Bobby Jindal and the intellectual bankruptcy of the Party of No

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Boo... freakin'... hoo.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal doesn't like it when Republicans are called the "Party of No":

Speaker Pelosi likes to call the Republicans the "Party of No." Some of us, we don't like the way that sounds. It hurts our feelings... Speaker Newt Gingrich said yesterday the Republicans need to be the "Party of Yes," and he is right.

It hurts their feelings? How old is this guy?

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Now, that's amusing -- but what's also amusing is that in that very same speech to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference yesterday, just a moment later, he declared proudly that Republicans are "the party of Hell No when it comes to this health care!" As Think Progress notes (link above, with the video), "[t]he irony appeared to be lost on the crowd."

And the amusement continued: "We do have ideas," Jindal asserted. "Some of those ideas are even good ideas." Some of them, huh? And the rest? Thanks for clarifying, guv'nor.

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The point is, I think, the Republicans are indeed the Party of No while the Democrats are in power. They've been given every opportunity to work with the Democrats on major issues, including health-care reform and climate change, the economic stimulus and the bank and auto bailouts, immigration and national security, but they've rejected cooperation and compromise at every turn, preferring, in opposition, to be obstructionist to the extreme.

When they're in power, though, they're certainly a Party of Yes, as Gingrich and others want them to be. Do they want tax cuts for the wealthy? Yes! Do they want to privatize Social Security? Yes! Do they want to go to war against Iran? Yes! Do they want America to torture! Yes, even if they call it something else.

You get the point. They're fine saying Yes to right-wing extremism.

I would actually go so far as to say that the Republicans are, at present, an intellectually bankrupt party, much like most of the conservative movement that supports them. They're a retrograde party that continues to promotes the failed policies of the past, a party that has learned nothing and that only seems to be getting worse.

They're still certainly capable of saying Yes, of course, but it's what they say Yes to that matters. And what they say Yes to is a recipe for disaster.