAs for Virginia? Might want to stop state laws that include the words "vaginal ultrasound". n nah – neither party understands that their parties no longer are recognizable to half the electorate. nReal fiscal conservatives will be the next party to emerge from the wreckage of the past twenty years.
An excellent comment. "The state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation," as Pierre Trudeau famously put it. n nSo too does the Republican Party need to stop obsessing about gay people. CONSIDER: over 70% (seventy percent) of voters 18 to 29 now believe in marriage equality. Religious zealots have ruined the GOP's credibility in this arena. It needs to end. n nThankfully, DADT was no issue in this campaign. It would have been a loser for Romney. If the GOP wants to be paid attention by young voters, it needs to end institutional hostility to gay people. Otherwise, the GOP will remain the party of self-satisfied moralizers, appealing to few and fewer Americans every cycle.
Calling same-sex pseudomarriage "marriage equality" is like calling abortion "choice". I wonder who came up with the "marriage equality" moniker?
A fair question.A fair answer is this: Americans. Real Americans want to keep the state out of the bedrooms of the nation. Real Americans have respect for the privacy of others. Real Americans believe in the dignity and worth of all Americans.And real Americans do not spend time making idle, moralistic judgments about the private lives of other people.If two adult Americans wish to marry, we welcome it. Marriage strengthens the nation. Those who oppose marriage equality now are making arguments IDENTICAL to those that once opposed inter-racial marriage.Those vile prejudices failed fifty years ago. Yours are failing today. Thanks for asking.—
Yes, spoiled nihilistic hipsters who put aside "obsolete" things like religion and objective truth are definitely "real Americans". n My religious faith trumps your "if it feels good, do it" ethos time after time.
And your reply is yet another reason why the GOP did so badly in the elections. n nOur Constitution trumps your private religion time after time. n nOur Constitution provides, to paraphrase, "liberty and justice FOR ALL." Your religion provides guidance FOR YOU. n nAnd our great country believes, more profoundly than you will ever realize, in "live, and let live." Smug moralizers like yourself simply have to stop butting your noses in where they don't belong. n nYou raised IDENTICAL objections to inter-racial marriage. You lost. Now, employing IDENTICAL debased prejudices, you oppose marriage equality for our gay citizens. And you are losing again. God wills it. n nBTW, your confusion is greater than you know. You try to conflate faith and "objective truth". What nonsense. Faith is that which cannot be seen or measured, but is understood. "Objective truth" can be seen and measured by all. n nFor example, it is "objectively true" that religious bigots operate in a parallel universe where they, and they alone, hear God. Great fun!
I want to keep the state out of the bedrooms of the nation. I have respect for the privacy of others. I believe in respecting the dignity and worth of all Americans who do not forfeit that respect. I do not spend time making idle, moralistic judgments about the private lives of other people. If two adult Americans of the opposite sex wish to marry, I wish the state to continue to encourage them to do so, for the benefit of their progeny if they are capable of producing any and to not intrusively inquire into that capability in any case. I have never opposed inter-racial marriage. I am, by the way, an athiest. (cont.)
(cont.)I believe, however, in the rule of law and it is absolutely clear that nothing in the Constitution or natural law requires that marriage be redefined to include other arrangements than one man and one woman. Nor do I see any good reason to misapply this currently suboptimal and unwieldy mechanism unnecessarily to relationships where much of what it provides is unnecessary and undesirable and for which it was never designed. Further, the execrable campaingn to force that redefinition has been largely a campaign of illegal and undemocratic lies and oppression, and people like you who engage in it (apart from democratic iniatives, such as – I believe – the two that passed November 6th) are unspeakably vile as well.
Republicans hurt their own by forming a "circular firing squad" during the primaries. It was, after all, Gingrich who went after Romney as a "vulture capitalist"; Obama just picked up that theme. Some cultural conservatives also ignored Daniel's insistence that this campaign not focus on social issues, so we ended up with talk of contraception, abortion, and ultrasounds, which ultimately became the "war on women". n nOn the immigration issue, I'd urge conservatives to consider a "residence not citizenship" approach. Republicans obviously oppose an amnesty that would create millions of new democratic voters, and wish to maintain the "rule of law" that reminds folks that we're dealing with *illegal* immigrants, not just "undocumented" folks. Legal status for long-time residents who won't "self-deport", and who we're not prepared to deport, allows them at least to integrate and contribute without looking over their shoulders. But only those who arrive legally would have a path to citizenship and the right to vote in national elections.
Your proposal is just surrender by another name. Restoring law and order (it's too late to maintain it) will be hard, but with this country going to hell in a handbasket, as it is doing, the correlastion of forces may change. Anyway, two classes of citizenship is a really bad idea that is in any case unsustainable. Then there are the anchor babies. And while you continue to obstruct their being deported I -want- them looking over their shoulders and in other ways having a really bad experience, to discourage those who haven't come and to encourage those who have come to leave. I don't want them here, for many reasons, and favor doing whatever is possible to minimize the numbers and damage.
The Republicans failed the American people and may regret it dearly. The left may find a way to keep the power after 2016! Then WHAT!!!
The problem with Republicans is they think they can lie to people. If they just throw the Hispanics a bone in a speech here and there, they can broaden their base while continuing the same policies. They cannot accept that their policies are seen as failed. And even if you think they are correct and it is a messaging issue, look at the last week or two. n nTake John McCain. On one day, he notes that the party needs to cater to more than just white men. But he basically proceeds to spend the two weeks after the election further alienating any group with the exception of angry whites. The takeaway from the last election, according to McCains ACTIONS, is that the angry white base is not angry enough, and if we have to lose a few votes to get them fired up, so be it. n nRight back to the southern strategy.