Jindal Tries to Pick Fight With Christie, to No Avail

The undercard debate is in the books, and one of the key themes was the newly demoted Chris Christie trying to keep the focus on Hillary Clinton rather than engaging with his fellow Republicans. Bobby Jindal in particular went after Christie again and again, declaring that his own record as governor of Louisiana is far more of a conservative model than Christie's in New Jersey. “I’ll give you a ribbon for participation and a juice box, but in the real world it’s about results,” Jindal said during one of their exchanges. But as Politico points out, Christie wanted no part of this fight. “He’s done a nice job in Louisiana, and I don’t have any problem with the job he’s done,” Christie said. "People out there don’t care about any of that. They care about who’s going to beat Hillary Clinton, who’s going to keep their eye on the ball.”

The Washington Post sums up Jindal's tactics: "Jindal, who rose in politics as a mild-mannered wonk, seems to believe his path to the nomination is to run as a conservative hard-liner, and a bit of a jerk," noting another of his quotes: “I want to fire everybody in DC." The debate as a whole was a relatively tame affair, with Rick Santorum ("This campaign has been about two words for me: working families") and Mike Huckabee ("We get rid of the IRS. We completely eliminate it") the other two participants. Those interested in a transcript can dig in here. (More Bobby Jindal 2016 stories.)