Gov. Bobby Jindal's trip to Iowa over the weekend was greeted with no small amount of sniffing and huffing by Iowans perturbed by the Louisiana governor's "temerity" in lecturing the Hawkeye State about its state supreme court judges.
By Walter Pierce
Gov. Bobby Jindal's trip to Iowa over the weekend was greeted with no small amount of sniffing and huffing by Iowans perturbed by the Louisiana governor's "temerity" in lecturing the Hawkeye State about its state supreme court judges. The GOP wunderkind was in Iowa to campaign for a ballot initiative that, if successful, would remove from office one of the justices who joined a unanimous court in legalizing same-sex marriage.
But the Des Moines Register, the state's largest newspaper, didn't take kindly to Jindal's meddling in its internal affairs. In a regular editorial column titled "Roses & Thistles," the editors gave Jindal a prickly thistle:
A thistle to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for having the temerity to come here to lecture Iowans about their judges. Jindal was on the recent bus tour across the state campaigning to unseat Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins. This is the governor of a state whose courts have consistently been ranked No. 49 out of the 50 states in the respected state courts survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Iowa consistently ranks in the top five or 10 states overall in the survey of business lawyers. In Marshalltown, Jindal got a laugh with the remark that "Some of these judges, they actually make the replacement refs in the NFL look like geniuses." That may be the case in his state: In the 2008 survey, Louisiana's judges were rated the worst among the 50 states in the area of competence. Maybe Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad should head down to Louisiana and take a bus tour to persuade the good people of that state to reform their system of electing judges.
Jindal's Iowa sally also incensed Iowan Dave Gregory, who sent a letter to the editor of Baton Rouge's Advocate newspaper:
Your governor, Bobby Jindal, has traveled from town to town across Iowa crusading against gay marriage. Many suspect he's already campaigning for the 2016 Iowa Presidential Caucuses.
We Iowans were recently subjected to an endless parade of Republican candidates during the 2012 Presidential Caucuses. We really don't need Gov. Jindal's wisdom and advice for the next four years.
Please call back your governor and find something for him to do. Aren't there any homosexuals to persecute in Louisiana?
Oh, snap!