Bobby Jindal’s 2016 pitch: I am Christian; also, I am the governor of Louisiana

[cbayer]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/05/13/bobby-jindals-2016-pitch-i-am-christian-also-i-am-the-governor-of-louisiana/

BY PHILIP BUMP
May 13 at 1:14 pm

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s by-now-well-established effort to lure conservative Christian voters to his not-yet-official presidential campaign suffers from two key problems. First, there is at least one other possible 2016 candidate with much stronger evangelical credentials. And, second, Jindal is not a well-known candidate.



FILE - In this Aug. 30, 2013 file photo, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal speaks in Orlando, Fla. Getting ready to run for president means working through a hefty checklist of activities long before most people are paying attention to the contest ahead. Prep work, positioning and auditioning don't wait for the primary season. And the pace is picking up. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)


As today’s front-page Post article by Tom Hamburger makes clear, Jindal’s efforts to make his background known to voters has been kicked into a higher gear recently. He took a prominent position in support of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson last December, then became actively engaged in the religious freedom push that flashed through several states earlier this year. Hamburger’s report on Jindal’s outreach to pastors in early primary states makes clear that the governor is making both a public and private effort to cultivate support in this community.

This is a smart strategy. Evangelical voters make up a significant chunk of the Republican primary electorate. In 2012, a report from Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition estimated that half of the Republican voters through March of the primary season identified as evangelical Christians. Exit polls from national networks suggested that this probably wasn’t too far from the truth. In some states, particularly in the South, four out of five voters in the 2012 primaries identified themselves that way.

Jindal’s problem — the problem that he’s explicitly trying to fix — is that people barely recognize him as a candidate, much less as a Christian conservative one. Since Jindal has remained on the fringes of the national conversation, there isn’t a lot of polling showing how well known he is at this point. In a national Fairleigh Dickinson University poll conducted in 2012 (admittedly, a long time ago — but after Jindal’s heavily derided State of the Union response), 63 percent of respondents hadn’t heard of the governor. (He’d won reelection by a wide margin the year before.)

more at link

[TlalocW]

1. It ain't going to happen Jindal

At least not right away, and then it's a long shot.

There's no way after 8 years of a "colored" in the White House republicans are not going to nominate a white old guy. Hell, even if Obama had been a white guy named John Smith, the probability of republicans nominating a non-white old guy would only have jumped from 0% to 1%. And that's probably not going to change moving forward for the next several presidential elections.

So Jindal's best bet is to try and prove his conservative bonafides without looking like a buffoon while doing it (*ahem* Perry) while sucking up to whoever he thinks will be the nominee during the debates and hope that he can get the vice-presidential nomination, which is unlikely anyway because Louisiana is pretty solid republican when it comes to voting for president so you have to question what advantages he would bring to the table. And the answer again is race. The republican actually believed that having Palin on the ticket would attract women voters, who they assumed wouldn't care about Sarah's qualifications (or lack of), but they would go ahead and vote republican because the veep candidate had the same kind of sex organs that they do. So it's not that far a reach to believe that some would push for Jindal as the new Palin, believing that non-whites all over America would see him as proof that republicans aren't racist fucks, never mind their policies that screw them over, which of course they won't educate themselves on, those silly brown people! Ha-ha-ha! After all, Bobby kind of looks like them!

But of course, there are actually some other republicans this time around that could fill that ticket - Rubio, Carson, West (if they wanted someone who was batshit insane), etc.

So, long shot - Jindal is the veep candidate in 2016.
Further long shot - GOP wins the presidency.
Even further long shot - GOP wins again in 2020.
Extremely further long shot - Jindal hasn't done anything to disqualify himself as a serious contender and being the vice president is thus in good standing to run for president in 2024 and wins.

And waaaaaaay out there long shot - First two or three happens, and the president dies, and Jindal takes over the presidency.

So barring that last one, I don't see Jindal having a shot until 2024 and that's if if my long shot scenarios play out. If they don't, tough luck for Bobby.

[cbayer]

2. I tend to agree with you, but, then again, I never thought I'd see him

do what he did in Louisiana.

He's not stupid and he's a pretty savvy politician, despite his "Gee, shucks" attitude at times. Louisiana has never elected someone with a name like his or a look like his.

If it can happen there, I wouldn't completely rule him out at the national level.