Paul Krugman, in responding to Bobby Jindal's ramblings last night, made a particularly scathing assessment of Jindal and the Republicans in his latest post on his New York Times blog. Follow me over the jump for his and other reactions:
Link to Krugman post
Krugman begins by asking what the role of government is. He says that while liberals and conservatives disagree on its size and scope, they've generally agreed that government exists to provide public goods that benefit everyone, such as national defense.
Here's Krugman's response to Jindal:
So what did Bobby Jindal choose to ridicule in this response to Obama last night? Volcano monitoring, of course.
And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.
The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.
Judging by America's response to Bobby Jindal's Mr. Rogers-Kenneth-the-Page-Barney-Fife "Golly-Gee Willikers" speech last night, Americans like being talked to like adults, not children. Jindal and his GOP brethren have decided the best course of action is not only to talk like they're talking to children, but to act like petulant two-year-olds as well, shouting "NO!" at everything that comes up and kicking and screaming when they don't get their lollipops for their districts.
Conservatives also had criticism for Jindal:
"A wonderful human being, I like him very much, but he is a horrible speaker," conservative commentator Laura Ingraham said on the radio this morning. "You can't go on TV and counter Obama with that."
Ingraham noted that Jindal kept looking down and that only one of his hands seemed to move. "Very off-putting," she said.
You would think that Jindal might have prepared by watching tapes of previous rebuttals. I guess he didn't want to have to listen to anybody who disagreed with him.
And the criticism was savage on the Internet. Amanda Carpenter of Townhall.com tweeted that "Ok, some conservative needs to start a campaign to fire whoever wrote this cheesy response and coached him to talk like this. I can't watch."
Bad news, Ms. Carpenter: it wasn't what he said - it was how he delivered it.
It looks like Jindal may want to wait a few more years before running for the presidency, say 2032.