Add to this the blunt fact that the GOP probably can’t afford to lose racist white voters, especially in the South (you think a Jindal – Obama race wouldn’t invite a conservative, white, third-party candidacy?), and I think Jindal’s chance of being the nominee in 2012 is, despite his obvious talents, pretty close to nil. The GOP isn’t going to be looking for its own Obama; it’s going to be looking for an anti-Obama. ~Chris Orr

As I argued some time ago, never underestimate the Republican desire to get on the high horse of anti-racism and egalitarianism, to say nothing of the even greater desire to demonstrate that they are in no way racist.  This is the “defensive crouch” for Republicans, which has led them time and again in the last twenty years to nominate the “inclusive” moderates who engage in various minority outreach efforts to no avail.  The Palin pander to women failed magnificently, but the failure of most of the other panders over the years has not discredited these attempts inside the GOP.  The inevitable next step will be to nominate a non-white candidate.     

This is partly opportunistic, but it is also partly very serious.  The small cottage industry out there cataloguing the “real racism” of liberals represents a genuine conviction in the modern GOP that they are the only true defenders of color-blind equality.  The Republican obsession with Jeremiah Wright cannot be understood apart from this “fight the real racists!” mentality.  The enthusiastic reception of Palin and the sudden willingness to label any criticism of her as sexism and elitism reflects a similar impulse to out-egalitarian the egalitarians.  This is opportunistic insofar as it is aimed at confusing conventional definitions and throwing the opponent off guard (“we’re the real feminists, so there!”), but it is quite serious in that it reflects a widely-held Republican belief that their agenda and their party represent “empowerment” for women and minorities. 

Observers on the left don’t believe this for a minute, so they find it hard to believe that Jindal would be embraced by the rank-and-file, but this is actually an important part of the GOP’s understanding of itself.  This is particularly true among Republican elites, and as we have seen over the last eight years the rank-and-file will mostly go along with whatever their elites tell them is the new party line.  Besides, supporting Jindal won’t be much of a stretch for most people.  Ideological heterodoxy has not been a problem for him, his positions have been consistent and very much to the liking of conservatives, and any trouble he will have on account of his religion will be much more manageable than the resistance that Romney had among evangelicals and Huckabee had among non-evangelicals.  If some have pulled back from Huckabee and Palin because of the role of identity politics in their candidacies, they will celebrate Jindal as the supposed negation of identity politics (even though his Catholicism and social conservatism are essential to his appeal).  In Jindal you have someone conservatives of almost all stripes find to be genuinely attractive and exciting, which cannot be said about any of the ’08 also-rans and many of the other possible ’12 candidates, and also someone who will provide Republicans considerable cover from accusations of racism as they mount another campaign against Obama.  I hadn’t been thinking of it along these lines until I read Orr’s post, but I now see why Jindal should be considered a strong, perhaps leading, contender for the nomination if he chooses to run.