First, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal had to
give up on his tax plan abolishing the state's income and corporate taxes and replacing them with an expanded sales tax. In giving up, he encouraged the state legislature to come up with its own plan to abolish the income tax. Now, he's lost on that, too, as state House Ways and Means Committee Chair Joel Robideaux has
indefinitely deferred the repeal bills:
Robideaux said there was little support for such a move in the House. Committee members were particularly concerned about the budgetary implications of phasing out the income tax without finding an alternative source of revenue, a move that would have left the state with about $23.7 billion less in revenue over the next 10 years, Robideaux said.
In response, Jindal emailed a statement with some nonsense about an income tax repeal creating jobs. Presumably this email was composed as he wept for his seriously damaged presidential aspirations, because really, he's a southern Republican governor whose single legislative priority just got rejected by his state's Republican legislature as irresponsibly extreme. That is not a good position from which to launch a national campaign—not because Republican primary voters don't like irresponsibly extreme policies, but because they don't like candidates perceived as weak losers.