How Bobby Jindal’s Islam Rhetoric is a Turnoff to Millennial Voters

There was a time when I looked forward to Bobby Jindal running for president, until he started running for president. Back when he was a whip smart man of ideas that laminated the GOP not be the party of stupid, but then he starting talking stupid. I met Gov Jindal about a year ago at which time he seemed hopeful and fresh but today his recent comments about Muslims seem hateful and fear mongering.

Arif Rafiq from Politico recaps:

The Louisiana governor and potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate has been repeating a lie that even Fox News was forced to apologize for. In an address before the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society in London last week, Jindal warned of so-called Muslim “no-go zones” in the West—areas in which “non-assimilationist Muslims establish enclaves and carry out as much of Sharia law as they can.”

He has since doubled down on the claim, even after being pressed for evidence by a British journalist and failing to provide it. Instead, Jindal asserted that no-go zones “absolutely is an issue for the UK [and] absolutely is an issue for America and other European [or] Western nations.”

I, like a lot of people, wish our national leaders would accurately describe the current purveyors of international conflict what it is: radical Islamic terrorism. But Gov Jindal’s rhetoric might be a case in point for why some refuse to attach Islam to the phenomenon of terrorism done in the name of Islam; out of concern that doing so might incite an unfair backlash against all Muslims.

As Gov Jindal gets closer to a decision to run for president it appears he’ll be running and leaving the millennial cohort behind. Not just because he’s rhetoric is designed to stoke the fears of evangelical Christian voters into a divisive Christian vs. Islam fight; but because in doing so he is invariable alienating the most pluralistic, diverse and open-minded of the national electorate: millennials – which also happens to be the biggest slice of the electoral pie in 2016. In other words, millennials are the kind of voters that would hear the story about how “a major mosque in northern Virginia rents space for Friday prayers at a Jewish temple that shares a parking lot with a Catholic Church” and feel good about the state and direction of America.

In primary elections you can’t have it both ways and this is even truer in what looks to be the most intense GOP primary in modern history. Not only is the GOP primary electorate splintered like never before between the business/economy class, the evangelical/social conservatives and now the tea party/constitutionalist voters but the contenders within each subset are numerous and compelling.

Gov Jindal knows this and he knows that in order to win his sought after slice he’ll have to fight hard for it even if it means employing harsh rhetoric. Consider his competition: Santorum and Huckabee both former Iowa Caucus winners, 2012 and 2008, respectively are beloved figures amongst evangelical/social conservatives.

Yet it’s not evident that millennials fall entirely within anyone segment of the GOP primary electorate. Yet, I don’t think the most pluralistic, diverse and open-minded will fall for religious fear mongering rhetoric.