Ed Kilgore: Bobby Jindal’s Last Stand?
Bobby Jindal Relaunches Himself One More Time
ED KILGORE FEBRUARY 18, 2014, 6:00 AM EST
What do you do when at the age of 42 youve been a Rhodes Scholar, a state agency head, a university president, a member of Congress and a two-term governor of your state? What if you have also been described as a genius for two decades, the epitome of your political partys new tolerance and diversity, and as part of every wave of every future?
The obvious next step for Bobby JIndal is the White House, but theres a problem: for all of his credentials and the symbolic freight he carries, his every step towards the Ultimate Prize has been frustrated from the get-go by false starts and the pesky folks back home in Louisiana (including many in his own party) who arent real enthused by his performance there.
As he struggles towards a 2015 term limit, his best recent poll in Louisiana showed him improving to a 43/52 job approval/disapproval ratio (another last August gave him a 28/59 job approval ratio, with 72% saying he should not run for president). The antipathy towards him among Louisiana Republicans is so acute that his probable successor as GOP gubernatorial nominee (Sen. David Vitter, who announced his 2015 bid last month) has all but staked his own comeback from a prostitution scandal on a personal feud with Jindal. As The New Republics Marin Cogan discovered last summer:
Its really, really bad, said another Louisiana Republican familiar with the relationship [between Jindal and fellow Republicans]. So essentially Vitter has stepped up to fill that void. Because everyone hates Bobby, David hates Bobby, and presto: The enemy of my enemy is a friend.
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