Plan B Forum

Washington: The last Republican primary race in 2012 was meant to be the clown car primary. This time around the Grand Old Party was supposed to have hunted out the transparently self-serving, hopeless cases cluttering its field.

So far at least it has not turned out that way.

The most recent candidate to throw his hat in the ring is Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, who announced his candidacy on Wednesday afternoon. In his own state – one of the most conservative in the union – his approval ranges between a dismal 27 per cent and an embarrassing 32 per cent.



Nationally, Mr Jindal, once considered to be a policy heavyweight who could broaden the base of his party, has captured about 0.8 per cent of Republican supporters. He is polling not only last in the field, but he is trailing "None of the above", which has captured 2 per cent of the Republicans in primary polling.

As with the rest of the party, in recent years rather than addressing reform Mr Jindal has veered far to the right. He appears to be chasing voters that might otherwise turn to the Tea Party favourite Senator Ted Cruz (another candidate, a rank outsider who nonetheless enjoys the support of 6.5 per cent of Republicans.)

Mr Jindal, a convert to Catholicism, is a graduate of the prestigious Brown University and was once a Rhodes scholar, but the best-known pieces of writing from his time as a student is his description of an exorcism he participated in, a treatise for the New Oxford Review called "Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare".

Politico has welcomed him to the race with a story called "The Stupid Party's Candidate", an allusion to a call he once made for the GOP to abandon its loyalty to Wall Street.

JUNE 24, 2015
Number of G.O.P. Candidates Now Thirteen, Says C.D.C.
BY ANDY BOROWITZ

DEKALB COUNTY, GEORGIA (The Borowitz Report)—The number of official candidates for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination has risen to thirteen, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control.

The count had stood at twelve since the announcement last week by the reality-show host Donald Trump, leading many at the C.D.C. to privately hope that the epidemic was losing steam.

But with the entry of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal into the race on Wednesday, the C.D.C. was forced to hold a press conference to announce the worrisome news that the number of candidates had increased yet again.

“It might have been misplaced optimism on our part, but we had started to believe that this thing had been contained,” said the C.D.C. spokesman Dr. Harland Dorrinson. “Regrettably, it has not.”

While scientists disagree about how running for President spreads from person to person, most epidemiologists believe that a candidacy needs an environment rich in narcissism and delusion—plus a host to feed on, ideally a sociopathic billionaire.

The C.D.C. spokesman refused to address speculation that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker would soon enter the race, bringing the number of candidates to fourteen. “I don’t want to say anything that might cause the public to panic,” 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.

BobbyJindalsSoWhite that he couldn't win a spelling bee if he tried