Here is an article from CNN.com stating that even though Jindal's speech at the Republican National Committee retreat in Charlotte showed courage, the speech only identified the problems with the Republican Party not ways to fix the party:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/25/opinion/avlon-bobby-jindal/index.html
(CNN) -- Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal rode into the
Republican National Committee retreat in Charlotte, North Carolina,
ready to offer a dose of tough medicine for the Republican Party, which
he now says "must stop being the stupid party."
"The Republican Party does not need to change our principles," he said in a keynote speech, "but we might need to change just about everything else we do."
Ouch.
There's a problem with Jindal's prescription, however, rooted in an idea that Forrest Gump once articulated -- "stupid is as stupid does."
As the GOP enters a
period of reassessment, it knows it desperately needs to reach out
beyond its older white male conservative populist base. Jindal is an
appealing symbol of that needed change -- a young Southern governor who
is also an Indian American and former Rhodes scholar.
The GOP's problem in
reaching out beyond its conservative base is not simply a matter of
communication and tone. The problem is in the party's policies.
But because Jindal needs
to keep the conservative base in his corner to mount a widely expected
2016 presidential campaign, he is restrained from really dealing with
the root of the problem.
Instead, his well-written
speech -- presented as a refutation of President Barack Obama's second
inaugural address -- was incomplete and dominated by many of the
straw-man arguments he decried.
Defensively, Jindal
assured his audience that his federalist vision of modernizing the
Republican Party did not mean "moderating" its policies in any way.
"I am not one of those
who believe we should moderate, equivocate or otherwise abandon our
principles," Jindal said. "This badly disappoints many of the liberals
in the national media, of course. For them, real change means:
supporting abortion on demand without apology, abandoning traditional
marriage between one man and one woman, embracing government growth as
the key to American success, agreeing to higher taxes every year to pay
for government expansion, and endorsing the enlightened policies of
European socialism."
The tragicomic
caricature does not describe what Democrats believe or what a centrist
Republican might want. But the markers Jindal puts down means he is
backing social conservative positions such as opposition to same-sex
marriage and the call for a constitutional ban on abortion that is
codified in the party platform.
Many voters --
especially members of the millennial generation -- consider these
positions at odds with libertarians' professed belief in maximizing
individual freedom, but the contradiction and resulting voter alienation
is entirely sidestepped. Confronting it is politically inconvenient, if
not impossible.
Not being the stupid
party also means supporting science and the separation of church and
state, at least to the extent that creationism is not taught in public
schools. But Jindal has backed the teaching of creationism in Louisiana public schools in a pander to conservative populists. Physician, heal thyself.
When Jindal says, "We
must not become the party of austerity. We must become the party of
growth," he is arguing for a positive frame for the conservative
message. But he is not actually questioning conservatives' call to cut
federal spending and social programs dramatically, which could restrict
growth and alienate efforts to appeal beyond the base. He's just saying
the GOP should present the glass as half full.
I'm all for reinventing
government and reducing bureaucracy dramatically -- as Jindal calls for
-- but part of "talking to Americans like adults" -- involves talking
about the real costs and consequences, not just reframing the debate.
Jindal rightly says, "We
had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive
and bizarre comments. We've had enough of that." He's presumably
referring to the self-destructed tea-evangelist Senate campaigns of
Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin -- which alienated women and centrist
voters with the candidates' tortured talk about rape, biology and
abortion.
But the problem with
those bizarre and offensive comments was rooted in the policies the
Senate candidates were being asked to defend -- namely, their
faith-based opposition to abortion, even in cases of rape. Unless, that
policy is addressed, the problem will remain. Silence on the subject
doesn't solving anything.
Likewise, correcting the
overwhelmingly white complexion of the conservative base will require
more than just talking to everyone as individuals and rejecting identity
politics. It will require backing policies such as comprehensive
immigration reform -- as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have backed. Jindal
stayed silent on the subject and substance.
There is a lot to admire
in Jindal's speech -- first and foremost the courage it took to
challenge his party in unvarnished terms so soon after a stinging
election loss. He is right about the need to offer a compelling contrast
rooted in radical simplification to decrease costs and increase
efficiency. Jindal is correct in saying that Mitt Romney's failure was
in large part his inability to move beyond simply criticizing Obama and
offer a detailed positive policy alternative. But that failure was
rooted in the fact that much of current conservative policy is broadly
unpopular, a problem only compounded when the party becomes more
polarized and dominated by the far-right debating society.
The demonization of
Obama beyond all reason and reality only adds to the credibility gap
that conservatives are now confronting. Most leading national Democrats
-- whether it is Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton or John Kerry -- may
be decidedly center-left, but they are basically pragmatic progressives,
not the kind of fuming anti-American statists many conservatives
imagine. Most Main Street Americans understand this, and hard-core
conservatives look a bit dotty for insisting their overheated vision is
rooted in reality.
There's one final
contradiction between rhetoric and reality that's worth confronting.
Jindal spent a lot of time in his speech slamming the "barren concrete"
of Washington and the job of "managing government." But if Jindal runs
for president -- as seems increasingly likely -- he'll be running for
the privilege of living in that barren concrete jungle and managing the
federal government. That's a basic part of the job description. Let's be
honest: Jindal doesn't really hate the federal government; he wants to
run it.
Jindal is courageous to
call on his party to stop being "the stupid party." But that slogan and
his speech is a diagnosis of the problem, not a prescription for fixing
it. Confronting the impulse to pander to social conservative populists
is necessary to fix "the stupid party." The problem is in the policy,
not just political perception.
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