6 responses to “Bobby Jindal’s Approval Rating Sharply Down”

1. 

   C. Clavin

   April 9, 2013 at 7:59 am

   I am shocked this story is not getting more play.
   Here is a guy in one of the biggest welfare queen states…LA takes far more money from the Fed than they send to the Fed…and more than almost any other state…who tried to pursue the Reddest of economic policies…shield the richest and f*ck the poorest….and was roundly rejected by both citizens and business…as was the Ryan/Romney economic scheme before that.
   Norquist was putting Jindal up as a poster child…calling his plan the;

   “…the boldest, most pro-growth state tax reform in U.S. history…”

   and suprise…he failed miserably.
   The people of this country are saying…NO…we aren’t interested in your failed trickle-down theories.
   You’d hope more journalists and pundits would notice.
   Mataconis was busy predicting the 2014 congressional races.
2. 

   Ben

   April 9, 2013 at 8:40 am

   From the PDF:

   The poll found 63 percent of respondents opposed Jindal’s tax swap
   proposal. Even among Republicans, slightly less than half said they
   supported the plan to eliminate state income taxes and increase sales
   taxes. The proposal was even less popular among Democrats and
   independents. A mere 9 percent of Democrats and 29 percent of
   independents favored the idea.

   This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, since sales taxes are among the most regressive types of taxes, and this would hit the Louisiana poor and middle classes very hard indeed.
3. 

   stonetools

   April 9, 2013 at 9:23 am

   Seems like poor and working-class people in Louisiana are finally waking up.

   Had he found a way to make it so black people would suffer more from this legislation than white people , he would have had a winner. Just sayin’.
4. 

   MarkedMan

   April 9, 2013 at 10:55 am

   This is the kind of thing that really shakes my view of the world. Not that Jindal’s reforms were wildly unpopular, but that he seems to have actually believed in them. This guy was painted as a rising star of the Republican Party but, by god, he actually seems to bee dumb enough to believe in the Heritage/Ryan drivel. Which makes me wonder if my world view is completely askew. Do the Heritage Hacks actually believe what they write? Did Paul Ryan actually read Ayn Rand after his sophomore year and really think she was a genius rather than an embittered crank? Does George Will really believe his ridiculous “facts” about global warming. I’ve always assumed that it was all about riding the Adelson et al gravy train. But if these bozos really believe this nonsense, we may be worse off than even my worst fears.
5. 

   Moosebreath

   April 9, 2013 at 11:20 am

   Josh Marshall has an intelligent take.

   “But look at what the budget actually did. Broadly speaking it cut back a lot of services that people rely on and redistributed almost all the tax burden onto middle class and lower middle class families. So cut services relied on by the middle class (and below) and make them pay all the taxes. We’re surprised this didn’t catch fire?

   it’s really about the most obvious thing you can imagine and puts it sharp relief the big gap between what excites ideologues in the Republican party and what has a remote chance of flying with the public at large, even in a pretty conservative state like Louisiana.”
6. 

   Kylopod

   April 9, 2013 at 9:44 pm

   puts it sharp relief the big gap between what excites ideologues in the Republican party and what has a remote chance of flying with the public at large, even in a pretty conservative state like Louisiana.

   Also, it exposes the contradictions at the heart of Devil’s Pact between cultural and economic conservatives. Contemporary American economic conservatism–which I refuse to call “fiscal conservatism,” because simply uttering that phrase helps perpetuate the myth that these economic policies have something to do with fiscal prudence–is strictly aimed at lining the pockets of the rich. It isn’t even about lowering taxes per se, it’s about shifting the tax burden from the rich to the middle class and poor, as Jindal’s Norquist-backed plan reveals. But for the past several decades, conservative elites have managed to draw in a certain amount of non-rich supporters, particularly in the South, partly by distracting them with social wedge issues and partly by suckering them into thinking these policies will benefit the common person, through trickle-down theory and other rhetorical devices the elites don’t seriously believe in. The amount of non-rich voters who have fallen for this con game has never been a majority, but it has been just enough to enable the GOP to remain competitive in national elections, something that would be difficult if not impossible for them to do if they presented their policy positions clearly and honestly.