BATON ROUGE -- Gov. Bobby Jindal is among a short list of Republicans whose political stars stand to rise as the party looks for new ideas and leadership in the wake of Tuesday's landmark Democratic victories.
With the GOP out of power in both the White House and Congress for the first time since 1992-94, analysts expect attention to shift to the states, where many Republican governors remain popular with constituents despite the national repudiation of presidential standard-bearer John McCain and the GOP losses in Congress.
"This party is going to take on a new face and new leadership and younger leadership and he would seem to fit that bill pretty well," Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said of Jindal. "Right now it's a party without a leader, so there's a great void to be filled."
Jindal has consistently denied having any political ambitions beyond seeking re-election as governor in 2011. But his recent travels around the country to raise money for himself and other Republicans -- along with a flood of flattering national publicity -- have generated speculation that he could soon turn his attention to higher office.
"The most important role for me is to be the best governor I can be for Louisiana," said Jindal, who recently ruled out being a candidate for president in 2012. He said the out-of-state fundraisers, which included visits to Gainesville, Fla., Washington, D.C., and Greenwich, Conn., are merely a good way to make contacts that can benefit the state in the future.
Still, the speculation about Jindal's future is likely to grow later this month, when he is scheduled to be the featured speaker at a banquet hosted by the Iowa Family Policy Center, a conservative Christian group in the state that holds the first presidential nominating caucus in 2012.
"I think there's just no question that Jindal is one of the names that's going to be buzzed about" for 2012, said Norm Ornstein, a senior scholar with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
--- On the short list ---
James Garand, a political science professor at Louisiana State University, said Jindal is on an early short list of potential candidates that includes Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty. All three have the advantage of having few, if any, ties to the outgoing Bush administration and its historically low approval ratings.
"Now that the Bush administration will be coming to an end, I think the Republicans are going to be looking to reload their national leadership," Garand said, and that means looking outside Washington. "They have to go somewhere, and the states are a prime place for them to go."
Although he has been in the governor's office for less than a year after two terms in Congress, Jindal's reputation has grown steadily among the conservative faithful, with talk-show host Rush Limbaugh calling him "the next Ronald Reagan" and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich singling him out as a leader to watch.
Earlier this year, Jindal was mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick after he was one of a handful of Republican officials invited to spend Memorial Day weekend at McCain's Arizona ranch. The slot eventually went to Palin.
--- States as laboratories ---
In the meantime, Jindal said his job as governor provides the opportunity to test and showcase how conservative ideas can work. He likened the GOP's upcoming exile period to the early 1990s, when Congress was in Democratic hands and President Clinton was in the White House but Republican governors were pursuing welfare reform and other policies that eventually found their way into the national political dialogue.
"I've often thought that the founding fathers got it right," Jindal said. "They wanted the states to be laboratories of experimentation, and they wanted the federal government to learn from what works in each of these states."
Jindal blamed this year's GOP's losses on the party straying from the themes of fiscal conservatism, anti-corruption and policy innovation that worked in the previous decade. "You can't beat something with nothing," Jindal said. "For too long it seemed the Republican message was, 'vote for Republicans because the other side is worse.' And that's simply not a good enough reason to win elections."
Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute, said states likely will continue to be crucibles for experimentation during Barack Obama's administration, as the new president will inherit record budget deficits that will make it tough for him to fulfill his ambitious domestic agenda. And that, in turn, could work to Jindal's advantage. "We're not going to have the resources or the votes (in Washington) to do sweeping health care changes," Ornstein said.
--- Allying both wings ---
Should Jindal enter the national fray, Republicans will be hoping he can help reconcile a party that occasionally has been riven by dissent between social conservatives and those who consider economic issues such as spending and taxes to be paramount.
"He is one of the few Republican politicians that has been able to fuse the two parts of the Republican Party, the social conservatives and the business conservatives," said Wayne Parent, an LSU political science professor.
By contrast, Parent said, other Republicans who get mentioned as future party leaders tend to be more popular with one camp or another. He cited former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose popularity with Christian conservatives is not matched by similar enthusiasm in the business community, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is popular with economic conservatives but had a tough time selling himself to social conservatives during the Republican primaries this year.
Potential obstacles for Jindal, 37, could be his age and relative inexperience, considering his party has a history of nominating the person considered next in line for the presidency. But Parent said the example set by Obama, who rose from representing Illinois in the U.S. Senate to the pinnacle of American politics in four years, could help overturn that tradition in the GOP.
"I do think that people in the party, the donors and the activists, will be more comfortable with looking closely at someone as young as Bobby Jindal now that President-elect Obama has had such a meteoric rise in a short time," Parent said.
