Appearing at the #KidsTable GOP presidential debate on Thursday, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal vowed that if he were elected president, he would use every agency he could think of to hound Planned Parenthood out of business—even the agency Jindal has blasted for allegedly targeting conservative opponents of President Obama.
“Planned Parenthood had better hope that Hillary Clinton wins this election,” Jindal said, “because I guarantee you, under President Jindal, January 2017, the Department of Justice, and IRS, and everybody else that we can send from the federal government, will be going into Planned Parenthood.”
Jindal’s campaign promise to use the Internal Revenue Service to attack a nonprofit he disagrees with might be surprising to anyone familiar with his past comments about the IRS’ screening of politically active nonprofits, which included a number of small conservative and tea party groups. In January 2013, speaking to a group of Virginia Republicans, Jindal had a starkly different take on using the IRS to pursue political opponents.
“Anyone who is participating in the targeting of Americans for our political beliefs…anybody who knew about it, anybody who cynically looked the other way, anybody under whose watch this occurred, they need to be fired and they need to be fired immediately!” Jindal told the crowd.
But he didn’t stop there.
“You cannot take the freedom of law-abiding citizens, law abiding-Americans, whether you disagree with them or not, and keep your own freedom, when you do that, you go to jail!”
