Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal urged Republicans to "stop being the stupid party," transcend their image as the party of the rich, and reach out to broader numbers of voters in a 45 minute interview he gave, on Monday, to Politico and reported by Jonathan Martin in Jindal: End 'dumbed-down conservatism.'
“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.”
“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.”
Jindal encouraged Republicans to reject "anti-intellectulism, and to become “the party of ideas, details and intelligent solutions,” and to “stop reducing everything to mindless slogans, tag lines, 30-second ads that all begin to sound the same." Perhaps anticipating a run for the presidency in 2016, he added that trying to organize an appeal to voters of “(s)imply being the anti-Obama party didn’t work. You can’t beat something with nothing."
It isn't clear whether in this quote if Governor Jindal is just showing off his knowledge of math, or if he is taunting the stupid wing of the Republican Party by suggesting that if they don't back down, he might test them by asking what other combinations of numbers add up to 100.
“The Republican Party is going to fight for every single vote,” he said. “That means the 47 percent and the 53 percent, that means any other combination of numbers going up to 100 percent.”
On cultural issues, he suggested the party not retreat from its stances opposing abortion rights and gay marriage but rather soften its tone on such matters.
Politico did not report if there have been any spike in google searches in red states for "combinations of numbers adding up to 100."
Also, Governor Jindal did not explain how if the Republican Party were to abandon stupidity, become more inclusive to other voters, moderate positions on social issues, and stop being perceived as the champion of the rich, they would differentiate themselves from the Democratic Party. A question made more poignant after Mitt Romney endorsed and adopted President Obama's entire foreign policy in the third debate. A cynic might say that the Democrats played a sneaky trick by adopting nearly the entire Bush administration foreign policy, but for the purposes of party differentiation that point is now water under the bridge.
Never-the-less, I recommend this interesting article providing insight into one of the smartest of the rising stars of the new Republican Party. If the GOP are successful in overcoming the stupid wing of their Party, it might put pressure on us to do the same. If the Republicans move back to being a center-right party, will we Democrats might have to considering moving back in a left-wards direction?
We may need to concentrate some that we do not make their job easier by jolting ourselves in the Republican direction of stupid with any excess compromises of tax extensions, and budget balancing to avoid the "fiscal cliff."
But, after this confusing bit of celebration this last week, it's sort of comforting to see the 2016 presidential election cycle starting up so we can get back into our normal routines.