Republican governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt in an interview that aired this weekend that Palin was “absolutely” electable and that “it’s up to her to make the case to voters.”
Talking about Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough’s Politico column last week, in which Scarborough advised the GOP to “man up” and work to stop a Palin nomination, Jindal said he didn’t think “the establishment should try and get together to pick the nominee.”
“I love Joe. I’ve been on his show several times,” Jindal said. “But I don’t like anybody — whether it’s the Republican establishment, D.C. insiders — trying to tell the Republican voters who their nominee should be. I think there are several strong contenders. Governor Palin is one of them; there are many others.”
“It’s not up to me. It’s not up to Joe. It’s up to the voters,” he added.
The Indian-American governor also spoke out against the DREAM Act. “I think it’s a mistake to start with anything other than securing our borders,” he said, adding that now was “absolutely” not the time to pass DREAM.
Jindal said in November that he would not run for president in 2012. But he has not ruled out the vice presidency, telling NBC’s David Gregory that he was “not going to turn down something that’s not been offered,” although he added that he was “not running for vice president.”