Jindal Courts the Religious Right

[Valin]

National Review:

Louisiana’s governor is open about his faith as he woos the values voter.

Eliana Johnson

Jan.20 1015

 

In early August 2011, Rick Perry took the stage at Houston’s Reliant Stadium, his image blown up on megascreens and broadcast to the thousands present. This was “The Response,” a daylong prayer rally for Evangelical Christians intended to bring about spiritual revival in the country. They raised their hands, they swayed from side to side, and they huddled closely in small groups. God, Perry said, “is wise enough not to be affiliated with any political party.”

 

“He doesn’t have a political agenda,” the governor said. Less than a week later, the Texas governor announced his ill-fated candidacy for the presidency of the United States.

 

God may not have a political agenda, but more than a few American politicians do. On Saturday, while most of the potential 2016 candidates will be at Iowa’s Freedom Summit, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal will host “The Response” at Louisiana State University. It’s not often these days that you see a sitting governor bow out of a political event to hold court at a prayer rally, so what, exactly, is going on? Though the Republican establishment has kept the religious Right at arm’s length, Jindal is aggressively courting the party’s values voters. His actions say he’s not just a Rhodes Scholar–cum–policy wonk but that he understands the spiritual, the sacred, too.

 

(Snip)

 

Though Jindal won’t say it directly, he doesn’t think much of the GOP’s subtle calls, as in the party’s post mortem report on the 2012 election, to soften its positions on social issues — or, as the report put it, to make sure “young people do not see the party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view.”

 

(Snip)

[Draggingtree]

Monday, 16 February 2015

Gov. Jindal, local Bishop, Halt Construction of Abortion Clinic in New Orleans

Written by Jack Kenny

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and the Catholic archbishop of New Orleans have managed to halt construction of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in New Orleans, theWashington Post reported. A sign at the construction site, where the clinic was scheduled to open early this year, promised “High-Quality, Affordable Health Care for New Orleans.” But Archbishop Gregory Michael Aymond wrote a public letter last year saying contractors who worked on the project would be shut out from all of the church’s numerous projects, leading several subcontractors to back away from the job. An inspector for the State Licensing Board for Contractors also began making what one major contractor told the Post were unprecedented weekly visits to the site.

Jindal, a former Hindu who converted to Catholicism, is portrayed by detractors as making a play for the support of the “religious right”

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/faith-and-morals/item/20134-gov-jindal-local-bishop-halt-construction-of-abortion-clinic-in-new-orleans