Bobby Jindal: Dumber than a box of hammers. (Image by Gage Skidmore.)

Watching the GOP sift through the wreckage of election night is a case study in selective amnesia. Karl Rove, whose party aggressively tried to suppress minority votes, accuses President Obama of voter suppression for running successful political ads. Joe Scarborough, a member of the delusional conservative media, is angry at the delusional conservative media. Stunningly, Newt Gingrich is one of the very few to show utter humility. Amazements never cease.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has gotten into the act, encouraging the Republican Party to stop being “stupid.” But this posture doesn’t cohere with some of his own positions as a creationist and supporter of intelligent design. Three excerpts follow.

From Politico: “‘It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that,’ Jindal said. ‘It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.'”

From Slate, 2012: “Jindal has an elite résumé. He was a biology major at my school, Brown University, and a Rhodes scholar. He knows the science, or at least he ought to. But in his rise to prominence in Louisiana, he made a bargain with the religious right and compromised science and science education for the children of his state. In fact, Jindal’s actions at one point persuaded leading scientific organizations, including the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, to cross New Orleans off their list of future meeting sites.”

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune, 2012: “Vouchers are supposed to rescue students from underperforming public schools and give them access to superior instruction. That will not always happen, it being the height of naivete to assume that private schools are necessarily better. But, thanks to Zack Kopplin, we know for certain that at least 19 of the schools receiving a public subsidy will deliver precisely the opposite of the advertised effect. Their graduates will be treated by employers and college administrators as pariahs.

That vouchers have led to this is hardly surprising. They are Gov. Bobby Jindal’s educational panacea, and he has always supported creationism.”

JC: Don’t take everything so literally, people.