While Attorney General Jeff Landry has been gearing up to oppose Gov. John Bel Edwards in the 2019 elections, there is another potential candidate who is making noise like a potential candidate and if he does run, it can only spell bad news for Landry.
You may remember his name.
Piyush, aka Bobby Jindal.
Before you laugh at the prospect of one with an approval rating hovering around 30 percent when he left office just over a year ago, remember that he is delusional even to the point of believing he was first, a viable candidate for President and later as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education.
With Timmy Teepell whispering in his ear (for the big bucks he gets at Jindal’s alter-ego), it’s plausible that he actually believes he can waltz back into the governor’s mansion. And I, for one, am not about to discount his chances after my prediction the day Trump announced for president that he would “crash and burn in six weeks.”
For openers, it’s important to note that Jindal never disbanded his AMERICA NEXT 501(c)(4) conservative think tank formed in 2013 to boost his comical attempt to wrest the Republican presidential nomination from a host of presidential wannabes.
Though he has made no formal—or informal, for that matter—announcement that he has his eye on “the only job he ever wanted,” he is making what some observers might see as an attempt to put himself in Trump’s good graces.
Using America Next as his forum, Jindal on Friday launched an attack on critics of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s choice for Secretary of Education. And he got Politico’s help in spreading the word.
Jindal wrote the piece as if (a) he can ride the coattails of Trump (who may not even know who he is) in 2019 or as though (b) anyone cares. This is, after all, the same Jindal who never rose above 1 percent in Iowa, where his presidential campaign started—and died an anonymous death. He is the would-be Boy Blunder to Donald Trump’s Batty Man.
Jindal has never passed up an opportunity for shameless self-promotion, even when ostensibly supporting someone else. And, of course, he didn’t let us down this time when he wrote, “America Next is overseen by former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has also advocated for education reform. Before DeVos was picked for the post, Jindal had been mentioned as a possible contender.”
It’s highly likely that the only one to mention him as a “possible contender” was Jindal himself. It’s reminiscent of a man with whom I once worked who was constantly applying for jobs for which he held no qualifications. Invariably, he would announce to us at break that he was a lock for the job because “They accepted my application.”
Jindal somehow managed to get Politico, an Internet political news service, to post a story about a pro-DeVos ad campaign being launched by America Next.
In its story, Politico quoted America Next: “With education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos facing a rocky path to confirmation, a conservative group is launching a pair of scorched-earth TV ads defending her – and accusing her Democratic opponents of being ‘full of rage and hate.’”
Politico further quotes from America Next: “Why is the radical left so full of rage and hate? They still can’t accept that Trump won and they lost,” it says. “Now extreme liberals like Elizabeth Warren are trying to stop Betsy DeVos from becoming secretary of education.
“Why? DeVos angers the extreme left because she exposes their hypocrisy. DeVos wants low-income kids to have the same choices that liberal elitists have for their families. DeVos wants equal opportunity for all kids. That makes angry liberals even angrier.”
A second commercial accuses “Washington liberals” of opposing “giving low-income families the same education choices as everyone,” Politico wrote.
The group is spending more than $500,000 to air the commercials, which will begin running Friday morning on multiple networks nationwide.
The ads were created by Curt Anderson, a veteran strategist who has worked for Jindal and a number of prominent Republican politicians.
“Betsy has been very polite and deferential to these Democrat senators,” Jindal wrote in an email. “But we don’t have to.”
Tough talk from a guy who left office with such a dismal approval rating. But hey, he’s a tough guy. After all, eschewing rubber boots, he chose to wear his Hopalong Cassidy cowboy boots at the opening of the Foster Farms chicken processing plant in Farmerville while he was governor.
Oh, and at the end of the piece, there was the obligatory “Click Here to Donate” button. Preachers and politicians just can’t seem to get a message across without asking for money.
Joking aside, Jindal has the kind of ego that keeps him in a constant state of denial about his lack of achievements and low approval ratings—and the youth and kind of misplaced self-worth that would drive him to try to match Edwin Edwards at the state’s only four-time governor.
Now if he can just get Trump’s endorsement…
Louisiana Voice 