The Republican's Problem

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The Republican Party's problem is, well Republicans or what left of them.  I'm talking about the knuckle dragging bigoted base that feels more at home in the 16th century. There is a reason the republican Party is now primarily a party of the South - that's where most of the knuckle draggers live.  They hate the federal government because it made them free the slaves and then expected them to treat the black and brown skinned people like human beings.  Oh, then there is the whole 16th century religious thing.  In order to win otherwise reasonable and intelligent Republicans have to dumb themselves down in order to win.  We saw it when John McCain ditched must of what he stood for in his run for President and according to Joe Klein we are seeing the same thing with Bobby Jindal. 

Bobby Jindal is a very smart fellow. Back when he was in Congress, I'd try to check in with him every six months or so, just to see what he was thinking about. At first, we talked about health insurance--his specialty. Then, about the federal response to Hurricane Katrina (he was appalled). He was fairly relentlessly conservative, but sometimes quite creative and always intellectually honest. 

In short, a different fellow from the one who appeared on Meet the Press today. This Jindal was relentlessly conservative, but not so intellectually honest.

Playing to the base:

The Governor of Louisiana has made headlines this week by threatening to refuse the stimulus package funds headed to his state. But he's not going to do that, really. He's going to accept all the money heading his way--except for the funds associated with one program, a permanent change in the rules governing the provision of unemployment insurance to part-time workers. 

He spent an awful lot of time griping about the overall stimulus package--although, in the end, that was pretty much a distortion, too. When it came down to it, Jindal didn't like the aforementioned unemployment insurance provision and the slight trims on tax breaks for small businesses. He also didn't like some of the infrastructure spending--on high-speed rail. He also didn't like $50 million originally proposed for the National Endowment of the Arts. (I'm not even sure that famous $50 million made it into the final bill, although I hope it did: a country whose children have a more supple knowledge of music and art will, without question, have more sophisticated and productive workers.)

To summarize: Jindal opposes the unemployment codicil, the slimmer tax breaks for small businesses, the support for high-speed rail and the money for the arts. That leaves the overwhelming bulk of the stimulus package, which he presumably supports.

Of course the real driving forces are the Grover Norquist ideologues who simply don't want the government interfering with there criminal activities and taxing there ill made gains but they use the knuckle draggers very well. Of course they have the"populist" knuckle dragging militias fired up but that won't play like it once did.  The republican party has no new ideas, only the ones that have already failed.

At one point in the interview, Jindal--who seems to be running for President--trotted out the standard Republican boilerplate about the need for a package with more tax cuts, especially in the capital gains tax. David Gregory pointed out that we'd just had eight years of that philosophy, and it hadn't done very much to help  job creation or median incomes. Jindal resorted to the Republican fantasy playbook--to the Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts, which allegedly helped boost the economy.  

The answer doesn't surprise me but the fact that David Gregory challenged him does.