Jindal Broke the Unwritten Law

Want to see what’s behind some of the fuss about Bobby Jindal? At Race42008, Dave G warns that Jindal is “headed down the Huckabee route.” In the course of complaining about the legislative increase, we get down to brass tax about what’s bugging him:

But never fear, Gov. Jindal is not the sort of politician that will back down on all of his principles. Especially when those principles involve religion. Indeed, Jindal has just signed into law a measure that will allow public schools to teach something other than science in science class. Local school boards can now approve “supplemental materials” for schools to include in discussions of evolution. Something tells me those materials won’t involve the scientific method (because if they did, they’d already be there) and will involve lots of concepts that belong in philosophy, theology, and religion classes, not in science class.

With these actions, Gov. Jindal is off to a very Huckabeean start. But that should probably have been anticipated. Jindal was always more of a culture warrior than most of us secular conservatives liked to believe when we saw a non-Caucasian, young, smart conservative who could actually form coherent sentences make his way onto the stage. And he was always less interested in fiscal issues than economic conservatives would have preferred. He voted for the tax-hiking, pork-laden farm bill and against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Meanwhile, he continues to support a ban on abortion with no exceptions, and has written articles on how Catholicism is the true Christianity and the true path to God. If you thought Huckabee’s women-should-submit language was unfairly taken out of context, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

So let’s just say that this skeptic remains especially skeptical of Jindal, who seems at this point to be an economic moderate and hard-right social conservative more in line with the former governor of Arkansas than with the former governor of California. If this trend continues, I suspect that economic conservatives, moderates, and Independents will ensure that a future Jindal presidential campaign has the same fate as Huckabee’s, and once again, a certain segment of the Republican base just won’t be able to figure out why.

First of all, there’s plenty of scientific texts on intelligent design, as well as global warming, and cloning (all of which are covered by the law). How wicked of Bobby Jindal. He wanted kids to be able to see something on Global Warming other than An Inconvenient Truth.

Bobby Jindal broke the unwritten law. Rather than paying lip service to the concerns of social conservatives, he actually did something.