Bobby Jindal drops out of US presidential race
WASHINGTON: Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced yesterday he was bowing out of the 2016 presidential race, saying “this is not my time”. “I’ve come here to announce that I’m suspending my campaign for president of the United States,” Jindal told Fox News. “It’s been an incredible honor to run for president of this great country,” he added in a post on Twitter.
Jindal’s campaign failed to gain traction this year. He languished near the back of the big Republican pack seeking the GOP nomination, a group that included several politicians - and political neophytes - with higher profiles. He often polled at under one percent support, and his campaign faced financial pressure as it approached the allimportant two month stretch before the first state-wide vote in the nomination race, on February 1 in Iowa.
Jindal, the 44-year-old son of immigrants from India, is the third Republican to drop out of the contest, after former Texas governor Rick Perry and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. His departure leaves 14 Republicans in the nomination hunt, including billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Senator Marco Rubio and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.
Jindal has always pegged himself as a rebellious outsider, insisting that America needed to pick a president who was not cloistered inside the Washington power bubble. He abhors big government, and constantly vowed on the campaign trail to slash federal programs and spending. At the most recent Republican debate, where he was on stage with three fellow lowpolling candidates ahead of the main showdown, he insisted: “There’s only one of us who’s actually cut government spending -not two, there’s one - and you’re looking at him.”
An extremely fast-talking policy expert, Jindal has an encyclopedic command of the issues, and as a candidate he never hesitated to lash out at the policies of President Barack Obama or Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. He said he hoped the Republican nominee would have the “courage and smarts” to make changes to the status quo in Washington. “The reality is, we cannot afford to go towards socialism,” he told Fox. “We cannot afford Hillary Clinton, four more years of a weak foreign policy,” he added. “Our country deserves better than that.”
Tributes poured in from rivals in the race, including Senator Ted Cruz, who said Jindal’s “focus on substantive policy matters advanced the debate that our party must have on the issues most important to American voters.” — AFP