Republican governors seem prepared to attack tea-party lawmakers such as Ted Cruz (R., Texas), Rand Paul (R., Ky.), and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) by comparing them to President Obama, who ran for the White House as a freshman senator. Today, Governor Bobby Jindal (R., La.) pointed to the president’s lack of executive experience as an explanation for his job performance.
“I do think Bill Clinton, having served as a governor, I think that was better preparation for being president [than] simply being a senator, as we’ve seen with President Obama,” Jindal told reporters at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington, D.C., when asked to name the Democratic president in his lifetime that he admires most.
Jindal, who is openly considering a 2016 presidential bid, did not draw an analogy between Obama and any Republican, but his comments come one day after former governor Mike Huckabee (R., Ark.) — who also acknowledges that he is mulling a presidential campaign — said that GOP should not nominate a senator.
“If not me, I would be supportive of someone who has had executive experience and who has been a governor prior to somebody having only had legislative experience, which I think is fundamentally different in the manner in which one serves,” Huckabee told reporters Monday.
Remember when Rubio, for instance, was hailed as “the Republican Obama,” and as “the Tea Party’s answer to Barack Obama”? When Obama’s campaign victories were fresh on the mind, that might have seemed like an advantage. As the crises accumulate, though, Republican governors who want to run for president seem ready to argue that primary voters shouldn’t put a Republican freshman senator in the White House.