Conservatives have an opportunity to present a clear alternative to the consequences of failed liberal policies that have become part of everyday life to Americans, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Friday.
Jindal, a Republican presidential hopeful, elaborated on the theme during an extended segment of a question-and-answer session at the Ideas Summit hosted by the National Review Institute in Washington, D.C.
The governor’s riff began with a criticism of President Obama’s leadership but morphed into something more as he warmed up in front of a receptive crowd.
“The president has done a great job—and I don’t mean this as a compliment—but I think he has done a great job of dividing the country,” Jindal said. “He divides us by gender, by race, by geography, by age, by income.”
What got Jindal going was the subject of the Baltimore riots that followed the funeral of a young black man who suffered a fatal injury while in police custody. The governor was careful not to minimize the sadness of the case or the need for local law enforcement to gather the facts and act accordingly.
Then he said:
Let the Democrats divide us with special interest groups. We should be speaking of universal aspirations. I believe every mom or dad wants their child to have a better education, have a better-paying job and live the American dream like my parents wanted for me.
Jindal, 43, is the son of parents who came to America from India. He told a favorite story of a young mother who, like her mother before her, had a baby while still a teen. She thanked the governor for a state program that made it possible for her daughter to get a scholarship to a parochial school in New Orleans.
The second-term governor, still pondering a White House run, quipped that he didn’t think she voted for him, except perhaps “by mistake.”
While on the subject of children, he boasted that on his watch Louisiana concentrated on private-sector growth to reverse a population drain and add residents in each of seven years. His administration “made tough choices so our kids would come back,” he said.
“Where I think voters are today is that after six and a half or seven years, they’ve seen this president’s policies don’t work,” Jindal said. “You don’t need a bunch of numbers to tell them … Their kids are still living on their couch after [graduating] school. They can’t pay back their student loans, health care premiums didn’t get cut $2,500. All the things we were told were going to happen didn’t happen.”
Jindal’s conclusion:
I think they’re open to conservatives making their case. … I think that the real opportunity for us is to show our ideas are better. The danger and trap for us is that if we simply become the anti-Obama party.
We don’t have to re-litigate the past, we have to show people going forward our ideas do work, they are better, they’ve worked in states where they’ve been implemented. And they’ll work for our country as well.
I think people are open to that message. I don’t think the American people are a jealous people. One of the mistakes this president has made is he’s tried to appeal to our worst selves. He’s tried to say to us, ‘Look at those people over there who are successful. They must have cheated you, they must have broken the rules. Their success is hurting you.’ …
And yet I think that is increasingly the danger, that we have a generation that forgets the American dream. I think as conservatives we have to make a positive case to every voter that tomorrow can be better than today, and it’s not rocket science. We just have to get back to the ideas of growth and opportunity. We have to move away from the sense that a larger, more expensive, more intrusive government is the answer to every problem.
The one good thing this president has done? He has proven that progressivism doesn’t work. He has proven that government isn’t the answer to every problem—and Obamacare is Exhibit A.
