Jindal Attacked By Fellow Republican

After the President's first joint statement to Congress last month, Gov. Bobby Jindal's speech had him go from one of the brightest stars in the Republican party to just another GoOPer for Independents and Democrats to laugh at. While the news of that night has long since quieted down, the part about volcano monitoring hasn't been forgotten, even by members of his own party.

From TPM:

Bobby Jindal's denunciations of federal spending to monitor volcanoes is now attracting some serious critcism from a Republican Senator -- namely Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, whose state has been recently disrupted by a series of eruptions from Mount Redoubt.

"Recently there were some comments made about federal spending for volcano monitoring being wasteful," Murkowski said from the Senate floor, without naming Jindal directly. "I can assure you that monitoring volcanoes is critically important to the nation and especially to my home state of Alaska."

In Jindal's speech, he said: "While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes ... $140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.' Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, DC."

Senator Murkowski in no way wants to be tied to Jindal and his idiotic and politically-opportunistic comments. When there are possiblly deadly natural disasters at your doorstep, the last thing a conscious elected official would think of doing is pooh poohing federal money that is meant to mitigate any potential damage to life and property. Murkowski's statement was a smart move on her part, but it does nothing to curb the meme that the Republican party is falling apart on message control or having any kind of real unity that they had enjoyed during most of the Clinton and Bush years.