The Danger Of Jindal-- Guest Post By Stacey Tallitsch

Bobby Jindal-- he does a mean exorcism

Here at DWT we first came across Stacey Tallitsch when he was running for Congress in Louisiana's first district in 2006. His opponent was then-freshman Congressman Bobby Jindal and Stacey ran as an unabashed anti-war, grassroots progressive. The DCCC ran in the other direction and Jindal won. We loved Stacey's platform at the time and if he would have been in the U.S. Senate today (yeah, yeah, he was running for the House), instead of corporate whore Mary Landrieu there's no doubt he would have joined Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Jeff Merkley, Barbara Boxer and a handful of others attempting to remove the gavel from Holy Joe Lieberman's clenched fist. In fact Stacey would have done that in 2006. A few days ago John Amato and I touched based with him and asked him for an inside look at a danger to America developing on the far right: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Here's Stacey's report:

It is really gratifying seeing the GOP in such disarray, and I too want that feeling to last a very long time. But, at the risk of being a buzz-kill, the one we really need to pay attention to is the Governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal.

I ran against Jindal in '06 when he was running for his second term in Congress. My campaign was aggressive and one of my commercials was even posted on C&L, FDL, and DWT. However, I walked away with only 4% of the vote. Never mind that most of my "friendly precincts" were still refugees from Katrina and couldn't vote, Jindal was still very popular in the KKK friendly areas of the district.

To put it plainly, imagine if Barack Obama used his political skills for (lack of a better word) “evil” instead of the common good.  Well, if you can’t imagine Obama doing that, instead look to Bobby Jindal and no imagination is required.

Jindal is as savvy as they come. When he was in Congress, the 109th, which enacted the vast majority of the draconian laws we’ve all come to know, Jindal voted with Bush 99.99% of the time. Yet has recently said that this year’s election wasn’t the fault of the Republican philosophy, but of Bush, and never mind all those bills Jindal helped push through on Bush’s behalf.

Case in point, the only time Jindal ever voted “against Bush” was on CAFTA. Nothing wrong with that, you say? Except when the vote was taking place, House Speaker Dennis Hastert held the 15 minute vote open for three hours and forty-five minutes, while Asst. Whip Bobby Jindal strong-armed other Congressmen, including Democrats to pass CAFTA, and once the votes were secured, Jindal voted against it.

The Louisiana Sugar and Shrimp lobby were against CAFTA, and Bobby Jindal got to have his cake and... ate it like a pig.

Typical behavior for Bobby Jindal. He’s first in line to take credit for something he had nothing to do with, and always has an exit strategy if things go south.

Jindal's Strengths:

• He's an "ideas-man" and talks faster than most northerners, which gives the impression he's a bottomless well of new ideas. Like a Gatling gun, he'll name every accomplishment he's ever had over the last 20 years in less than 30 seconds.

• As a Rhodes Scholar, he's extremely intelligent, savvy, and media-minded. (The Iraqi-purple finger in the SOTU was his idea.)

• He's a Zen-master of whisper campaigns. He projects an image of "moderate" while at the same time stays the darling of the craziest ding-bats of the Religious Right. In public he's a fiscal conservative, in private he's a social conservative. The epitome of a "Wolf in sheep's clothing."

• He excretes strength in times of weakness. In the last hurricane season, Jindal took credit for the levee's not breaking in New Orleans and so little damage in comparison with Democrat Governor. It was as if Jindal had confronted the storm with a commandment of "Be still," at least that’s the image he wanted to project.

• He never publically goes negative. But, has an army of fringe groups who act as his behalf.

• He is Obama’s evil doppelganger.

Jindal’s Weaknesses:

• He’s a whore to big oil.

• He’s a whore to big pharma.

• He’s a whore to the Religious Right.

• The KKK thinks he walks on water. 

It is true that he once wrote an article for a Catholic magazine expounding on his experience in performing an exorcism on a female “friend.” And, as much as I would love to include that as a weakness, the media has proven with Sarah Palin’s witch-hunter background, no one cares.

If Jindal has one weakness above all its vanity. In many places around the world there is the emanate threat of death, but there is no place more dangerous than getting between a camera and Bobby Jindal.