DC Media to Bobby: We’re Just Not That Into You
BATON ROUGE — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is back in Baton Rouge today for a damage-control call with Moody’s — which is warning of a credit downgrade — but his trip this week to pay court to the D.C. media was mostly a belly flop into the burgeoning pool of GOP presidential contenders.
“For a guy who claims not to care what Beltway elites think, Governor Jindal certainly spends a lot of time pandering to them,” said Stephen Handwerk, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party. “He’s spent half the week in Washington, hanging out with MSNBC hosts and speaking at clubby breakfast meetings, as the state of Louisiana sinks further into debt.”
Here are some of the highlights from Jindal’s Beltway media tour:
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A speech at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in which Jindal falsely claimed Louisiana’s higher education budget is higher now than when he took office — a claim awarded three Pinocchios by the Washington Post Fact Checker
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A profile in the National Journal that notes “Jindal has avoided many… tough political choices in favor of what’s in his short-term political interest”
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Another profile in the Daily Beast that notes Jindal is “his own worst enemy as a politician because he can’t say anything in less than several minutes of what too often sounds like stream of consciousness”
NOLA.com reached out to Larry Sabato, whose Crystal Ball published a ranking of the GOP presidential field and put Jindal in the fourth tier, for his assessment of Jindal’s tour. Sabato said, “Jindal has not exactly taken the Republican contest by storm, so I suppose you can argue that these events, while unfortunate, have at least gotten his name into the headlines around the country.”
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