What change looks like: Government by the people, for the people

Funny how Jindal's been hyped as a conservative Republican intellectual (4.00 / 1)

and then laid that enormous egg that even some in the conservative punditry/chattering class deride as intellectually bankrupt.

Namely David Brooks. (Yep, best use of "nihilism" since De Beauvoir launched it at Arthur Koestler in the Deaux Magots that night back in '51 when...)

Channeling Brooks, what Jindal should have done was erect at least a respectable edifice for neo-Reaganism.

In other words, point out that while Reagan had tamed the bureaucratic beast in the 1980s, responsible conservatism acknowledges a role for government intervention in the economy, especially when that means either saving capitalism or outfitting the free market system with crutches when it stumbles and breaks a leg...or two. And in times of trouble, Mother Mary's governmental safety net programs for the truly needy were, indeed, vouchsafed by Reagan himself even in the early '80s (he had a nasty recession, too) when he was calling government "the problem not the solution."

So, having made a case for smart government in a time of emergency, Jindal should then have attacked the stim as flawed (and waste on a monumental scale) even by the standards of liberal economic (Keynesian) orthodoxy--not enough emphasis on private market job creation (infrastructure, including maybe even something visionary like rebuilding the nation's energy grid) with too much emphasis on creating public sector government jobs...yada yada yada. (Well, he tried to do that with his volcano monitoring BS, but he'd so epically failed already that it fell utterly flat.)

Had the Mahatma of the Bayou begun the process of articulating what the conservative chattering class would instantly and glowingly have dubbed neo-Reaganism, he might have been a hit. Or at least not spouted off drivel that Brooks labels "nihilistic," though that may have put Rushbo's man crush on the intellectual right's formerly Great non-Caucasian Hope at risk.

---

by: benjaminwalter @ Thu Feb 26, 2009 at 13:30:21 PM UTC

ironic (4.00 / 1)

I find it ironic how many of us dirty-hillybilly bloggers could have written a better rebuttal speech for Teh Republicans than they managed to pull off. They're flailing around because they are intellectually bankrupt.

That's the problem with running an anti-science, anti-government, anti-ideas party. It makes it really hard to dig yourself out of a hole when you face problems that cannot be solved by faith alone.

Clapping harder just barely re-elected Bush in 2004, it ain't worked out so great for the GOP since.

---

by: Clem Guttata @ Thu Feb 26, 2009 at 14:05:20 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Underestimate us butt-scratchin' hillbilly bloggers at your peril, I'd say (4.00 / 1)

Clem. :)
All this tiny clown had to do was make a case for limited government economic intervention as a general American conservative rule while also making a case for potentially massive short-term government intervention in unusual or emergency circumstances.

Had he done so--and, yes, Reaganism as a living, evolving body of thought, or guiding principles, could have been invoked--Jindal would at least today be the intellectual doyenne of an American conservatism desperately seeking Susan the mom w/kids and bills to pay, as well as not just philosophical rejuvenation but day-to-day tactical guidance.

And to further illustrate the point you make about their intellectual bankruptcy, consider this. Jindal's address attempted the Reagan form but without any new, response-to-the-current-situation content.

In other words, he told little illustrative "stories," but with none of The Gipper's B Actor flair, and although he just made shit up (an apparent homage to the Gipper and some of his more colorful "anecdotes" about Cadillac-driving welfare queens), Jindal the Page is paying a heavy price for getting caught in a web of homespun lies.

Sorry, Booby. The Gip was Teflon. You ain't.

---

by: benjaminwalter @ Thu Feb 26, 2009 at 14:28:55 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

So, now let's look at Jindal's Dilemma from another standpoint... (4.00 / 1)

Had he done what I'm saying, he'd have risked excoriation by the hard Republican right for straying way too far off the tax-breaks-as-universal-panacea reservation.

And that right there would have exposed their for-now gaping and untreatable wound--that President Obama has shited the center of the debate just ever so much to the left.  

---

by: benjaminwalter @ Thu Feb 26, 2009 at 14:44:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Good points on Jindal......... (4.00 / 2)

the thing I'm curious about is if anyone read over his speech prior to letting him loose on national tv?  or if anybody thought to have him practice the speech.....ya know, maybe in front of a camera, maybe practice then watch it, then fix what didn't work......is that too much to ask of a major political party? Maybe it was all thoroughly vetted and this is all they've got?
and the odd stagecraft...it takes you back to McCains lime green background speech or the ever-changing background during his convention speech....there really is nothing at all that was successfully pulled off the other night, the content, delivery, setting, entrance.....it was all just awful and amateurish.

---

by: japhyryder79 @ Thu Feb 26, 2009 at 15:58:21 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

He's dumb as hell if he didn't use this as an opportunity to... (0.00 / 0)

touch base prior to the address with conservative intellectual heavyweights like Brooks, Kristol and maybe even the austere Will or perhaps even their current Mount Rushmore: The Plumber, who probably would have billed him for his time.

Yeah, I wondered the same thing as you, japh. WTF? This is the guy Republicans have told me is the smartest elected official in the nation?

LMFAO

---

by: benjaminwalter @ Fri Feb 27, 2009 at 01:19:34 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Books sold: 5 (4.00 / 1)

Sam the Sham is in DC ahead of CPAC to sign books. Quite efficient, turned a 3 hour tour in to less than an hour. Yes, the same CPAC that booed McCain last year, but Joe tells us now he didn't really like McCain much either.

Speaking of William Kristol, has he been right about any thing?

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

---

by: CA Berkeley WV @ Fri Feb 27, 2009 at 02:31:37 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

And speaking of Kristol, did you hear what Chris Matthews said tonight (0.00 / 0)

about Kristol's column today? As described as, "Kill Obama in his crib."

The right has feared this since the end of the Cold War, that an undistracted by fear and the national security state as an endless way of life America would get around to asking troublesome questions like, "What the fuck do I get out of this? Health care maybe?"

That as we all know was one of many reasons that the War on Terror was prosecuted with such Force 10 fervor.

And their other fear's been, "What if the other side gets their own Reagan? How fucked might we be then?"

I think Orszag handed'em the bill today.

---

by: benjaminwalter @ Fri Feb 27, 2009 at 01:35:28 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

And to Gov. Sanford's horror (4.00 / 1)

this is why Rush said "I hope Obama fails". Not because he wants the country to go down with him. Because he realizes it will put an end to the "center-right" myth supported by the likes of Newsweek's Meacham.  Accomplishing health care reform has been the right's fear since Truman, hence the the War on the Poor and the Poverty Business.

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

---

by: CA Berkeley WV @ Fri Feb 27, 2009 at 02:19:58 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Huge Bingo, CA. In December at the forum the state Center for Budget (4.00 / 1)

& Policy put on in Charleston, the featured speaker was Michael Tomasky. He looked at the West Virginia vote (data came from CNN's exit-polling) and pointed that WV did not vote like a Deep South state. Looking to 2012, he was sanguine in his outlook on Obama's chances here, so long as health care reform gets done in the first term.

Then he threw in the caveat: big coal's response if the Obama Administration is at all aggressive in enacting climate change policies with teeth in them.

Now, of course he's not going to dismantle an industry that furnishes 46 percent of domestic electricity, but you won't probably won't be able to tell from the industry rhetoric we're likely to get three years from now.

It's interesting that the industry's media response to those extremely effective "No Such Thing As Clean Coal" ads, is the in-heavy-rotation clip of Obama comparing the search for clean coal technologies to America's determination to put a man on the moon in the Kennedy/Great Society '60s.

It's a blatant quid pro quo that I don't buy: hey, if you throw enough billions at clean coal we won't be as nasty as we're capable of being.

Yeah, right. They'll be vicious in 2012 no matter how much dough gets pumped into clean coal.

---

by: benjaminwalter @ Fri Feb 27, 2009 at 03:31:44 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

but will the (0.00 / 0)

Revolution Be Televised?

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

---

by: CA Berkeley WV @ Fri Feb 27, 2009 at 06:27:29 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

It was his RNC speech canceled because of Hurricane Gustav (4.00 / 2)

Originally to be delivered the same week as those of Rep. Michelle "science is not necessary because Jesus already saved the planet" Bachmann (R-MN-06) and Gov. "taxes and ethics are for other people" Palin (R-AK).

NFTT: Support My Team or I Will Dance

---

by: CA Berkeley WV @ Thu Feb 26, 2009 at 20:22:26 PM UTC

here's the fucking title (4.00 / 1)

JingleBob was a train wreck.  Besides the total lapses in logic, he sounded like he was the host of some afternoon kid's show.  Does that condescending tone actually work in Louisiana?
I sat there in total disbelief, but also thinking, "Wow, if this is the future of the republican party, the dems have many more years of policy setting."

---

by: SagaciousHillbilly @ Fri Feb 27, 2009 at 00:49:58 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

In hindsight, they could have gone thoughful. You know, Sir Samuel Wurzelbacher n/t (0.00 / 0)

n/t

---

by: benjaminwalter @ Fri Feb 27, 2009 at 01:10:45 AM UTC

[ Parent ]