Bobby Jindal's response-to-Obama speech came out like Gomer Pyle explaining waterboarding to kindergarteners just before a big tap dance number. And that's not counting the backward-looking political viewpoint. He's a weird dude, Jindal.
Also, as a longtime (former) resident of Louisiana, I have to raise a major objection: the city is not pronounced "Baton Rooj," but Baton Rouge, as in that Frenchy "zh" business. Therefore I'm going to start my own conspiracy theory here and now. Bobby Jindal, are you really from Louisiana?? Or were you really born in India to a Tamil Tiger mother and Phil Gramm? Where's your birth certificate? Why won't you show it to me? You'd show it to me if you didn't have something to hide.
Just saying.
In related news, it's more likely that I would grow a third hand than find David Brooks compelling. Now and then it's even possible to agree with him, but something about all that blinking and blinking is really off-putting.
But this is a muy interesante take from Brooks on Jindal's speech last night. It encapsulates very well the inadequacies of the old Republican formula in the current climate:
…to come up at this moment in history with a stale "government is the problem," "we can't trust the federal government" – it's just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic right now. They may not like the way the Democrats have passed the stimulus bill, but that idea that we're just gonna – that government is going to have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that – In a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say "government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending," it's just a form of nihilism. It's just not where the country is, it's not where the future of the country is. There's an intra-Republican debate. Some people say the Republican Party lost its way because they got too moderate. Some people say they got too weird or too conservative. He thinks they got too moderate, and so he's making that case. I think it's insane, and I just think it's a disaster for the party. I just think it's unfortunate right now.
Followed by 417 blinks.
