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Liberal and Incompetent
Posted by Gov. Bobby Jindal
Thursday, June 14th 

A few weeks back I found myself at the scene of the crime… campaigning in Wisconsin with Governor Walker. One thing was abundantly clear, and if you spent any time helping out Governor Walker in his campaign, you can attest to this — The radical left has taken over the Democrat Party. 

Last Tuesday in Wisconsin, the silent majority was very loud. Call it the Cheesehead Rebellion. I suppose you could say that the people have spoken, but the truth is they spoke a year and half ago and this entire recall election was nothing more than a case of sour grapes from the radical left that has taken over the once proud Democrat Party. Let’s remember what happened here. The hard left launched this recall because Scott Walker had the audacity to act in the best interests of the people of Wisconsin. 

Governor Walker inherited a fiscal mess from the previous Democrat Governor, with a fiscal shortfall of over $3 billion, so he fixed the problem and balanced the budget without raising taxes. Indeed, property taxes will actually now go down. And now, Wisconsin is adding jobs for the first time in quite a while and the unemployment rate is lower than it has been since 2008. But again, let’s remember WHY the radical left launched this recall…Here’s the frightening policy that Scott instituted…which is what caused all the fuss…are you ready for it?…it’s very scary…here it goes…. 

In order to eliminate the budget deficit and avoid having to layoff teachers….Governor Walker asked the public employee union members to pay a small portion into their own retirement plans and medical insurance, just like most folks in the private sector already do. That’s it. That’s what prompted the Democrat legislators to flee the state and hide in Illinois, that’s what prompted them to put Wisconsin through this civil war, which by the way, cost the taxpayers about 18 million dollars.

And here’s the kicker – the Democrat candidate, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett did NOT EVEN campaign on the issue of collective bargaining. He didn’t run TV ads on it, he didn’t run radio ads on it, it was nowhere to be found. So the very reason for the recall was absent from the actual recall. Why is that? Very simple – the people of Wisconsin agree with the conservative reforms of Governor Walker. 

The truth is — Governor Walker’s conservative reforms are reasonable, they are sound policy, they are fair, and they are working. That’s the entire story. 

Where was the President? 

On Tuesday, election night, I was scheduled to go on FOX News to talk about the election. They had me scheduled for about an hour after the polls would close. So of course, I figured I would be put in the unenviable position of talking about the election prior to the returns being at all conclusive. Well…as it turns out….the race was called 49 minutes after the polls closed. 

What was supposed to be a long night at the Walker headquarters in Wisconsin … actually turned into a long night at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. As we all knew would happen, the White House immediately declared that the Wisconsin recall election results don’t matter. In fact, they said that early in the day on Tuesday. Apparently, when Democrats win elections it is a big deal, but when Republicans win it doesn’t matter. 

But the big head-scratcher is the President’s absence in this recall election. Why did he not come to Wisconsin to save the day at the end? Was this not an important election? Remember – President Obama carried Wisconsin by 14%! Surely he had enough capital built up that he could spend some for the cause? 

Did the President not go to Wisconsin because he was afraid he might not be an asset? Did the President not go to Wisconsin because he knows a majority of voters favor Governor Walker’s reforms? Did the President not go to Wisconsin because he was afraid of hurting himself by backing a loser? 

There is a lesson about leadership in here. Scott Walker was faced with some tough choices, and he did not shrink from them. He stood tall, he took decisive action, and his state is better off for it. Scott was not lacking in courage. The President, however, he shrunk from the challenge, he elected to stay away for fear of losing. This is not what leaders do. The President would have done well to show the courage to engage in the fight. He did not. Again…there is a lesson in leadership here. Leaders do not run from a fight. 

The bottom-line takeaway from the Cheesehead Rebellion is this — Conservative reform ideas work in the real world. We’ve found this over and over in Louisiana, and we are now finding it in Wisconsin. Next, we need to elect Governor Romney and get about the business of rebuilding America and ending this left wing experiment otherwise known as the Obama Presidency. 

LIBERALISM AND INCOMPETENCE 

It is of course well understood by now that I’m not a fan of the Obama Administration. Let me take just a moment to be very clear on why this is. The Obama Administration is the nexus of Liberalism and Incompetence…and this is a deadly combination. 

The liberalism part is widely understood and easily documented. After running a clever campaign in 2008 where he positioned himself as a centrist, President Obama has been the most liberal president since Jimmy Carter. He jammed through a government takeover of health care that has never enjoyed the support of a majority of Americans, not on even one single day. It is bad policy and it is unpopular and he jammed it through anyway. It cost the Democrats control of the House, but President Obama considers that a small price to pay. 

This Administration lurches America every day toward a model of government that is patterned after European style socialist policies. Here’s the real problem – I suspect that many in the Obama Administration don’t really believe in private enterprise. At best, they see business as something to be endured so that it can provide tax money for government programs. 

Indeed, the President had to quickly retract his recent comment that the private sector was doing fine, despite lagging economic growth, stagnant wages and continued record high unemployment rates. The problem is that the private sector is so foreign to our President that he would need a passport to go there and a translator to understand what is happening. 

We scoff at the notion of redistribution of wealth as if it is a nutty and discredited socialist notion. But that’s not the way they see it. They see “redistribution of wealth” as a pejorative term for exactly what they believe in. They of course don’t call it “redistribution of wealth,” they call it “taking care of people,” they call it “progress,” they call it “government.” 

While the liberalism of the Obama Administration is widely understood, the incompetence of it remains a bit of an untold story. A few weeks back, I made the comment that prior to being President, Obama had never run anything, that in fact he had never even run a lemonade stand. That’s a fun line, and folks were entertained by it. But, here’s the problem: it’s not a joke, it’s the truth. 

We put a guy in the White House who has no experience running anything. In that sense, the joke’s on us. But again, it’s not a joke. America simply cannot afford another four years of on-the-job training. There may have been times in our country’s history where having an untested leader in the White House would have been fine, but this is certainly not one of those times. Yes, President Obama needs to go because his liberal policies are wrong and bad for America. But it’s worse than that; it’s basic incompetence. He is also the most incompetent president since Jimmy Carter. 

Politicians are like the boy who cried wolf; they always say the sky is falling, a wolf is coming, the end is near, etc. It’s been said so much that people don’t believe it. But the truth is that America is the proverbial frog in the pot, it’s coming to a boil, but we think it’s cozy and relaxing. This time, however, the sky IS falling, and the wolf of debt and bankruptcy really IS at the door. We simply have to win this election. 

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