Jindal at Ross’ restaurant – excels at retail politics
We attended two campaign appearances of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal this week. The first was Wednesday at noon at the new Ross’s Restaurant in Betttendorf, which has been a campaign stop in this area for about every politician of every stripe for decades. Jindal was the first 2016 presidential candidate to hold an event at the new facility. The attendance in their meeting room was about 70, which filled the room and made the event stuffy intimate. As we have often said, if you live in Iowa (or just come to Iowa) and have any interest in politics you can literally rub elbows with almost every presidential aspirant in the months leading up to the caucuses.
The second event was Thursday evening at the Davenport Elks which is at the opposite end of the metro area. It was attended by about 90 individuals. Not many were the same from the day before which combined made for a decent turnout.
His standing in the polls with Republicans is unfortunate because he has an excellent message and connects well with the audiences. He is very personable, perhaps more so than any big-time politician we have seen including Rubio, and most make an effort. At each event he allowed more time for questions, comments and pictures, including one-on-one chats as we have seen.
While presuming the two events stump speeches would be similar we nevertheless bothered to attend the second event because we had more time to stay for his generous question and answer period — and we had a question to ask. The speech was similar, hitting all the right buttons for conservatives, but he elaborated on different points which easily kept our interest.
The question we had in mind was instigated after we came across an interesting attack on him from conservative former Red State Editor Erick Erickson, decrying what he said was Jindal’s support for doing away with the filibuster. We wanted to confirm the validity of the accusation and compliment Jindal if it were true. It was.
Jindal indicated he is a friend of Erickson’s (Erickson grew up in Louisiana) and basically brushed off the criticism. But Erickson’s concern was typical of the view point in support of the filibuster — that it some how protects minority views, state’s rights, etc.
The typical fear is that if Republicans lose the Senate or the presidency again,the filibuster is all that will protect the country from the Democrats. Apparently Erickson figures on losing the House at the same time. In our judgement the reality is that in the Senate it is a tool of Democrats to use as they wish with the help of Republicans. Under McConnell’s leadership its use by conservatives will be undermined because he says he fears for the Party being accused of shutting down government.
If Democrats remain in the Senate minority with a Republican president, they will not hesitate to use the filibuster, “shutting down” government, and under McConnell will be allowed to thwart legislation even preemptively just with the threat. With Republican’s in a minority role in the Senate with or without a Republican president, Democrats lead by a Reid or Durbin will not hesitate to change the rules to inhibit or disallow the filibuster or doing what ever is necessary to disallow Republican minority interests.
Some of the more memorable positions taken from Jindal’s stump speech and the Q and A’s to come …
R Mall
