GOP Gov. Jindal calls for party to stop being 'stupid party'

>> let's go to the politico playbook's executive editor jim vandehei . in the wake of mitt romney 's loss, how are folks in the gop like jindal trying to reframe the party 's agenda? using joe's words.

>> well, good morning. bobby jindal called politico to offer his first thoughts on the election. and it's pretty interesting. he said the party has to stop being the stupid party and that they have to recalibrate pretty dramatically and stop being the party of big business , big wall street , big banks, big anything. and he said this dumbed down conservatism is killing the republican party .

>> boy, i'll tell you what, man, that -- it's so great hearing him say that. of course, nicole wallace and i always were talking about, you know, nicole has said and i've repeated on this show all the time she said, let's stop having the debate on whether the conservative party or moderate party . let's stop being the stupid party . and i think jindal's right. and that's the thing that was so frustrating. why weren't we just as suspicious of big banks and big corporations as we were big government ? it set us up for a colossal failure this year, jim.

>> and bobby jindal is not an insignificant player. he's the governor of louisiana , he's likely to run for the presidency in 2016 . he's about to head the republican governor's association. and i'd say there's a lot of republicans . i feel like this election is more historically consequential than barack obama 's first election. because it's the first time i can remember where a lot of very serious republicans are questioning their addiction to and reliance on very conservative media on being basically the party of mostly white, mostly male voters. and it's not just bobby jindal . you're seeing it across the board. people re-thinking about where are they on immigration? where are they on economic issues? how do they broaden the party to appeal to asians, hispanics, single women , gay voters. across the board, they got walloped in this categories. bobby jindal is the most prominent to say what you've been saying. you'll see a lot more republicans echoing that message.

>> it is about damn time, and i'll tell you what, there has been a strain of any intellectual strain in this party for a long time. you look at people that won the primary, some of these primary contests, or were ahead during the primaries in the presidential race. it was a joke. anger, rage, resentment, replaced ideology, replaced the working knowledge of government.

>> well, i'll say something else about bobby jindal , he is one of the smartest in terms of pure policy, one of the smartest conservatives out there.

>> no doubt.

>> among governors.

>> he's a brilliant guy and a good example of someone who could be the thing we talked about yesterday. someone who could be a modernizer of the republican party , but not a moderator. he's a very conservative guy and he's also a really smart guy and he can -- he could be very much on the front lines of coming up with a forward-looking, but really deeply conservative vision of what the republican party could be.

>> yeah.

>> let me throw in another name. we had rand paul did an interview with us, as well. and rand paul who is very close to mitch mcconnell who runs the republican party in the senate. he told us he's going to start pushing for more lax marijuana laws, going to start pushing for a pathway to citizenship on illegal immigration . he said that this tea party conservatism that brought him power and some fame needs to recalibrate too and they need to use this libertarian strain to start to reach out to people in cities, in the northeast, they can't be a one-region party . again, it's not just bobby jindal , it's across the board where you have prominent, influential republicans re-thinking what it means to a republican. and that is, i think that is the one silver lining for the republican party from the results last week.

>> by the way, jim, that's a big, big silver lining . a big silver lining . this is a party , this wasn't a goldwater type wipeout. it was a couple of percentage points in the popular vote. you have a president whose campaign team was brilliant and they outmaneuvered the republicans tactically in nine states. no doubt, we were out of touch with voters on issues, but it was a huge tactical win for the white house , two percentage points. this wasn't a landslide, and if we recalibrate and stop listening to the conservative media complex or whatever david from called it, that's good news.

>> one question is, if you use the dlc model of the democratic model after '84 trying to find a modernizing and moderate way forward , i think i'm right it was founded in '85. that took seven years, will it take that long for this rethinking to happen?

>> i think things happen a lot faster.

>> jim vandehei , thank you very much.

>> yeah.

>> take care, have a good day.

>> by the way, i saw somebody tweeted yesterday, tweeted the map as the democrats see it in 2016 . i looked at that and i just retweeted save this. it's one of those things in the days after a big victory. that you look back and go, huh, okay, maybe we were a little overconfident. i always think about '92 and then the end of war room where they're all crying, we changed politics forever and two years later. '94 and then same thing with republicans , karl rove 's permanent majority wasn't so permanent after all.

>> or the '64 blowout landslide and '67 reagan wins.

>> and the republicans dominate the white house for the next