You may have seen Gov. Bobby Jindal’s response to President Obama’s speech the other night. But I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t remember it, either because it made absolutely no impression on you, or because it was so traumatizing that you subconsciously repressed the memory. In either case, don’t worry, you didn’t miss much.

I saw Governor Jindal’s speech. And like every pundit in Washington, of every political stripe, I thought it was a complete and unmitigated disaster. Chris Matthews’s unintentional “Oh, God,” whispered over the MSNBC mics as Jindal wandered toward the stage, turned out to be prescient; the Governor was charmless and awkward, condescending in his delivery, unnervingly artificial in his body language. The speech itself was blunt, artless, and juvenile; I’d call it a train wreck, but it’d be an insult to train wrecks. About the only thing Jindal did right was pronounce his own name.

Of course, Barack Obama is a hard act to follow – especially when he’s surrounded by hundreds of cheering politicians in the chambers of the U.S. House – a sleepy southern governor’s mansion just won’t have the same emotional impact. Rebutting the president is always an uphill battle; Democrats’ responses to Bush’s State of the Union addresses weren’t exactly stellar (one recalls Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ somnambulant response last year – and if the New York Times is to be believed, it didn’t slow her political ascent one bit). But even by those standards, one might have expected more from Jindal than the oratorical equivalent of dry-heaves.

The immediate effect of Jindal’s pratfall has been to tamp down speculation over his possible 2012 presidential run, as well as to provoke joyful schadenfreude among crass leftists like me. But the speech also illustrates just how badly Republican thinking has reified in the past few decades.

The thrust of Jindal’s argument, and it’s one that’s shared by conservatives from Limbaugh to the congressional leadership, is that the way to stop the economic crisis is to cut taxes and reduce the deficit, thereby stimulating business development. Everything else, in this understanding, is waste. It’s the classic conservative line, which worked to such great effect during the Ronald Reagan years; basically, any kind of state economic initiative amounts to what Jindal called “dependence on the government.”

Such an argument is alternately contemptuous and hostile toward the actual affairs of governance – which is why Jindal openly ridiculed state spending on, among other things, disaster prevention and high-speed rail, and told an anecdote about Hurricane Katrina that was so simple and moralistic it made Hans Christian Andersen sound like Hegel. (“Gather round, kids, and I’ll tell you the Fable of the Sheriff and the Bureaucrat!”) There is no nuance here; David Brooks, in a rare moment of forceful accuracy, called it “nihilism.”

It’s hard to overstate how tone-deaf his argument is. Put yourself in the place of the average American voter: you’re worried about the imploding economy and what it means for your own job and family. The institutions that have guaranteed your standard of living for as long as you can remember – banks, insurers, large employers – are dropping like flies. The government, under George W. Bush, had no expressed interest in helping anyone except its corporate backers. There is no one in public life that you trust, and you’re frightened. Now here comes Barack Obama, a man who if nothing else radiates integrity, with a message that his government is finally going to step up and help; they’re going to try their best to save your job and your house. How are you going to react when Bobby Jindal tells you you can’t trust the government either?

“Oh, God” is right. Jindal looked Americans in the eye and, just after acknowledging that they’re “worried… [and] looking to your elected leaders in Washington for solutions,” informed them that “the strength of America is not found in our government.” He went on to compare the economic crisis to Hurricane Katrina, and told Americans that Obama’s plan would “increase our taxes down the line, and saddle future generations with debt.” Gov. Jindal might have a Reaganite policy outlook, but he sure doesn’t have Reagan’s optimism.

Apparently this is the Republicans’ new message; just this Wednesday, Rep. John Boehner told reporters that “the era of big government is back, and Democrats want you to pay for it,” calling Obama’s budget a “spending spree.” Sen. Judd Gregg, inveighing against the budget on Thursday, said it contained “tax hikes that will only hurt the economy” and instead called for “aggressive spending restraint.” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison wondered aloud, on CNBC, “What is happening to our free-enterprise system?” The Republican machine really seems to think that these retrograde arguments about deficits and wasteful spending are the way back to popular support. And perhaps they are, among the GOP’s wealthy base voters, who are still perfectly self-sufficient and who have no interest in sharing their riches – but everyone else is more than ready for a new approach.

None of these arguments will have any more resonance or power among Americans than Jindal’s disastrous speech, no matter how many times Republicans try them; somebody really needs to tell these clowns that the 1980s are over, and Reagan is dead.

Americans want to trust their government again. Barack Obama, in his address, gave them that chance – which perhaps is why his approval ratings soared among voters that heard him speak. Bobby Jindal, repeating the moldy ideas of Reaganite fiscal conservatism, did not. So even if the GOP had the organizational wherewithal to put those ideas in an appealing package – which, unsurprisingly, they don’t – they won’t win a single new voter until they bring their ideology in line with the 21^st-century political environment.

Given the performance we saw on Tuesday night, I’m not holding my breath.

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