Would Bobby "The Exorcist" Jindal really be on our A team? It's enough to make me despair. I mean, just who *would* our A team be? (Not counting VDH.)

Yes, Ed, Rich is married; has been for some time now. That doesn't necessarily mean that Rich is leading with a firm, or even coherent, voice.

That being said, let me use the occasion to say this about what Rich has written: just exactly who is the "A Team?" Who is the "conservative leader" who Rich is talking to? Is he a guy who could have run for President? If so, why isn't he running? If he is not running, why isn't he backing someone who he thinks is competent enough to be president?

I guess I should announce my candidacy for president. But no one would put me up, and why would I subject my personal life to such scrutiny? So I have to support one of the ones who is running. This is a joke. No one in this country likes any of the candidates we have running for president. They are all bozos. But I want the chief bozo, Barack Obama, out. He is the one bozo that can do the most damage to the country. None of the rest of them can do so. So tell this "leader" who talked to Rich to stuff it. If he won't run, and if he won't back someone who has the stuff to win AND govern, then he needs to shut up and go away.

I agree with the skepticism about Jindal. I am sure he is a good guy, but he has a serious charisma deficit. If he is to become a national leader, he will need a prolonged introduction to the American people as they become used to him and he, for his part, learns to project better. In any case, we are talking about something well into the future.

It's not just one speech; Jindal is a truly awful speaker, on or off the teleprompter. He speaks too fast and for too long a time, overwhelming the listener with statistics and boilerplate.

But who cares? He is one of the few public figures about whom the word "brilliant" might actually apply. Have the GOP give him elocution lessons and fast. He appears to have the talent to actually get us out of the mess we are in.

No private sector experience? You’re tough.

While he was in high school, Jindal “started a computer newsletter, a retail candy business, and a mail-order software company. He spent his free time working at the concession stands during LSU football games. Jindal was one of 50 students nationwide admitted to the elite PLME program at Brown University, guaranteeing him a place in medical school. He was interested in public policy. Jindal also completed a second major in biology. He graduated in 1991 at the age of 20, with honors in both majors.

“Jindal was named a member of the 1992 USA Today All-USA Academic Team. He was accepted by both Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, but studied at New College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. He received an M.Litt. degree in political science with an emphasis in health policy from the University of Oxford in 1994 for his thesis ‘A needs-based approach to health care.’ He turned down an offer to study for a D.Phil. in politics, instead joining the consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

“In 1993 U.S. Representative Jim McCrery (whom Jindal had worked for as a summer intern) introduced him to Governor Mike Foster. In 1996 Foster appointed Jindal as Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, an agency that represented about 40 percent of the state budget and employed over 12,000 people. Jindal was the youngest ever Secretary of the DHH at 25. During his tenure, Louisiana's Medicaid program went from bankruptcy with a $400 million deficit into three years of surpluses totaling $220 million. Jindal was criticized during the 2007 campaign by the Louisiana AFL-CIO for closing some local clinics to reach that surplus. Under Jindal's term, Louisiana nationally rose to third place in child healthcare screenings, with child immunizations rising, and introduced new and expanded services for the elderly and the disabled. In 1998, Jindal was appointed executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare, a 17-member panel charged with devising plans to reform Medicare.

“In 1999, at the request of the Louisiana Governor's Office and the Louisiana State Legislature, Jindal volunteered his time to study how Louisiana might use its $4.4 billion share of the tobacco settlement. In that same year, at only 28 years of age, Jindal was appointed to become the youngest-ever president of the University of Louisiana System, the nation's 16th largest system of higher education with over 80,000 students per year. In March 2001 he was nominated by President George W. Bush to be Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation. He was later unanimously confirmed by a vote of the United States Senate and began serving on July 9, 2001. In that position, he served as the principal policy advisor to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. He resigned from that post on February 21, 2003, to return to Louisiana and run for governor.”

That’s all from Wikipedia.

Jindal then ran for governor, lost the first time, ran for Congress and won, and distinguished himself as a Congressman before winning two terms as Governor, in which office he has continued to amaze.

Surely Jindal has the best resume of anyone who has run for President in modern times, and he is still a young man. But he's a bad speaker, so let's just elect Mitt Romney?

Isn't it long past time to retire the obnoxious "derangement syndrome" charge? It has become completely meaningless.

When someone criticizes your preferred candidate (or now, apparently, the Party) it is not evidence of some mental or physiological defect.

It isn't going to work, we are stuck with what we got.

And I'm not all that happy with the field this year either. I can think of about 2 dozen people who could probably beat Obama in an election that are not running. Instead we have 5 candidates running rinkydink campaigns that can't even complete basic tasks like getting their names on all the ballots, like say, someone like Dennis Kucinich, and three of these candidates have been reduced to running one state campaigns (Bachmann and Santorum in Iowa, Huntsman in New Hampshire). We have another guy who might win the Iowa Republican caucus, a state where evangelical Christian voters supposedly dominate, a guy who sounds a little like Jeremiah Wright on foreign policy.

Romney is clearly the best candidate in the field and admittedly that isn't saying much, and there is no guarantee that he will win against Obama, but at least he is competent, he is the best shot we got. It would help his chances even more if he could just learn how to relate to the humans.

But remember Romney is the same guy that DeMint endorsed in 2008, the same guy Santorum endorsed, the same guy Rush Limbaugh said represented all three legs of the Conservative stool, the same guy that many of us turned to as the alternative to McCain. He has in the past changed his position on many issues, but he is pretty much the same candidate that ran in 2008, only a little more seasoned this time. He failed to save us from McCain in 2008, hopefully he can save us from the dysfunctional train wreck of a field of candidates that are running this year.

We may get a better idea of who our candidates really are if some grenade thrower (either a candidate or a media guy) rolls onto the debate stage a grenade in the form of a question like, "Where do you stand on the Voting Rights Act that keeps Southern states in permanent "reconstruction" mode and, particularly, what do you think about the DOJ using the VRA to try to tell South Carolina that it cannot have a voter-ID requirement like numerous non-Southern states have?"

Nominate me.
I'll kick Obama's ass in the November election, and make him thank me for doing so.