“We’ve got to stop being
the stupid party,”Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, one of the GOP’s brightest young
stars, said in a much-anticipated speech last week at the party’s winter
meeting. “We’ve got to stop insulting the intelligence of voters. We need to
trust the smarts of the American people.”
That’s all well and
good. But Jindal also warned that the party should not “moderate, equivocate or
otherwise change our principles” on issues such as abortion, gay marriage,
“government growth” and “higher taxes.”
On abortion, there is an
uneasy consensus that the procedure should be legal but uncommon; the GOP wants
to make abortion illegal, and the party’s loudest voices on the issue do not
favor exceptions even for incest or rape. On gay marriage, public opinion is
shifting dramatically toward acceptance; the Republican Party is adamantly
opposed. On the size of government, Americans philosophically favor “small” —
but, as a practical matter, demand services and programs that can only be
delivered by “big.”
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