I’m not sure what is selling lower this morning- Citibank or Jindal 2012 stock, but it really is hard to state accurately just how bad it was. It started off like this:
That was Chris Matthews, and while the folks on the right will be screaming about liberal media bias, they might be wise to remember that Matthews is a superficial twit, but he was responding to the optics of the entrance, and the optics were not good. Watch Jindal goofily lope in his weird gait out to the microphone with that uncomfortable smile on his face- all of which happened after Obama’s command performance in the regal chamber in front of hundreds of clapping people. “Oh, God” is right. And then he started to talk. My snap reaction:
Is Jindal addressing the nation or auditioning for the job as Mr. Rogers replacement? WTF is up with this sing-songy delivery? He sounds like he is addressing grade school kids.
Then again, maybe the Republican voters tuned in for him, so maybe he just knows his target audience.
Now, in fairness, the responses are always awful. Every year (with the exception of Jim Webb) someone is trotted out and forced to give the response, and it is at this point the political equivalent of throwing a virgin into a volcano. It is beyond time for them to end. However, there was something just especially awful this year, and already the comparison to Kenneth from 30 Rock is sweeping across the intertubes.
And speaking of volcanoes, Jindal’s response was just nonsense on wheels. Some snippets:
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.
There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit of our citizens.
Seriously, does the Governor of the state that required several hundred billion FEDERAL dollars to rebuild really want to crow that the government was the problem. Really? That is rugged individualism? And I thought the lesson of Katrina was that an INSUFFICIENT federal response was the problem. Jindal is now claiming that the strength of America is in the individual response. You heard that right. Bobby Jindal says that what America needed was more folks like… Sean Penn. You know- the guy Republicans mocked during the disaster.
And for the life of me, I have no idea why Republicans hate replacing the federal fleet of cars with fuel-efficient vehicles or monitoring volcanoes to avoid disasters. It seems to me that the latter, making sure volcanoes do not blow up on your citizenry, would be something that even Ron Paul would think is a government job.
These guys have nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well, they do have Fred Hiatt’s editorial page, where Michael Gerson does the deed this morning, but other than that, the Republican party is just a pathetic joke.
*** Update ***
From the comments:
His entrance was horrific. Stepping out of the shadows, he looks like the psycho killer who’s trying to act normal after just having finished sinking a car with a dead body in the trunk in the swamp behind his house. Did M. Night Shyamalan direct that entrance? Because I see dead people.
The Morning After Look at the Jindal ResponsePost + Comments (155)