Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal ripped into the Republican Party current orthodoxies in a blistering attack during an interview with Politico published earlier today.
Jindal: End 'dumbed-down conservatism'
By JONATHAN MARTIN
“We’ve got to make sure that we are not the party of big business, big banks, big Wall Street bailouts, big corporate loopholes, big anything,” Jindal told POLITICO in a 45-minute telephone interview. “We cannot be, we must not be, the party that simply protects the rich so they get to keep their toys.”
He was just as blunt on how the GOP should speak to voters, criticizing his party for offending and speaking down to much of the electorate.
“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's analyses is the most honest depiction of his party that I have heard coming from a prominent Republican in a long long time. The changes Jindal is calling for would mean some wrenching changes for the GOP and its media machine.
Jindal's message charts out a badly needed course corrections for the Republican Party to return the GOP to the main stream of American thinking. As desirable a change as these changes would be for Republicans to stop their party's slide towards irrelevance it faces major opposition from the far right fringe that now dominates the party. And opposition from the Big Money interests who play the GOP like a fiddle. No simple task.
It would also mean Republicans would have to stop trying to run away from George W. Bush's legacy of catastrophic failures. That would take a recognition that Bush and Greenspan's rigid adherence to free market fundamentalism enabled the catastrophic economic meltdown that the US is still struggling to recover from. That is a pill so bitter many Republicans may choke on it, and might rather cling to the GOP's current evasions and far fetched blame shifting historical re-writes.
It would also mean transforming the Republican Party's propaganda machine Fox News, that is accustomed to molding their reporting to conform to the GOP's rigid and extreme ideology. Again no simple task considering all the cognitive dissonance this would stir up among the Republican rank and file who have embraced Fox News' fun house mirror view current events and recent history.
Only Republicans can fix their party, but it remains to be seen if they have what it takes to face up to the hard truths Jindal has shined a light on.