All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said President Obama's push for health care reform is more about rhetoric than reality.

"His marketing is the best part of this," the Republican governor said Thursday on CBS' "The Early Show", the morning after Mr. Obama addressed the nation in a prime time news conference aimed at jumpstarting support for his health initiative.

"[Obama] said, he does not want to increase the deficit, does not want government control of healthcare. He wants people to keep their insurance. He wants to crack down on the abuse, the over utilization. All that's great. The problem is that's not what's in the House Democrat bill. The House Democratic bill increases the deficit by $250 billion [and] increases the burden on employers. Why would we want to do that during one of the worst recessions in decades?"

In his news conference, Mr. Obama emphasized the importance of reform, but pledged that he would not support any plan that increased the federal deficit or placed an economic burden on middle class families.

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Gov. Mark Sanford’s, R-S.C., tearful admission of an extramarital affair comes on the heels of Sen. John Ensign's, R-Nev., similar admission last week and is the second potential 2012 presidential candidate to announce such a revelation. As in the case of Ensign, it's safe to say that Sanford's future as a presidential candidate is all but over.

If there's a concern for the Republican Party, it's not that these admissions will have an effect on the various races that will take place this year and in next year's midterm elections. It's that they're losing some of their fresh faces as potential national voices.

Both the 49-year-old Sanford and the 51-year-old Ensign's admissions come at a time when the GOP is struggling to find the next generation of voices to combat a Democratic president and Congress.

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The leader of the political action committee urging Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal to run for president in 2012 has called on supporters to halt their efforts, The Associated Press reports.

"Jindal For President Draft Council" treasurer Dan Kyle said Tuesday that pressure from the governor's organization led to the the action. A letter from Jindal's campaign was sent to the PAC, stating that the draft effort would be a distraction.

"I believe that the last thing anyone in this group would want to be is a distraction to the governor in achieving his goals," Kyle wrote to Bobby Yarborough, treasurer of Jindal's state campaign organization, The Times-Picayune reports.

Jindal has previously denied his presidential hopes and maintains that he wants to remain in Louisiana for as long as possible.

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Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal yesterday addressed criticism of the widely-panned speech he gave one week ago responding to the President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress.

“Look, I get that people thought I could have spoken better. I get that,” Jindal told reporters in Baton Rouge, according to the Associated Press. “That's fine ... What's important to me is the content. I'm a policy guy. You guys know that. I've always been a policy guy, always will be a policy guy. The ideas are important. The substance is important.”

Though Jindal was widely criticized on his delivery, he also took heat from both Democrats and Republicans for the content of his speech, which some deemed a rehash of tired GOP ideas. New York Times center-right columnist David Brooks called Jindal’s rhetoric “a form of nihilism” and deemed the speech “a disaster for the party.”

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In his much-criticized response to President Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told a story about an interaction he had with Sheriff Harry Lee of Jefferson Parish, who died in 2007. Here’s what he said:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I'd never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: 'Well, I'm the Sheriff and if you don't like it you can come and arrest me!' I asked him: 'Sheriff, what's got you so mad?' He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters.

The boats were all lined up ready to go - when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn't go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, 'Sheriff, that's ridiculous.' And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: 'Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!' Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

The story quickly drew scrutiny from liberal sites like TPMMuckracker, which questioned its accuracy.

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The big story Tuesday night, of course, was Barack Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress. But almost as interesting to political junkies was what came immediately afterward: The response from Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Governor being pushed as the new face of the Republican Party and a leading contender for the party’s presidential nomination in 2012.

What was meant to be a coming out celebration on the national stage, however, turned to something far different for Jindal: The governor, who has been well received in other public forums, was almost universally panned. And an address that was expected to generate momentum for a possible 2012 run instead resulted in questions about whether the 37-year-old governor is really ready for prime time. (You can watch and read Jindal's speech in full here.)

Many of the most stinging barbs came from Jindal’s ideological brethren. Consider these comments from a Fox News panel right after the speech:

“This was not Bobby Jindal’s greatest oratorical moment.”

“The delivery was not exactly terrific.”

“I think he had a really poor performance tonight…it just came off as amateurish.”

“Even the tempo in which he spoke seemed like sing-song, and he was telling stories that seemed very simplistic, and almost childish.”

“He tried the best he could.”

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As Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal walked out to rebut President Obama last night, MSNBC's Chris Matthews uttered two words on a live mic that quickly echoed through political circles: "Oh God."

The Hardball host later said that he was "taken aback" by the stagecraft of Jindal's entrance. He had already prepared a statement explaining his reaction on Hardball later on tonight.

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In many ways, President Obama’s quasi-State of the Union address Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress felt like part two in the multi-part miniseries that is the Obama administration.

Following part one, his inaugural address, Mr. Obama recapped his themes from that speech – hope, responsibility and patience with him as he deals with the challenges facing the country – and added another layer: some details to go with those themes.

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Responding to President Obama's prime-time speech to Congress on the economy, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal stressed smaller government, tax cuts, and help for small business—decades-old mainstays of the Republican platform that he said his party has lost sight of in recent years.

"The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit of our citizens," said Jindal, telling a story about a Louisiana bureaucrat thwarting citizens' rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

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The Republican National Committee has released excerpts of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s response to President Obama’s planned address to a joint session of Congress this evening.

The speech, entitled “Americans Can Do Anything,” includes a section on Jindal’s upbringing.

“As a child, I remember going to the grocery store with my dad,” Jindal plans to say. “Growing up in India, he had seen extreme poverty. And as we walked through the aisles, looking at the endless variety on the shelves, he would tell me: ‘Bobby, Americans can do anything.’ I still believe that to this day.”

Jindal, echoing Mr. Obama, goes on to make an appeal to bipartisanship, saying that in his state of Louisiana, “we don’t care what party you belong to if you have good ideas to make life better for our people.”

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