So Bobby Jindal gave a speech, with recommendations for the Republican party.
We’ve got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults. We had a number of Republicans damage the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. I’m here to say we’ve had enough of that.
Bobby Jindal, creationist. Bobby Jindal, opponent of public education. Bobby Jindal, drill baby drill.
Yes, the Republicans need to stop saying stupid things. Let’s start by kicking Bobby Jindal out of office.
Oh, look here: Five reasons Jindal is responsible for transforming Republicans into the “stupid party”.
In a way, I suppose it is a good sign… Jindal is not the only one of the wingnuts to notice the party has gone all wingnutty. If even the inmates are starting to say, “Hey, the asylum seems to be rather ill-run at the moment”, I suppose that says… something.
PZ, keep in mind that to the Republicans, anything that questions creationism, supports public education and worries about the environment is offensive and bizarre. They truly believe that a fascist theocracy populated by a horde of ignorant drones is truly the best possible world (as long as they are the priviledged, educated elite behind the curtain, of course.)
It WOULD be a good sign, if he recognized his own damn wignuttery. As it is, it’s pretty meaningless.
Yeah, fine. But who are they going pick as the leaders of GOP v2.0? Who in the party is the least stupid, and who is qualified to make that decision?
Five bucks says nothing changes, and in 2016 the GOP nominate a proper dyed-in-the-wool fundie (not just a wishy-washy Mormon) for the Presidency
You left one out:
Bobby Jindal, believer in exorcism of demons
Translation for Bobby Jindal: “We need to hide our AMERICAN ideas better from those un-American liberals!”
The language in the article is, unsurprisingly, all about changing not their actual thinking or policies but their “brand” and “message.” In terms of content it’s more of the same, and they’re less likely to get away with it as time goes on. No amount of image-polishing is going to make their ideas and policies preferable.
It’s a good thing we are bilaterians, with most of our glands coming paired.
That spare irony gland comes in real handy sometimes.
Well their dumbass policies lost them the election last year, but I can’t see the evangelical voter base ever changing its mind. It’ll be a long slow dwindling for the GOP, rather than a single outright wipeout
@SC (Salty Current), OM #8 – Perhaps Jindal saw the episode of Mythbusters which showed that, yes, you can polish a turd
The republican party is the party of stupid: all of their economic, social, and military theories are laughably wrong and proven to be disastrous. The American people finally seemed to wise up to that fact and started to send the party to the Whig path of irrelevancy. But then the democrats had to go fuck it all up by hanging their hat on gun control. It is going to be 1994 all over again as people use their vote to retaliate rather than to support. I fear for what the collateral damage will be from resurrecting the republican party without any sort of reform of their stupidity… “Contract on America part deux”
Yeah, my first thought when I heard this was, “Isn’t this the guy who thinks he exorcised a demon out of his girlfriend or some shit?”
Until they make fundamental changes to their primary process, no sane Republican candidate will make it to the general election. You have to say so much conservative wackalooon bullshit to appease the hard core base to make it through the primaries that once you’ve clinched the nomination you’re essentially unelectable. Their saving grace in previous decades was the white vote, but as even Republicans are now realizing, that’s a failed bet for the future. Gerrymandering will keep them alive in congress for the next few years, but barring a huge about-face I think the writing is on the wall for Republicans.
“Obviously the stupid shit OTHER Republicans say is stupid shit. But the stupid shit that I say really does make sense if you look at it through a foggy lens in blue-lit room exclusively at a 63 degree angle, you big meanies.”
Jindal, the genius who wasted $220 million USD to build worthless sand berms after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Don’t underestimate the stupidity of the American voting public. If the economy is shitty enough, their desperation will override common sense and critical thought.
Just look at Chris Christie. I’ve seen tons of self-proclaimed “independents” and Democrats declaring they’d elect Christie POTUS, based on his reaming of the GOP over the last month. Whenever I point out that he still tows the line on most GOP policies, I just get “But… but… he yelled at this own party! He’s a moderate!”
I’d trust a rabid pit bull in a preschool before I’d trust that the American public truly gets how out to lunch the current GOP is.
What’s particularly rich for me is that the first time I heard of Bobby Jindal (and I’m sure this is true for many others as well) was when he was being rightfully mocked for treating volcano monitoring as a wasteful joke in his State of the Union response.
Jindal is wrong. The Republicans don’t need to stop saying stupid things. All they really need to do is continue their plan to systematically alter the electoral college so that Democratic votes count for less. If the Democratic party continues to snooze on the situation, and the American public continues to be too stupid to even notice, then I don’t see why they would need to alter their speech in any way.
The difference with Christie seems to be that he understands enough not to bite the hand that feeds him. His response to Hurricane Sandy is proof of that. Chalk it up to political calculus or cunning, but I sense that he is slightly more sensitive to the winds of change blowing these days than most of his ignorant colleagues. I doubt they will listen.
To be clear, Jindal isn’t talking about changing the Republican party in any substantive way. He’s talking about rebranding it. This is modern marketing babble for better market research, new buzz phrases, flashier flying logos, rearranging the deck chairs, slapping some lipstick on those porkers.
He’s not saying that Romney, Ryan, Akin, Gingrich, Bachmann, Perry, The Donald, et al were wrong to support policies that give $$ to the rich, put god back in the classroom, stop abortion (including for rape), kill the Fed, etc. He’s saying Republicans were stupid to say things out loud about these ideas. They didn’t play well in the media and they hurt the brand.
He’s correct from a strategic point of view. The buzz phrases from the past election…49% and legitimate rape, in particular…were stupid to say even in a semi-private domain and they probably cost Republicans several races, including the presidential race.
What’s sad is that the discussion of the important issues our country faces is little more than a Madison Avenue farce to manipulate an unthinking populace.
@19
if that “plan” is successful they could win one election but I would bet that that win would finally spell the end of the electrical college as we know it.
What it sounds like to me is they want to modify their image so to appeal more to the other voters not the white conservative christian men. They think if they lie better they will win. They think they are right they believe they are the majority. They seem to think that women really believe that they have too much freedom, that all minorities want to be white like them. That the upper classes are “better” that money makes you superior that the poor are the enemy and want to repress us.
my advice is to keep doing what you’re doing it can only get better.
uncle frogy
I have many Repub friends with whom I never talk politics, just to preserve the friendship. But one baffled soul just couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t vote for the GOP and such wonderful candidates as Palin or Bachmann (Like I’m a woman and they’re women – so I should be like 100% behind them).
I told him that I would NEVER support a party who fielded 4 out of 5 presidential candidates who believed in creationism. Nor for any woman, like Palin, who didn’t know why money was “wasted” on fruit fly research – especially, as the next “age” of economic growth will probably be fueled by biology. He didn’t take it well.
It’s sad, really. Most of my rational Repub friends supported the GOP because of taxes, the deficit, the economy. Mention the Religious Right and they wave it away as “just a few kooks”. They actually have no idea or are in denial of how deeply the RR is embedded in their party and the damage it is doing to it.
Also bad reasons to support the Republicans.
(I refuse to use the Grand Old Party abbreviation, no matter how many keystrokes it saves me)
Not to worry. Plans are afoot to ensure the Stupid Party rules for 1,000 years of power, regardless of what the little people think or how they “vote.”
Bobby Jindal: Fuck the dying
@rthur2013 (#10):
“The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can’t change your mind, because God sure isn’t going to change His.” (Roger Ebert)
Never voted for him and never will. I do take pleasure in voting against him every chance I get. Unfortunately I am in the minority in Louisiana. If he runs for POTUS you can have him although I don’t relish spreading his kookiness to the rest of the U.S. Of course, we still wouldn’t truly be rid of him. Sigh.
Maybe Jindal was simply posturing for support from the Republican wingnut base and doesn’t believe some of the ridiculous shit he’s said?
…I put fake HTML tags in that last post that was interpreted as real HTML. Heh.
It was supposed to have [naive optimism] and [/naive optimism] in there, except with >< signs.
I remember people used to say that about Romney. Unfortunately, when the beliefs a politician express are as crazy as those of the mainstream Republican party, he traps himself in a dilemma (or she, no matter how much cognitive dissonance you need to be a female Republican politician). Either he really holds ridiculous beliefs, or he thinks it’s acceptable to pretend to hold ridiculous beliefs in order to gain popular support. Either way, why would you trust a person like that?
So this guy Jindal says the Republican Party is going to “stop being the stupid party?” Not likely. Instead, he is soon going to find himself purged, along with Christie, or at the very least unelectable in their primaries. Look, half of all Americans are of below average intelligence and, for the last 30 years or so, the Republican strategy seems to have been to play that half of our citizenry by making them feel better about themselves. Delusional Bible thumpers, paranoid gun nuts, venomous racists, sexists, authoritarian wingnuts and general purpose haters of every stripe have found succor and validation in the Republican Party. The result has been that pretty much anyone who is sane and intelligent finds the Republican Party of today to be toxic, repulsive and very nearly traitorous. It’s a shame. I once was a proud “Goldwater Republican” myself. No more. I am very certain that Goldwater himself would no longer sanction what the Republican Party has become. So to Bobby Jindal, who himself is certainly NOT the brightest bulb, I say “Good luck!”
Rip Steakface,
You have to use HTML entities in place of the < and >.
< = <
> = >
i.e. “<naive optimism>” becomes “<naive optimism>”
(This message looks quite odd in the compose window since I have to use & to produce an ampersand that doesn’t get collapsed into a single character.)
ckitching,
Also with the use of < > it used to be (not sure if it’s still true, can’t be arsed to try) that preview would convert these to < and > and then when you posted they would get eaten. So take care when trying to do fake-HTML tags and preview together.
*headdesk*
Those weren’t the vinegar flies you’re thinking of. They were actual fruit-eating fruit flies that have an impact on some fruit harvest or other in… wait for it… California, which votes Democratic anyway, so doing anything for it is a waste from a Republican point of view.
…Are you sure they’re rational? Their reasons aren’t.
Simple lack of cognition worked quite well for Palin and seems to still be working for Bachmann.
Even after he wanted to nuke North Vietnam?