Republican Response: Jindal on America

By Kevin Robinson in News on Feb 25, 2009 4:00PM

Not to be outdone by President Obama, the GOP gave Americans their own minority leader to talk about his vision for our nation. Louisiana Governor (and the antithesis of Rod Blagojevich - hair notwithstanding) Piyush "Bobby" Jindal presented the Republican response to President Obama's speech last night.

Recounting the story of how his family came to America while his mother was still pregnant with him, Jindal touched on themes of self-sufficiency, independence and hard-work: "To find work, my dad picked up the yellow pages and started calling local businesses. Even after landing a job, he could still not afford to pay for my delivery -- so he worked out an installment plan with the doctor."

Jindal, who's name has variously been floated as a potential challenger to Obama in 2012 and the future of the Republican party drew on his experiences in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to draw bipartisan analogies for solutions to what ails the country:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters.

The boats were all lined up ready to go -- when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

Jindal slammed Obama's recovery plan as "larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects." Jindal then argued for tax cuts and swift action to reduce engery prices, saying "we need urgent action to keep energy prices down. All of us remember what it felt like to pay $4 at the pump -- and unless we act now, those prices will return. To stop that from happening, we need to increase conservation, increase energy efficiency, increase the use of alternative and renewable fuels, increase our use of nuclear power, and increase drilling for oil and gas here at home." He also cited reforms in the New Orleans schools as an example of what happens when government reduces its scope: "After Katrina, we reinvented the New Orleans school system -- opening dozens of new charter schools, and creating a new scholarship program that is giving parents the chance to send their children to private or parochial schools of their choice. We believe that, with the proper education, the children of America can do anything."

Whether Americans can get on board with less government regulation increased oil exploration at this point in history seems like a long shot. Calling spending on American manufacturing and infrastructure improvements "wasteful" at a time when massive layoffs are racking the economy weekly sounds less like a response and more like a reaction. In fact, Jindal's response to Obama's address was startling not because of the proposals it included, but in how much of it agreed with the broader agenda the president laid out. If anything, Jindal (and, by proxy, the GOP) didn't offer any new ideas, just the same basic agenda with which they lost the 2008 election. And if one listened very carefully, they would have heard beneath the rhetoric a dark vision for America.

If you missed it, here is video of Gov. Jindal's speech in its entirety.