Harrisburg Patriot-News
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a rising Republican star on the national political stage, praised Pennsylvania’s leading GOP politicians and statewide candidates while painting President Barack Obama as another Jimmy Carter.
With just over five weeks until the general election, at GOP state committee dinner Friday in East Pennsboro Township, Jindal lambasted Obama as the “most incompetent … [and] most liberal president since Jimmy Carter.”
Obama “believes the American people are lazy, soft and losing their ambition,” Jindal said.
“You look at all the promises this president has made in terms of the economy, spending and borrowing and health care,” he said in a 20-minute speech to the Radisson Hotel Harrisburg ballroom set up for less than half its capacity.
“We can’t afford another four more years of Barack Obama in the White House in terms of mortgaging our children’s future,” he added.
And with the first debate between Romney and Obama just four days away, the second-term governor challenged the widely held notion that the president is a competent speaker.
“Whenever the president gets off teleprompter, it’s amazing,” Jindal said. “He will say something that he really thinks, and invariably someone from the White House has to go out and say, ‘The president doesn’t really mean what he just said.’ ”
Jindal also referenced Obama’s 2008 campaign gaffe in which the then-U.S. senator fretted that the depressed Pennsylvania economy prompted “bitter” residents to “cling to guns or religion.”
“Now I know that was meant to be an insult,” Jindal said to laughter, “but as governor of the great state of Louisiana, I’m proud to tell the president we are proudly clinging to both our guns and religion.”
Jindal took time to promote Republican candidates in the state such as U.S. Senate candidate Tom Smith, but saved his most gracious praise for Gov. Tom Corbett and the GOP presidential ticket.
“This president has an Occupy Wall Street perspective on America,” he said. “He’s always demonizing those who are successful. That’s why it’s important that we support people like Gov. Corbett. That’s why it’s so important that we get Gov. Romney and Paul Ryan into the White House.”
Read more: http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/09/louisiana_gov_bobby_jindal_cal.html