CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan. 25 (UPI) —
Republicans must “stop being the stupid party,” recognize voter maturity and “go after every single vote,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told party members.
But the party can come back by returning to its conservative principles, which he said “are timeless.”
He called on conservatives to shift their focus from Capitol Hill number crunching to “the place where conservatism thrives — in the real world beyond the Washington Beltway,” referring to the interstate highway that surrounds Washington and the inner suburbs.
Instead of being the “party of austerity,” Republicans must “boldly show what the future can look like with the free-market policies that we believe in,” he said.
His “47 percent” comment invoked a remark 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney made at a closed-door fundraiser about a bloc of voters he said Republicans should forget about because they would vote for President Barack Obama “no matter what.”
The GOP “must reject the notion that demography is destiny, the pathetic and simplistic notion that skin pigmentation dictates voter behavior,” Jindal said. “We must treat all people as individuals rather than as members of special interest groups.”