JINDAL: We actually measure prosperity according to how people are doing in the real world, not the government sector. In Louisiana, we have balanced our budget 8 years in a row without raising taxes. Largest income tax cut in our state's history. Secondly, we have cut our state budget by 26%, $9 billion and cut over 30,000 fewer state government bureaucrats. We've had eight credit upgrades. We've got more people working than ever before in Louisiana's history, earning a higher income than ever before. We've reversed 25 years of out-migration. You look at Louisiana's economy and we have $60 billion, 90,000 jobs coming into our state because of economic development wins.
JINDAL: I think a bad deal is worse than no deal. I fear this administration could start a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Sunni countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are likely going to want their own nuclear capabilities This would be a threat to Israel, to Europe, to America. We're talking about an existential threat to the region, to the United States. Never mind the fact that we're not even asking Iran to recognize Israel, to cut off ties to terrorism, to release American prisoners. I'm just talking about giving up enriched uranium, giving up all their centrifuges, anytime, anywhere inspections. Those are the basic tenets of a basic deal. And it doesn't look like we're getting any of those things.
JINDAL: This is about business owners that don't want to have to choose between their Christian faith, and being able to operate their businesses. What they don't want is the government to force them to participate in wedding ceremonies that contradict their beliefs. I was disappointed [that the law was overturned] in Indiana.
Q: So it's OK based on religious conviction for a business to deny services to a same-sex couple?
JINDAL: JINDAL: We're not talking about day-to-day routine commercial transactions. We're talking about a very specific example here of business owners--florists, musicians, caterers--who are being forced to either pay thousands or close their businesses if they don't want to participate in a wedding ceremony that contradicts their religious beliefs. So in that instance, yeah, I think part of the First Amendment means that we allow individuals to obey their conscience, to obey their religious beliefs.
JINDAL: Look, let me see the details of the bill. I am, in general though, very supportive other defending religious liberty. And I think we can do that without condoning discrimination. I don't think those two values are mutually exclusive. And I think that's what this debate has been really about. I think we can have religious liberty without having discrimination. I think it's possible to have both. And it's desirable to have both in our society.
Then, at last, a slight stroke of good luck. Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized the letter--and maybe, implicitly, Jindal--on Twitter. "No one considering running for commander-in-chief should be signing on," she wrote.
Jindal seized the moment. "@HillaryClinton No one who allows Iran to become a nuclear power should consider running," he tweeted back. He was in the conversation. "News Alert: Bobby Jindal and Hillary Clinton tussle on Twitter," Jindal's political advisers wrote in a news release.
To Jindal's advisers, there is a method in all this activity: Jindal is not searching for a political identity. He is showing his range.
Jindal takes the latter stance in the name of greater "local control" of education--which would presumably allow Louisiana schools to teach his version of acceptable "science."
Because of what he views as a lack of consensus on the gravity of the environmental threat, Jindal felt free to try to turn the science argument against the Obama administration. The president, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies are "science deniers," he argued, because they impose limits on carbon dioxide and other pollutants from "job-creating" businesses without really knowing how well those restrictions work.
He accused the administration of being on the wrong side of the faith divide in this area. "The left loves energy to be expensive and scarce," he said. "It's almost a religious approach." Jindal has a detailed energy plan full of specific, thoughtful (and largely deregulatory) proposals.
As a studious man of immigrant background with the kind of credentials admired by coastal intellectual meritocrats--Brown, Oxford and McKinsey & Company--the Republican governor, at least on paper, has a chance to appeal to the middle, should he run for president in 2016. He also has an impressive record as a government bureaucrat and administrator, both in Washington and in Baton Rouge.
Yet given his own deep faith and his roots in the Bible Belt, Jindal's early focus will be on wooing evangelical Christians and others on the cultural right.
If he can solve this Rubik's Cube of religious belief and scientific trust, he may not only do the country a favor; he might reach the White House.
Jindal's comments echoed much of what he said during last week's Iowa Republican convention, where he assailed the administration's Affordable Care Act mandate to offer contraception as "one of the most dangerous overreaches of federal government power."
Jindal said there was a "silent war" against religious liberty: "I am tired of the left. They say they're for tolerance, they say they respect diversity. The reality is this: They respect everybody unless you happen to disagree with them," he said. "The left is trying to silence us and I'm tired of it, I won't take it anymore."
On paper, Jindal seems like an improbable candidate to marshal the religious right in the culture wars. He is an ethnic minority in a movement that is almost entirely white. Perhaps most problematically, Jindal was raised Hindu, and became a Catholic in his late teens only after a complicated, and sometimes messy, conversion that he later detailed in a series of articles for an obscure religious journal. The articles are nuanced, fascinating, and deeply human, revealing a level of self-awareness and sophistication about faith that is uncommon among aspiring politicians.
Jindal won a major round of applause at the recent Republican Leadership Conference when he highlighted his opposition to the Obama administration-backed Common Core. He took a firm stand against the mathematics and English education standards that Louisiana and 44 other states have adopted. "I am for standards. I am for our kids learning," the second-term governor said. "I am for our kids being able to compete, but it seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with the bureaucrats in the federal government--especially [those] who think they know best and [that children] don't need to listen to parents."
His current opposition to Common Core puts him at odds with John White, the Louisiana state superintendent of education, who was Jindal's top pick for the job.
[One Republican State Representative], who has led efforts to gut Common Core, said Jindal could have done more at the statehouse to get lawmakers on board: "He has not been engaged in the legislative process to get rid of Common Core, whereas with school choice he was very much engaged."
[One activist said], "it makes us question just exactly his true intent after he was so adamantly for Common Core." [Another activist said] Jindal has talked the talk and now she wants him to walk the walk, much like he did on school choice: "All we have is words right now," she said. "We've had no action
A: I think there is a way to find common ground to say 'we don't have to agree with the content of each other's beliefs, but we do stand up for the rights of each other to have those beliefs.' What I think is dangerous is this idea that we are going to try to silence those we don't agree with, to say 'we don't want them to be on TV shows; we don't want them to run their businesses.' I believe in the traditional definition of marriage. I don't condone discrimination. l think again here that tone matters. I think it is important that at the same time that we articulate our deeply held religious beliefs I think it is also important to communicate a tone that says 'we don't accept discrimination' and we understand that there will be those who disagree with us."
A: At first, they were very, very concerned. I'm a parent and I put myself in their shoes: 'Your teenage son comes home and says he is changing his religion. At first your reaction is--'Is this just a fad? Is he doing it for a girl? Will it wear off?' Second, you wonder, 'Is he joining a cult?' Third you wonder, 'Is he rejecting us?' I think they finally got to acceptance. By the time they attended our wedding and our kids' baptisms, they are very proud to be there. But still they are actively Hindu.
Q: What led you to join the Catholic Church while a student at Brown University?
A: There were a couple of things that drew me to Catholicism. One was the sacraments, and I felt a hunger for the sacraments. The other was the history and tradition of the church. I got baptized in Providence (without family present); I didn't want to cause them any more heartache than I had already caused.
JINDAL: On immigration--look, I've said all along that people that want to come into this country, work hard, get an education, that's good for them, that's good for us. There's nothing wrong with Republicans in congress saying let's secure the border first. If this president was serious about moving forward with comprehensive approach he would start by securing the border. We don't need a thousand page bill. It's not complicated. Right now, we have low walls and a narrow gate. That is opposite of what we need, we need a high walls and wide gate, so that more people can come in to this country legally.
JINDAL: That was an RNC audience. And you can tell there was some nervous laughter when I said that. I've got Op-Ed coming out tomorrow: we can't just be the party of no. As a party, we've got good solutions. Why not delay all of the mandates in ObamaCare? Why not approve the Keystone Pipeline today? The Republican Party needs to be all about growth, opportunity, creating good paying private sector jobs.
JINDAL: We've submitted the two-drug protocol to a federal court. So, the judge will have to decide whether we're allowed to proceed. We will likely support legislation in this session to give the Department of Corrections more options. And we actually have a different protocol. We weren't able to get that one-drug protocol. So, we're likely to go to the legislators this year to ask them to give the Department of Corrections other options. Like many states, we're not always able to find and secure these drugs.
JINDAL: Sure--we've started not just last year, but since I've been governor. And last year, we accelerated that--looking to lower those penalties. I agree with the president that we lock up too many people for casual drug use. What I mean by that is that non-violent, non-repeat offenders, those that aren't committing other crimes, we should look at treatment and rehabilitation. I'm not for the legalization. The full legalization of marijuana has been done in Colorado. But certainly, I think that it makes sense. We could use our resources more effectively. We passed some pretty good laws last year. There's more work that we can do there. I do think when it comes to medical marijuana, I've said that I'm open if it's tightly regulated, for legitimate medical purposes. We don't need to be locking up people who aren't the dealers, who aren't committing other crimes
JINDAL: Absolutely not, unless it's just purely ideological reasons. You know, the reality is that the Canadians, one of our closest allies, want to help us become more energy independent. And this goes to an absolutely critical issue: cheap, affordable domestic energy is an absolute critical component for us reviving our manufacturing-based economy. Here in Louisiana, we've got tens of billions of dollars capital investment coming in to our state, thanks to the fracking and thanks to the natural gas boom we see going on in our state and across other states. We can see the same kind of investment across the country, in the steel industry, the fertilizer industry, the plastics industry. We can make things and we can bring investment and jobs--good paying jobs home from other countries.
JINDAL: When it comes to immigration, we've got a completely backwards system today. What I believe we need is a system of high walls and a broad gate. Right now, we've got the opposite. We've got low walls and a narrow gate. What I mean by that is we make it very difficult for people to come here legally. We make it very easy for people to come here illegally. As the son of immigrants, I think we should let more people come in to our country legally, because it's compassionate for them and because it's good for us. When people want to come here, work hard, play by the rules, that's good for America. And so, I think that this is a problem we can address. I think our system right now is completely backwards.
JINDAL: Well, if Republicans act, I think we should do it because it's the right thing to do for the country, not because a pollster tells us. Look, right now, we're educating some of the world's best and brightest; then we kick them out of our country to compete with us. I do think it's right to say we need to secure the border first. I think the American people are compassionate. I don't think we're the kind of people that are going to kick people out of schools or hospitals or punish kids for what their parents have done. But I think it's also right the American people are skeptical. We've seen this play before. We remember what happened in the 1980s. So, we have to secure the borders--and I mean, let the border governors certify it as secure. Let's not measure it in terms of just dollars spend or effort expended. Let's actually look at results. Once we do that, I think there is broad agreement on legalization.
GOV. BOBBY JINDAL, R-LA.: We've got to stop being the stupid party. It's no secret we had a number of Republicans that damaged the brand this year with offensive and bizarre comments. I'm here to say we've had enough of that.
NEWT GINGRICH: You know, it's ironic. In 1976, Irving Kristol wrote an essay for The Wall Street Journal entitled "The Stupid Party," which I commend to every Republican. Ronald Reagan came along with Jack Kemp and they basically moved us back to being an idea-oriented party. I think we clearly have to change. When you lose Latinos by 71%; you lose Asian- Americans by 74%; you lose people under 30; you lose single women--I mean, you go down the list. Except for 2004, with an incumbent, we have not won a majority since 1988.
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The above quotations are from Sunday Political Talk Show interviews during 2013-2015, interviewing presidential hopefuls for 2016.
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