‘Obamacare’ key to Jindal as possible Romney veep

16th July 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

The decision of the Supreme Court to uphold the President’s Health Care bill, and in particular, the individual mandate, drastically increases the chances that Bobby Jindal could be tapped as Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential running mate. That is, if the Louisiana Governor does not disqualify himself first by uttering gaffes a bit too close to the truth.

No sooner had the ruling come down from Chief Justice John Roberts than pundits began to speculate that Jindal’s Heath Care expertise could provide the margin of difference in November, inoculating Romney from Democratic charges that he passed much the same piece of legislation as Obama while Governor of Massachusetts.

It certainly seemed that Jindal had adopted the traditional VP mantle of Romney defender in the wake of the 5-4 SCOTUS ruling. Then, in advertently, he reminded reporters last Friday of the GOP nominee’s weakness on the issue. “There’s only one candidate—Gov. Rom­ney—who’s committed that he will repeal the Obamney—the Obamacare tax increase. He will repeal Obamacare as soon as he’s elected.”

Channeling Tim Pawlenty might not advance Jindal onto the VP shortlist, even if the Romney campaign could not agree within itself for two weeks if the mandate were a penalty or a tax. The Louisiana governor quickly corrected himself, refusing to establish a federally mandated health care exchange in his state, despite the SCOTUS decision.

“We’re not going to start implementing Obamacare,” Jindal said during a conference call with Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell. “We’re committed to working to elect Gov. Romney to repeal Obamacare.”

Under the Affordable Care Act, states must set up a health insurance exchange program by Jan. 1, 2014, and will receive grants from the federal government to implement it. Several Republican governors, including both Jindal and McDonnell, have put off setting up the exchanges in the hope that the law would be repealed or struck down by the court. Now that the law has been upheld, Jindal said he won’t change course and is looking to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney to lead the repeal effort if he takes office in 2013.

“Here in Louisiana we have not applied for the grants, we have not accepted many of these dollars, we’re not implementing the exchanges,” Jindal said. “We don’t think it makes any sense to implement Obamacare in Louisi­ana. We’re going to do what we can to fight it.”

The decision brought howls of protest from Louisiana Demo­cratic Party Chair Karen Carter Peterson’s office. In a press release, she wrote, “On the issue of the expansion of Medicaid—as with the matter of the health insurance exchange—the Gover­nor has placed his national ambition above the wellbeing of the citizens of the state he was elected to govern.”

“His opposition to the expansion of Medicaid has him putting the health of up to half-a-million Louisiana citizens somewhere below his top priority of getting a high profile job outside of Louisiana where he can continue his pursuit of his national ambition.”

“Those ambitions are all that stand in the way of Louisiana businesses and consumers being able to use a health insurance exchange where they can make informed decisions about the best health insurance values for themselves and their loved ones. Those ambitions are also going to prevent as many as 500,000 Louisiana residents from being able to have affordable access to health care through the expansion of the Medicaid program here.

Has Louisiana ever had a governor who displayed such contempt for the well-being of our state’s citizens?”

Despite Jindal’s ethnic and wunderkind appeal with conservative voters, prior to the healthcare decision, those closest to Romney believed that the GOP candidate would be searching for a running mate that could attract swing state electoral votes rather than conservative base enthusiasm.

The logic centered around Romney as a mathematical rather than inspirational politician. Like any Wall Street maven, he’s reading the numbers, and calculating the odds. And, both are defined as electoral vote swing states.

Jindal brings enthusiasm, but no states to the GOP column. Which means that the GOP Veep will come from a swing state—or be able to influence a swing state.

Jindal’s own vocal opposition to the President’s Health Care bill would embolden opponents in key swing states, or so goes the logic.

Whatever happens in Tampa this summer at the GOP convention, there are even better odds that Bobby Jindal will be spending more time out the state this fall that he might have originally anticipated, all thanks to the Supreme Court ruling putting Health Care back into the Presidential Debate.

Because Chief Justice John Roberts ruled that the mandate to purchase health insurance—one of the key provisions of the law—was a tax, GOP leaders in the House and Senate can use a method known as “budget reconciliation” to pass a repeal bill. Thanks to the ruling, they do not need sixty votes to close a filibuster, only a simple majority to pass. Jindal vocalized this in his conference call with McDonnell. But this scenario relies on the Republicans’ ability to win the White House, keep the majority in the House and gain enough seats in the Senate. That requires a VP running mate with much more than a single swing state appeal.

What Jindal cannot do, and perhaps no candidate of any minority group can do, is take the sting of the term “Obamacare” out of discussion, especially for African-American voters. Appearing before the NAACP last week, Mitt Romney said, “”I’m going to eliminate every nonessential expensive program I can find, that includes Obamacare.”

The audience booed for a solid seven minutes. Commentators on the left called the speech “race-baiting” and “more focused on Fox News than the NAACP.”

With Black support for Obama v. Romney at 92 percent to one percent though, few statements and no running mate could make much a dent in that math.

This article was originally published in the July 16, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper