The sun has risen on the Democratic Party, and there is scant evidence that it intends to set anytime soon. A big reason for this is the youth vote that fueled the campaign’s volunteer organization and fundraising efforts, and which told their “mamas” to vote for Obama.
I know this because I, like many other Columbians and young Americans, worked for the campaign this summer (though my mama needed no such convincing).
What makes this an especially daunting reality for Republicans is that young independents are invariably trending to the left and represent a demographic that is likely to affect elections for years to come.
Yet there is still growing sentiment among the conservative faithful that a renaissance which will recapture young voters and revive the GOP is brewing in the bowels of the Republican Party—his name is Bobby Jindal, and you’re going to hear a lot from the 37-year-old Louisiana governor in the next four years. How do they think he will do it?
Well, that the rift between fiscal and social conservatives has ruptured into a bursting chasm in the belly of the Republican coalition is, at this point, really a matter of fact. One of the desultory solutions du jour among many conservative commentators is to reorient the party around the “Reagan myth” of small government, lower taxes, and folksy charm.
The other is apparently to douse the momentarily simmering flames of the Culture War with Alaskan crude oil to reassure and reignite the now-disillusioned, religious-right “Rove majority” with interspersed chants of “drill here, drill now.”
While both scenarios are equally likely, only the former seems to have a chance of appealing to young voters and dethroning the youth-bolstered, new Democrat coalition that also includes Hispanics, educated people, blacks, and an increasing number of working-class white men, all of whom (according to CBS/MTV and CNN polls) consider the economy the top issue and appear primed to turn out in droves for election cycles to come. And here is where Jindal comes in.
On the surface, Jindal is an impressive figure for the Republican party: a young, Ivy League-educated Washington outsider with charisma, a very fiscally conservative voting record, and experience with health care policy.
Conservative pundits claim that these credentials make him an attractive candidate to young and independent voters and thus a potential national victor for the Republicans in 2012 or 2016.
But what they won’t tell you is that Jindal also has some religious views that extend his appeal to America’s evangelicals and social conservatives without coming off overly intensely. In 1994, Jindal wrote an article for the New Oxford Review (a conservative Catholic publication) about an exorcism he claimed to have performed:
“With holy water and blessed crucifixes, I have even given her physical protection from the demons that have only once reappeared, and then for a mere moment.”
And this is the secret to Bobby Jindal’s popularity and perceived electability: the fact that he might be able to very visibly rally independent and young voters back into the GOP with his image and persona, while quietly uniting both branches of the Republican Party as an intelligent fiscal conservative and hushed member of the Catholic religion .
Just take a look at Jindal’s scorecard on key social issues, and you’ll find pretty quickly that this guy is definitely a Rove, not a Reagan-myth Republican:
Jindal has a 100 percent pro-life voting record and opposes stem cell research. In Congress, he had an A rating from the Gun Owners of America and voted for the Patriot Act, the REAL ID Act, and a constitutional ban on flag burning. He supports the teaching of intelligent design in public schools to boot.
As Marc Abanto, a political consultant in Washington, D.C., has written, Jindal “is George W. Bush version 2.0, except better looking, about ten times more intelligent, and maybe a hundred times more tactful.”
But something tells me that young and independent voters aren’t going to buy it this time, if only because the Republican Party’s problems among these voters are bigger than medieval disillusions about religion’s place in secular society.
As John Sununu (R-N.H.) told Politico upon losing his Senate seat this month: “There’s a tide moving the country to the left [fiscally] and we hoped that New Hampshire would be able to resist it. Unfortunately, the tide was too strong.”
Sununu is right. More than anything else, this election was a referendum on the economy, and the Reagan myth lost.
Some conservatives like to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Well my friends, the Rove model is broken. No matter how many Americans you deceive or inspire, the bottom line is that your policies have not worked.
As smart, young, and politically savvy as Jindal might be—regardless of his religiosity—if independents and young voters like Columbians don’t vibe with his “on your own” economic policy (which they apparently do not), he, and any other Republican, might not win the Oval Office for quite some time.
The author is a Columbia College sophomore.
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