At the Economic Growth Summit in Florida on Tuesday, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal began his speech with a little pandering toward the governor of the Sunshine State, and a hint about his own intentions.
“If I were elected president of the United States,” he said, “I would turn around America’s economy the same way Rick Scott has turned around the economy in the state of Florida.”
CNN reported late Tuesday evening:
Jindal is “likely to announce his plans to seek the GOP nomination,” said a person close to the Louisiana governor, with knowledge of the announcement.
The Louisiana governor will make his intentions known at a June 24th event in New Orleans.
In May, Jindal established a federal committee to formally evaluate a presidential bid and created a web site touting his possible entry into the race.
“If I run, my candidacy will be based on the idea that the American people are ready to try a dramatically different direction,” he said at the time. “Not a course correction, but a dramatically different path.”
Governor Jindal brings to the table a reputation for intelligence and policy wonkery.
His think tank, America Next, has for the past two years been devoted to churning out policy proposals on education, foreign policy, energy, and health care that make it easy to see, from a legislative perspective, what a Jindal administration would look like.
At the same time, the Rhodes Scholar has also become a self-styled populist, embracing Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson and positioning himself as a champion of the Christian Right. He has called for a spiritual revival across the country and hammered home the message that religious liberty is under attack.
After the Charlie Hebdo murders, Jindal sparked outrage on the left by speaking frankly in support of free speech and against Islamic expansionism.
On the January 26th edition of the Family Research Council’s “Washington Watch,” he called the Muslim spread into the west an attempt to “colonize” and “invade” the west.
“If we’re not careful the same no-go zones you’re seeing now in Europe will come to America,” Jindal said. He went on to criticize academia and the “media elite” who work hard against the U.S. and “don’t want to proclaim American exceptionalism.”
Although he’s only polling at around 1 percent at this point, a recent Public Policy Polling survey found that Jindal has one of the highest favorability ratings of all the Republicans in New Hampshire.
The Louisiana governor’s speech at the Economic Growth Summit focused on what he would do to get America back on the right track economically.
Jindal put forward three options he believes stand before us as a nation.
Option one — to keep doing what we’re doing: “What we’re doing now is the equivalent of a lung cancer patient smoking two packs a day…..keep fiddling while Rome is burning, keep rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. One day it will just implode and our economy will crumble. That’s our current plan as a country. That’s the road we’re on.”
Option two: “We could double our tax rates….It’s the only way we’re gonna balance the budget, pay off our debts, sustain the massive growth of our entitlement programs, including our newest creation, Obamacare. And that option’s fine if you’re ready and willing to give up on the idea of America. Just fold it in — close up shop — we might as well become a annex of Western Europe — put the American dream in our rear-view mirror. Just go on holiday and give up. This is the preferred option of the once proud Democrat party in DC. This is how we turn the American dream into the European nightmare. This is the Obamanization of America.”
Option three: “We can make America, America again. We can capture the future for ourselves and for our country. America’s the ability to do it. To dominate — not just compete — but dominate the next century, to usher in a new era of prosperity. It can happen and it only requires two things. It requires political courage and willpower. Two things that are in short supply in Washington DC.”
Jindal said first and foremost we need to cut the size of the federal government — “not just the rate of growth,” he added. “That’s just silly Washington talk – that’s nonsense. We have to actually shrink the size of government. That means shrinking the size and the number of things the government is involved in — shrinking the size of the government work-force and reforming entitlements.
He noted that the price of reform would be that the “big government crowd will fight to the death. People who have been feeding at the government trough will not go quietly.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yljIRbVTKhk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F05JXCLh3_A
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