Why Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal Is Polling at Zero in the GOP Race

The day before the second Republican debate, The New York Times published a graph showing the relative positions of each of the 11 hopefuls. Donald Trump was first, favored by 27%, Ben Carson was second at 23% and then way down at the bottom was Bobby Jindal. Jindal had 0%. Nobody favored him.

I wondered just what someone could do to have absolutely nobody wanting them to be president, and so I looked up information on Bobby Jindal, or Piyush Jindal as he was known before he changed his first name. There’s a problem right there.

Barack worked. Twice. One would think that Piyush would work better than Bobby.

Here are some other things. When Bobby Jindal became Governor of Louisiana in 2008—he’s still the governor—he hung a big oil painting of himself in the front hallway lobby of the governor’s mansion. It is still there today. It shows him with milky white skin. This painting’s skin color is not the skin color he was born and grew up with or has today. The skin he has today is brown because Jindal’s parents, Raj and Amar, were natives of India. There is nothing wrong with that. Jindal is an Indian-American.

This is Bobby Jindal’s official portrait. Photo credit: Robin May of @theInd pic.twitter.com/QBzSsMOoYZ

— Lamar White, Jr (@CenLamar) February 3, 2015

And yet, in his stump speech, he refers disparagingly to “hyphenated” Americans, as in African-Americans. He thinks hyphenated Americans are un-American. And he, an Indian-American, says this often. Jindal would lead you to believe his dark skin is just because he’s been at the beach. His campaign slogan is “Tanned, Rested and Ready.”

But rest assured — I’m tanned, rested, and ready for this fight. — Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) June 24, 2015

Once he takes off his jacket and gets down to work, that summer tan will just fade away. Who advises this guy?

Doesn’t it sort of remind you of that white woman who passed herself off as an African-American, complete with cornrow hair, to get herself elected as head of the Spokane NAACP? What the hell?

Besides that, it turns out, Jindal’s campaign slogan was stolen. It was used before. Whoever gave it to Jindal must have thought nobody would notice. This slogan, “He’s Tan, Rested and Ready – Nixon in ’88,” on a T-shirt, was the best selling T-shirt at the Young Republicans National Convention in 1987.

I should explain. Richard Nixon was our President from 1969 to 1974 when, caught up in a scandal, he resigned in disgrace and fled the White House by helicopter. His destination was the beach at San Clemente, California, where he had a vacation home. He stayed there for nearly 20 years, secluded, licking his wounds while his associates got sent off to serve various prison sentences, which means that when 1988 came around and the Republicans were trying to figure out who to nominate, the T-shirts reading “He’s Tan, Rested and Ready – Nixon in ’88,” were great satire. Bring him on. He’s our boy.

And there is still another way of looking at “Tanned, Rested and Ready.” Jindal entered the Governor’s mansion in 2008 and has been unsuccessfully fighting with his legislature to balance the state budget ever since. Except, most of the time he is not even there. According to a report I read, he got sworn in as Governor and then hit the ground running— for President of the United States. He’s been absent from Louisiana according to this report, for nearly half of each of the last two years, spending most of this time flying around the country glad-handing people and asking them to vote for him for President. This report (in the publication Salon), quotes his State Secretary of the Treasury John Kennedy, a man he appointed, saying he hasn’t had a conversation of any substance about the budget since he came on board.

Well, I am sure that Bobby Jindal must have some supporters. No, wait a minute. That’s why it’s zero.