Volcano Monitoring
by Brien Jackson
This will be my last Jindal post, at least for today, I swear.
One of the odder things about Jindal’s speech was his singling out of volcano monitoring money as an example of wasteful government spending. Generally speaking, even wingnuts tend to agree that watching out for natural disasters is a good idea. No one ever really argues that the government should cease funding that goes to watching for hurricanes out in the ocean, for example. And it’s not like it has a funny sounding, easy to misunderstand name you could mischaracterize either. “Volcano monitoring” is pretty straight forward, and sounds like something most people would agree we ought to be doing.
When I exchanged emails about the speech with a friend who works at the RNC this morning, he singled out the line about volcano monitoring spending as something he expected to see mocked in coming days, and really didn’t know how he was going to spin it. He also, more bluntly than Dave Noon, hypothesized that it might have been something of a jab to Sarah Palin. In case you didn’t hear, there’s a big volcano set to erupt in Alaska, and because of volcano monitoring the state and federal government have been able to evacuate people from the area, probably saving some lives and a whole lot of potential property damage. The thinking, I suppose, goes something like this; Jindal scoffs at volcano monitoring funding in his nationally televised, speaking-for-the-GOP speech; the people of Alaska find out about this just as a volcano is about to erupt, and demand that Palin repudiate Jindal’s comments. Seeking re-election, Palin will have little choice but to distance herself from a comment that’s both incredibly stupid and has real local significance to her constituents. By this point, the idea goes, “volcano monitoring” enters the right-wing’s vernacular as a short hand for pork in general, and Jindal will have his main rival for the support of the conservative-populist aspect of the base on record supporting this erstwhile symbol of government waste.
It seems like something of a bank shot to me, but I don’t see any more likely answer as to why Gov. Jindal seems to think we don’t really need to spend money watching out for natural disasters.
Tags: Bobby Jindal, Sarah Palin
This is interesting, Brien — thanks for the post. This sounds like Jindal is making a pretty big bet that the volcano won’t erupt. I mean, if he makes fun of volcano monitoring, and two weeks later a volcano erupts and lots of people’s lives are saved because they were evacuated due to volcano monitoring, any defender of volcano monitoring has a pretty big club against him, don’t they?’
Or maybe not, not in the Republican primary. If the governor of Louisiana can say with a straight face that the lesson of Katrina is that the federal government needs to stay out and do nothing, he could certainly spin away a volcanic eruption.
I think Jindal flubbed because he flubbed. Not every mistake has a good reason. Sometimes people just aren’t so good at speaking off the cuff. Talking bad about volcano monitoring was stupid and I think he picked that because it sounded “large” (volcanoes are big, right? “monitoring” probably requires big expensive machinery right?) and because Jindal just doesn’t know anything about it. Kinda like Dilbert’s Boss “I don’t know what that is so it must not be important”
After all, the Republicans have proven they enjoy using that logic. Why give Jindal the benefit of the doubt? He is, after all, a total party gopher.
” I mean, if he makes fun of volcano monitoring, and two weeks later a volcano erupts and lots of people’s lives are saved because they were evacuated due to volcano monitoring, any defender of volcano monitoring has a pretty big club against him, don’t they?”
You would think. And in so much as there is about to be a volcanic eruption in Alaska and volcano monitoring has already gotten people evacuated, I tend to think it was a more reflexive bit of wingnut stupidity than some sort of calculated shot at Palin. Anyone smart enough to construct a roundabout attack like that is also smart enough to realize that it’s probably going to backfire when the volcano erupts.