...and replace him with a Republican politician with reasonable, fact-based opinions? It's the first explanation that pops to mind: Someone has kidnapped our governor, who has publicly said he thinks it's OK to teach Intelligent Design (creationism in a lab coat) alongside evolution in biology class, and replaced him with a politician actually attuned to the fact-based reality the GOP has been slowly and painfully seceding from for two decades.
Yahoo! News' Liz Goodwin brought to our attention Jindal's op-ed today in the Wall Street Journal, "The End of Birth-Control Politics," in which he announces his support for selling oral contraceptives over the counter without a prescription. Again, Gov. Bobby Jindal says he supports selling oral contraceptives over the counter without a prescription. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, after all, threw its support behind same last month.
But after reading Goodwin's report - you can't read Jindal's actual piece unless you're a WSJ subscriber - we see that Jindal's reasonableness is motivated more by political maneuvering than rational thought: "I agree with this opinion, which if embraced by the federal government would take contraception out of the political arena," he writes. "Democrats have wrongly accused Republicans of being against birth control and against allowing people to use it. That's hogwash," Jindal writes. "But Republicans do want to protect those who have religious beliefs that are opposed to contraception."
So it's really more about countering the Dems' charge that the GOP has been waging a "war on women," which was used so effectively against Republicans in the last election cycle, than it is about sound public health policy. But hey, baby steps...