Brooks: Jindal and "nihilism"
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The NewsHour
Take a look at David Brooks' reaction to Gov. Bobby Jindal's response on behalf of the Republican party last night.
JIM LEHRER: Now that, of course, was Gov. Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, making the Republican response. David, how well do you think he did?
DAVID BROOKS: Uh, not so well. You know, I think Bobby Jindal is a very promising politician, and I oppose the stimulus because I thought it was poorly drafted. But to come up at this moment in history with a stale "government is the problem," "we can't trust the federal government" – it's just a disaster for the Republican Party. The country is in a panic right now. They may not like the way the Democrats have passed the stimulus bill, but that idea that we're just gonna – that government is going to have no role, the federal government has no role in this, that – In a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say "government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending," it's just a form of nihilism. It's just not where the country is, it's not where the future of the country is. There's an intra-Republican debate. Some people say the Republican Party lost its way because they got too moderate. Some people say they got too weird or too conservative. He thinks they got too moderate, and so he's making that case. I think it's insane, and I just think it's a disaster for the party. I just think it's unfortunate right now.
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Filed under: Republicans |
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It amazes me how you people who commented on this story earlier have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT. Jindal and his state are not refusing stimulus money. He is not planning on taking 10% of the money that has been offered to his state because doing so would require a permanent change in unemployment law in the state. The money would be a temporary loan given out if he enacts a permanent law. Have ANY of you bothered to even look up the FACTS, or do you all just want to keep bashing Jindal and the Republicans?
He speech wasn't great, but it wasn't a disaster either. He made good points, but was all over the place in doing so. The stimulus was a bad idea, proposed spending is even more out of control in the 4 weeks Obama has been in office and there is no end in sight. HAS ANYONE PROVIDED AN ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION: WHERE IS ALL THE $$ COMING FROM? You can raise taxes on just th "wealthy" and think that will foot the bill. Yet no "reporter" has dared to ask the Obama admin that simple question. Yet we continute to hear about $100 billion here and $100 billion there.
At some point we are all going to be paying for every one of the over 8,000 earmarks in the latest prosed budget. And guess what folks, that's more than double the number of earmarks in Bush's last proposed budget.
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