if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
Bye Bye Blanco
by Hal_10000
A lot of conservatives are very excited about the Louisiana election:
U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal became the nation’s youngest governor and the first nonwhite to hold post in Louisiana since Reconstruction when he carried more than half the vote to defeat 11 opponents.
Jindal, the Republican 36-year-old son of Indian immigrants, had 53 percent with 625,036 votes with about 92 percent of the vote tallied. It was more than enough to win Saturday’s election outright and avoid a November 17 runoff.
“My mom and dad came to this country in pursuit of the American dream. And guess what happened. They found the American Dream to be alive and well right here in Louisiana,” he said to cheers and applause at his victory party.
Here’s the important part:
Oxford-educated Jindal had lost the governor’s race four years ago to Gov. Kathleen Blanco. He won a congressional seat in conservative suburban New Orleans a year later but was widely believed to have his eye on the governor’s mansion. Watch more about Jindal’s rise to the governor’s office ยป
Blanco opted not to run for re-election after she was widely blamed for the state’s slow response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
Holy crap! A Democrat was actually held responsible for Katrina!
There is no question that the incompetence of Kathleen Blanco was a key reason for the Katrina debacle (note, this does not exonerate the President from responsibility). Ray Nagin got re-elected because he was running against another Landrieu and the people of New Orleans preferred Nagin’s brand of incompetence over Landrieu’s brand of corruption. But finally given a choice between a non-corrupt, non-incompetent and ... everyone else ... they chose Jindal.
One thing to be clear on, however. Just because Blanco and the Democrats were bad does not make Jindal good. He’s a Religious Right guy who wants creationism intelligent design taught on schools, opposes stem cell research and voted with his party 97% of the time in Congress. NTU gave him a B on spending, which is better than most Republicans these days. He’s an improvement for Louisiana but let’s not get too excited about Jindal being the future of conservatism.
Comments
How is Jindal different from the status quo? I would like to buy into the hype, but I’m just not seeing it. He votes with the GOP the vast majority of the time and he’s even more hardline on cultural issues than, say, President Bush. This is the future of the GOP?
Just curious, are either of your folks from Louisiana?
Jindal caused me to vote for a democrat for the first time ever. Mostly because I’ve gotten to the point where the war on drugs is my number one political peeve, particularly for a local/state election. He’ll probably do some good things for Louisiana fiscally, but he’s going to persecute black people (via the war on (some) drug[s] (users)) although he will honestly believe he’s helping. His drug/crime (as if they’re the same thing) plan doesn’t say anything that will significantly affect responsible, suburban, middle-class drug users. He probably doesn’t know they exist.
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I’ve kept my eye on Bobby since the beginning of his first shot at the Governor’s mansion. I’m pretty excited by the guy. He’s part of a new generation of Republicans that is quite different from the status quo, and who I think have great promise if they can stick with their principles.