Republican Sheriff Newell Normand might be a good ol’ boy from Jefferson Parish in Louisiana, but that didn’t stop him from lobbing a dose of reality at the Metropolitan Crime Commission’s annual awards luncheon on Tuesday. According to a video of the speech posted by WUVE, Normand bad-mouthed the GOP’s Beltway establishment and elected officials, notorious tax cutter Grover Norquist and called former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal an “idiot,” equating him to cult leader Jim Jones. Normand fully admits that he endorsed and supported Jindal when he ran for governor, but that Jindal’s leadership destroyed the state that Normand holds dear. “What a mess. Bobby Jindal was a better cult leader than Jim Jones,” he said to laughter and applause from the audience.
Near the top of my guilty pleasures list, just below Blue Bell’s Key Lime Pie ice cream and women’s beach volleyball, is watching Republicans eat their young. I especially love it when that rarest of breeds, a Republican with integrity and a functional grip on reality, publicly dismantles those responsible for leading the GOP (and with it, the country) down a rabbit hole.
Some Republicans actually do understand that “ideology” is separated from “idiot” by only a few consonants. Some of these folks have the cojones to call out their party for its collective willingness to traffic in fantasy, disinformation, ignorance, propraganda, and dangerous dishonesty. Newell Normand is one of the few on the Right who, while admitting to being a Republican, isn’t beyond calling out those who’ve done truly, deeply stupid and destructive things in the name of their own self-interest for truly, deeply stupid and destructive reasons.
Bobby Jindal is by no conventional rational definition a leader. He took one of the most thoroughly corrupt and messed up states in this country…and somehow managed to leave Louisiana in far worse shape than he found it. You can do that when your goal isn’t to make your state a better place, but to use your position as Governor as a platform for self-promotion and pursuit of grander ambitions. In Jindal’s case, he wanted to be President…without having the integrity and honesty to recognize or admit that he shouldn’t be allowed to manage a Dairy Queen, much less sit behind the big desk in the Oval Office.
Normand accused Jindal of working after his reign to rewrite history when the rest of the state doesn’t “even know what history is.” Much like other states with Republican governors like Kansas and Oklahoma, Louisiana faces a substantial budget shortfall, to the tune of $2.5 billion. Jindal is telling the world that he did a phenomenal job as governor and Normand is furious about it.
“We have to just say no!” Normand said. “I’m a Republican but I’m not a hypocrite. We have to look at ourselves critically as a party and figure out where we are and what we’re going to be about.” He admitted to the audience that he was partly at fault because he “endorsed that idiot,” but said that it was time to move toward solutions. Due to the budget problems, Normand says that the state will be cutting funding to mental health which causes more problems for law enforcement officers. The state also plans to close five state prisons that houses 8,000 inmates….
“We better get concerned. We better wake up. We better be honest,” Normand said. “We better talk about the issues because we are going to pay the price.” He continued saying that the state cannot cut its way to a balanced budget because doing so will cut the resources necessary for law enforcement officers like him to do their job safely and effectively.
Regardless of whether one’s a Democrat or a Republican, the one thing I admire above all else in a politician- if only because it’s such a rare commodity- is honesty. Normand at least has the courage to point out what should be obvious to anyone trying to figure out what in the Hell happened in Louisiana on Gov. Jindal’s watch. By any truly honest measure, what transpired was the equivalent of Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Jindal was so focused on burnishing his Social Conservative bona fides that he almost completely neglected the job he was elected to do. What he didn’t neglect, he boogered things up so thoroughly his successor will likely spend his entire term trying to undo the damage done.
It’s not all Jindal’s fault, of course; Normand and the voters of Louisiana elected and re-elected one of the most thoroughly inept leaders in the history of American governance. Louisiana is a state with a long and not so proud record of official ineptitude and corruption. Louisianans meekly acquiesced in Jindal ratcheting up the state’s budget deficit…because he was far more heavily invested in proving to Conservative culture warriors that he was one of them.
“And I have to listen to my Republican counterparts talk about gobbledigook. Blah, blah blah… And I’m so sick and tired of hearing: Obama, Obama, Obama. You know how much intellect it takes to blame something on somebody else? This much!” he said holding his hand up to indicate zero. “Propose a solution. Work together.” He closed by comparing politics to being married and asked how many people in the audience refuse to compromise in their marriages.
On this count, I couldn’t agree with Normand more. I may be a confirmed Bleeding-Heart Leftie ComSymp, but even I understand the reality of politics, which is that you will never EVER get everything you want. The late Tip O’Neill once described politics as “the art of the possible,” a truism Republicans in Congress have tossed out like yesterday’s garbage. In today’s political environment, too many on the Far Right equate compromise with capitulation- anything short of utterly destroying and completely crushing opponents under their boot heels is a defeat.
It shouldn’t be controversial to hold forth about how this is a damned poor way to run a government. Governments may be run by politicians, but while politicians run on ideology, governments themselves can’t function effectively if they aren’t managed based on real world facts. Denying those facts while plowing ahead is a recipe for disaster…or in the case, Bobby Jindal. Louisianans have only themselves to blame for electing an inept, incompetent dilettante lacking even the most basic management skills, never mind anything even faintly redolent of a functional grip on reality.
“Propose a solution. Work together.” That shouldn’t take on the patina of a radical idea, yet in the feverishly ideological world of Republican politics, where smug arrogance is the Prime Directive, it’s an idea not even worth consideration.
A very wise man once said, “Lead, follow, or get the Hell out of the way.” It seems a good time for Republicans to lose their collective arrogance and belief in their unquestioned moral superiority and take that advice…before they run this country into the ground.
