HOT SPRINGS — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Friday night that Americans should elect former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as president of the United States to protect the American dream.
“We need to make sure President Barack Obama is a one-term president,” Jindal said. “We need to elect Gov. Romney the next president of these United States so we can get our country back in the right direction.”
Romney offers a “very different view of America” than Obama, who “has a misunderstanding of the American dream,” Jindal said.
“Every generation of Americans has left that American dream for their children. What’s at stake in this election is whether we want to continue that tradition or whether we’re going to mortgage our children,” Jindal said. “I think the president has it wrong. I think our best days are ahead of us, not behind us.”
Addressing the Republican Party of Arkansas’ 2012 Reagan-Rockefeller Dinner at the Hot Springs Convention Center, Jindal said Obama is “the most liberal president we’ve had in the White House since Jimmy Carter” and “the most incompetent president we’ve had in the White House since Jimmy Carter.”
“And I don’t want to insult President Carter by saying that,” he quipped.
The 2012 presidential election is “the single most important election in our lifetime,” Jindal said. He assailed the Obama administration’s economic policies, saying, “In the middle of the greatest recession since the Great Depression, his policies have actually made ours worse and not better.”
“All he wants to do is spend more money, raise more taxes, borrow more money,” Jindal said. Financially strapped European countries have criticized U.S. economic policies under Obama, he said. “That’s like the town drunk saying you drink too much,” Jindal said. “The reality is, we can’t afford to stay on this path. If we keep spending and borrowing money, we’re literally mortgaging our children and grandchildren.”
Even with Obama’s healthcare overhaul, nicknamed “Obamacare” by Republican opponents, about 25 million Americans will still be without adequate health care, Jindal said. While he is disappointed that the U.S. Supreme Court recently determined that the health-care overhaul is constitutional, “at least they were honest enough to call this bill what it is, the most taxes on middle-class Americans we’ve seen in a long time,” Jindal said.
The health-care bill represents a major expansion of government powers, Jindal said. When he takes family members to a hospital, he said, he doesn’t want “a government bureaucrat in that waiting room, in that operating room, telling those doctors and nurses how to do their jobs.”
“You begin to wonder, where does the government’s authority stop and personal freedom begin,” he said.
Arkansas GOP faithful paid $125 per plate to hear Jindal speak. Jindal, 41, is reportedly in contention to become Romney’s running mate in the Nov. 6 general election. Serving his second term in the Baton Rouge Statehouse, Jindal is the first Indian-American to be elected a governor in the United States. He represented Louisiana’s 1st District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2005-2008.
Jindal’s stop in Hot Springs to address the Arkansas GOP was part of a campaign road tour on behalf of Romney, who was in London on Friday for the Summer Olympics. Jindal campaigned for Romney on Thursday in Iowa and is to stump for the former Massachusetts governor in Florida today and Colorado next week.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/28/2012