That’s a big negative on the first question. No surrogate, whether
volunteering for campaign assistance or employed as a policy-making extension
of a chief executive, is going always to agree with the boss on every issue or
action. But that doesn’t matter so long as he loyally supports without public
dissension of whatever the candidate/executive does; that’s all you can ask.
And if that support cannot be forthcoming, then the subordinate resigns to
avoid disunity.
However, the campaign is over and it’s Ann, not Jindal, who married
Mitt. So if Jindal wants to point out flaws that he saw in it, he’s right to do
so, regardless of whether it’s from the goodness of his heart to improve his
party’s chances of winning elections and/or because identifying himself with
that criticism improves the prospects of his political career. It doesn’t make him
a hypocrite to have kept his mouth shut during the campaign about, then after
it criticize, the remark that Romney made that said he had an uphill climb when
47 percent of the population was in families receiving some kind of benefit
from the federal government, followed up by Romney calling many of these
transfer payments “gifts.” It makes him loyal as long as there was something to
which to be loyal.
It’s a strange definition of “hypocrisy” when it means if you have
disagreements with the leader that you must carry them to the grave. If the
Romney campaign had wanted errand boys willing to make blood oaths of silence instead
of distinguished surrogates whose purposes were to compel voters to tap the screen
for Romney, that’s who they should have had out on the hustings plumping for
Romney.
And what Jindal said that prompted the former aides’ complaining needed
to be said, both for the good of the GOP and for progression of a Jindal
political career. The main mistake made by the Romney campaign was its faith
that a projection of steadiness and competence with ideology taking a back seat
alone could win in an environment where so much of the electorate benefitted
from federal government largesse (yes, you can point out that over a third of
that “47 percent” was in the form of social insurance payouts, but practically
everybody receiving those has benefitted from huge government subsidies with
future generations paying for those of the past and through deficit spending).
Jindal is absolutely correct in maintaining that anybody receiving transfer
payments can be persuaded by the intellectual and quantifiable policy superiority
of conservatism. Many, because of character, temperament, and intellectual laziness,
will not be, but some will and can become part of a winning, enduring
coalition, Maybe you do get a “gift” from government, but some non-trivial
portion of those recipients want more and want a country where they or their
children don’t need such “gifts,” and it is, where liberalism fails to do so,
conservatism that demonstrates how that is achieved. As did Pres. Ronald Reagan
before him, Jindal (and others) get that. All that has to be done is to
communicate and demonstrate the core principles of conservatism.
Which, at best, Romney gave just a half-effort to, banking his campaign
on getting the majority in the country disappointed and disgusted to the polls,
instead of additionally challenging the caricature the left created about ideas
antithetical to its destructive agenda. That exit poll majorities still could pin
blame on the economic situation on Pres. Barack Obama’s
predecessor instead of on the guilty party himself and that the arrogant, insensitive,
and bad-mouthing Obama could be seen as more “caring” than Romney exactly
diagnoses this failure to offer more choice than echo by the Romney campaign.
That Jindal spoke of this flaw, even if at a more superficial, less
analytical level, while setting down a marker for any future national
aspirations, and subsequently drew this reaction from some may bring more
near-term, state-level political drawbacks for him. Legislators may take this
incident as a sign Jindal’s interest is waning in state governance if he seemed
so willing to move into a putative Romney Administration, and become more likely
to challenge him. Thus, Jindal needs to draw to a close the post-mortem phase
of the national campaign, no matter how much the media may wish to goad him to
keep it up (because the media believe conflict in politics sells, the bonus
being if it is within the GOP) and instead begin work on an aggressive and
well-prepared legislative agenda.
1 comment:
This is the post-election post I've been waiting for. All that bitterness, all that "resentiment" and emotional indignation. Finally coming to the surface as Jeff, teary-eyed and wounded, makes bitter accusations completely detached from reality. Obama is "arrogant," "insensitive"(!) and a "bad-mouther." As opposed, presumably, to Romney, who is Mr. Sensitive Empathy, right Jeff? And of course, the angry accusation that Obama bought votes by government handouts. Total garbage, and offensive. Just more of the subtle race and liberal-hating. Obama, of course, made no meaningful change to "welfare," but that doesn't stop Jeff from pushing the easily refuted claim. Anyway, thanks Jeff, I've been waiting for this rant. Lets see if you can manage to force yourself to stay outraged over the next four years without succumbing to outrage fatigue.
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