I wonder how all these flakes out there trying to prove Barack "Barry" Obama is really a Kenyan Muslim would deal with the fact that Piyush "Bobby" Jindal grew up a Hindu.

Eh, I think the GOP base will adjust pretty quickly. The true racists are a shrinking minority.

Jindal is smart, charismatic, and socially conservative; barring the meteoric rise of a similarly-appealing white right-winger (John Thune?) or the rehabilitation of Sarah Palin, I think Jindal will immediately have the full support of many of the figures on the demagogic right who have been stoking concerns about Obama's "otherness" (Hannity, et alia). If Jindal were from, say, New Jersey, I might agree that he has reason to worry about being embraced by white Southern voters, but he's already been elected governor of a Deep South state. He'll be fine. Indeed, I wouldn't even be surprised if many white, Southern evangelicals trust an Indian-American evangelical from the South more than a white Mormon from Massachusetts.

I think Fox News is attacking Obama because he's a liberal Democrat, not because anyone there has any genuine concern that he's a foreign, crypto-Marxist radical. That just happens to be the best narrative they've come up with to go after him. They're fighting using the weapons they've been given. Put Jindal at the head of the ticket, and it'll take them ten minutes to start complaining that Democrats are deeply bigoted against Indian-Americans.

"The GOP isn't going to be looking for its own Obama; it's going to be looking for an anti-Obama."

Disagree.  The fight within the GOP will be those looking for an Obama and those looking for an anti-Obama.  Look for, in fact, the possible rise of the anti-Palin: a Republican woman who can actually appeal to centrist voters.

C'mon Chris, he was elected by Republicans in Lousiana. I think in 4 years he will still be too young, younger than Kennedy and that alone will mean he won't run, but he is at the top of the potential VP slots.

As insane as the Republican party is acting now, I just can't see the insanity lasting. One out of every 3 americans is an ethnic minority. If the Republicans cede those votes by being a whites only party, they will have to rack up a huge majority of white votes every election. Democrats will only have to get a little more than 30% of the white vote. And the numbers are trending towards a larger percentage of minorities, by mid century the US will be majority minority.

People like Bobby Jindal have got to be among the prominent faces of the Republican party. This is why this reprehensible language by Palin, the us vs. them, won't survive.

Precisely the case I made for Palin being the 2012 Republican nominee. Yay, validation.

Agree with timteeter:  now that the GOP has made the break with an all-male cast, there are quite a few Republican women out there -- or there will be -- who know they can pursue a less polarizing, less sensational, but potentially more electorally successful kind of politics than Palin ever could.

Andros, is Jindal evangelical? Someone just claimed he was Catholic.

Anyway, I agree re: "and it'll take them ten minutes to start complaining that Democrats are deeply bigoted against Indian-Americans" Exactly like sexism vis a vis Palin (though that meme seems to have died down a bit).

I think there are many more people in the GOP who are currently embarrassed to be associated with racists than there are racists. I bet they will be happy to rehabilitate their image as a party by nominating Jindal. THey might think it puts to rest some moderate voters disgust with the GOP this year.

>Andros, is Jindal evangelical? Someone just claimed he was Catholic.<

He was born Hindu and converted to Catholicism and I believed actually attended exorcisms.  He frequents fundamentalists churches and professes not to believe in evolution (biology degree from Brown University)

I suspect if there was a larger Jewish population in Louisiana he would have undergone circumcision.  

Ambition is his only religion IMO

CFK, there are evangelical Catholics as well.

I wonder if people in other countries read the Repbulican propaganda and say to themselves, "Wow, Bush really did a number on those Americans.  Now they're thinking of electing a terrorist from another country who is a muslim and hates America.  Talk about low self esteem!"

Oh, huh. Yeah, it looks like he's a Catholic. He does seem to have a very close relationship with Protestant evangelicals, though. A 7/13/2007 article from the Times-Picayune says:

"Sundays often find [Jindal] giving testimony in Pentecostal or Baptist churches, whether large ones in Monroe, Alexandria and Shreveport or before tiny congregations, the farther back in the woods the better. Jindal says his giving witness predates his political life, and that he feels the obligation because 'there were people who witnessed to me, and I wouldn't have become a Christian if they hadn't.' ... Few in Louisiana politics have reached out to Pentecostals as much as Jindal has since Edwin Edwards [Louisiana's first 20th century Catholic governor, who served four non-consecutive terms and is now in prison]."

First, I think former Hindus, like current Jews, get a pass from evangelicals if they support their positions. It's not like Muslims, whom they equate with Arabs, whom they equate with evil terrorists.

Second, Chris is wrong that McCain/Palin's closing argument (be afraid of the exotic dark skinned guy) hurts Jindal.  The meme is totally insincere and if the dark skinned exotic guy is a bible thumping red meat conservative, then you can bet that Karl Rove and his successors will have no problem turning on a dime and starting to sing kumbaya.  They will pretend they never engaged in a scare campaign, the same way that they put forward flip floppers (like Romney and McCain) in 2008 after relentlessly attacking Kerry in 2004 for being one.  

I'm not sure Jindal would face nearly the same level of conservative white backlash as Obama has, and therefore the rise of a Dixiecrat-style third party seems pretty unlikely. The ugly rumors and constant, ever-changing attacks against Obama have been spread by some of Jindal's biggest cheerleaders - as Suzy notes, they include Norquist, Limbaugh, Malkin, and Gingrich. (The wingnut who writes for the Dallas Morning News is a big fan too, noting among other odious and anodyne things that Jindal's adoption of the name Bobby is a sign of "immigration done right" - I guess the only thing better than that would be if he dyed his skin pink.) These people, and many others who care about ideological purity more than skin tone or foreigness, will not spread rumors about Jindal, unless it's to discredit him in favor of a candidate more to their liking. (The Dems would of course be crazy to do it.) Even here they'd be on thin ice because they wouldn't be able to claim (in polite company anyway) that he's not like us because of his positions, as they can do with Obama. (My own theory about racism in this election is that it's the icing on the cake for the right-wing attacks that are inevitably made against any Dem - it's all about demonizing the Other, and in the case of Obama he's presumptively the Other because of his race. If Republicans could attack Kerry on the basis of his military service, they can attack anyone for anything - Obama's race and background just make these attacks easier.)

Is it possible that in a primary death-match between Palin and Jindal the partisans would hammer away at the only difference between them - one's an all-American small town girl who checks all the boxes on the wingnut wishlist and the other's a hyphenated-American with a year round tan who checks all the boxes on the wingnut wishlist? Maybe, but only if Malkin, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al are motivated more by racism than by a desire to promote conservative candidates, because these attacks would clearly rend the party by dividing the Base. Jindal could not win an election with part of the Base voting Dixiecrat, and Palin could not win an election if her nomination was so clearly the result of stoking fears about a genuine far-right conservative whose only sin is his ethnicity. (Virginia voted against the "macaca" candidate - America as a whole would almost certainly do so.)

That said, if the Republican Party has a future, it has to find a way to bring the Base into the 20th, and then the 21st, centuries. It has survived and thrived electorally by getting their votes, but it may wither and die if it continues to coddle its reactionary extremists in the hope that decent, conservative-leaning people will see the attacks as "just politics" and look the other way. Let's hope that Obama wins and helps them get started on this absolutely necessary project.

Chris:  Everything you say about Louisiana is true, but it's also a state where David Duke on two occasions in the 1990s received more than 50% of the white vote. It's more culturally and ethnically complex than most Southern and Appalachian states, but "light years" ahead strikes me as a bit of a stretch. The city of New Orleans itself now has only about 250,000 residents; the New Orleans metro area has a million, but that's still only 25% of the state population.

Chris, thanks for the response, I agree La. is a odd for a southern state, and Jindal's catholicsm had to be helpful, but my main point is that Jindal is 8 years away from a serious bid, and will only be a VP candidate in 4 years. And again, this insanity can't last. People also sell Repubs too short, Powell was mentioned as a serious possible VP pick way back in 1988, and I think would have only helped Bush in 2000 if Cheney didn't pick himself and picked Powell. This Palin crap only represents at best 30% of the republican party, and probably no more than 10 to 15% of the electorate, and it will only get smaller in the future due to demographics.

Palin is the only anti-Obama there is, and her future really isn't much.

please people, evangelism and catholicsm are not incompatible, fundamentalism and catholicsm are. There are many Catholic evangelicals. Not every evangelical is a fundamentalist as not every fundamentalist is an evangelical.

chris...you are right and wrong about Louisiana but you can't project the multicultural, multiracial aspects of New Orleans upon the rest of the state. My GF hails from just outside of Lafayette and many of her older family members and some friends are from conservative families. Their support for Jindal was as a much a reaction against the previous governor, Blanco (who was seen as a complete failure) as it was a rejection of the corrupt NOLA/Baton Rouge Democratic machine that had run politics in the state for a long time. Once you get outside the province of NOLA, many white Louisianians will express polite disdain for minorities, primarily blacks for sure, and I've even heard a few say NOLA is now better once Katrina forced many AA's to relocate to Houston.

While some older, conservative Democrats won't vote for Obama because he's simply not white, I suspect some held their noses to vote for Jindal out of a desire to support a conservative, his Catholicism certainly dulled "otherness" criticism in a very Catholic/Episcopal state. That being said, the older Dixiecrats may still have a problem voting for Jindal because of his ethnicity but will support him because he isn't black. Plain and simple. But it will be interesting to see where Jindal ends up in the national GOP party if he successfully gets a second term as Gov. of LA.

Chris writes,

"I'd be delighted to be proven wrong, but I remained convinced that Jindal would be a very, very hard sell among GOP voters in much of the South and in Appalachia--places a GOP candidate can't afford to be weak--and that a Jindal - Obama race would almost inevitably give rise to a third-party conservative spoiler."

Let's say that such a latter-day George Wallace was thinking of runnning..  What would be the rationale for his candidacy?  That Jindal isn't conservative enough?  In terms of stuff you can actually talk about publicly, the only objection you could make to Jindal on the GOP side would be his lack of experience.  That would almost certainly come up in the primary, but I don't think it's nearly enough to publicly rationalize a 3rd party run.

One other thing that's worth noting about Jindal's 2012 prospects is that the conditions that would make it possible for a Republican to win would also work against Jindal.  Basically, the Republicans can only win if Obama has a crappy 1st term, but if that happens, then you're almost certainly right that the Republicans will be looking for an anti-Obama, not their own version.

The entire premise of both this post and Suzy's seems off to me. First they presume that Jindal's window is in 2012, it's not ... his window is 2016; and second they fail to note that the one person on the planet best situated to benefit from Obama's success is Bobby Jindal.

Skipping  2012 will give him an opening to secure both the Republican and the presidency. Obama's V.P. pick didn't exactly hand pick a successor so once the "what do you take me for" chafe types [read: varmint and or moose hunters] have been cleared out of the GOP, he'll be ideally positioned to pull a David Cameron.  

Via Andrew Sullivan, a smart quote from Ross Douthat regarding Bobby Jindal&#8217;s prospects for 2012: If anything, I think the way the McCain campaign has finished up &#8212; and the way the media has covered it &#8212; works to Jindal&#8217;s advantage

A few last thoughts (promise!) on Bobby Jindal&#39;s 2012 prospects and the role race may or may not

My colleague Chris remains skeptical that Jindal—as yet another “dark-skinned man with [a] foreign-sounding

First Read makes a good point about the timing of a 2012 presidential run by the Louisiana governor: