Republican governor Bobby Jindal blasts Romney for blaming his election loss on 'gifts' from Obama

• Jindal said Romney's words 'don't represent where we are as a party and where we’re going as a party'
• Louisiana Governor is potential 2016 Republican candidate
  

By Toby Harnden

PUBLISHED: 13:21 EST, 15 November 2012 | UPDATED: 14:01 EST, 15 November 2012

Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a former vice-presidential prospect in 2012 and potential 2016 Republican candidate has branded Mitt Romney as 'absolutely wrong' for saying he lost the election because of Barack Obama's 'gifts' to voters.

'I absolutely reject that notion,' Jindal said on a conference call with donors today. 'I don’t think that represents where we are as a party and where we’re going as a party. And that has got to be one of the most fundamental takeaways from this election.'

The remarks will be seen as early jockeying for position among the 2016 Republican hopefuls.

Outraged: Louisiana Republican governor Bobby Jindal said Mitt Romney was 'absolutely wrong' to say he lost the election because of Obama's 'gifts' to voters

Along with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and Representative Paul Ryan, Romney's running mate, Jindal, 41, is seen as one of the new generation of Republicans who will vie for the White House in four years.

Romney, speaking to his own campaign donors earlier in the day, said that Obama's 'very generous' healthcare reform and directive to allow some illegal immigrants to remain in the United States as 'highly motivational' to some voter groups.

'The president’s campaign focused on giving targeted groups a big gift - so he made a big effort on small things. Those small things, by the way, add up to trillions of dollars.'

At a meeting of the Republican Governors Association (RGA), however, Jindal, who is Indian-American, criticised the Romney campaign for failing to present a 'vision' to Americans and argued that the Republican nominee's campaign allowed the election to become a 'contest between personalities'.

'We have got to stop dividing the American voters,' Jindal said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

'If we’re going to continue to be a competitive party and win elections on the national stage, and continue to fight for our conservative principles, we need two messages to get out loudly and clearly.

Sore loser? Romney said low-income voters, minorities and young people gave Obama a second term in the White House

'One, we are fighting for 100 percent of the votes. And second, our policies benefit every American who wants to pursue the American Dream, period.'

But in a conference call with his national finance committee, Romney said Obama's win was based on bribing loyal Democratic constituencies. The poor had been promised 'free health care', illegal immigrants that he had protected from deportation and college-aged women had been offered free contraceptives. 

'You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity? I mean, this is huge.'

'Likewise, with Hispanic voters, free health care was a big plus,' he added. 'But in addition with regards to Hispanic voters, the amnesty for children of illegals, the so-called DREAM Act kids, was a huge plus for that voting group.'

Obama announced in June that he would grant temporary amnesty to some children of illegal immigrants who met certain requirements and had clean criminal records. The programme resembled the DREAM Act, which had long been stalled in Congress. 

This summer, Romney criticised Obama for waiting so long to deal with immigration reform, a 2008 election promise, lambasting that his 'amnesty' programme as politically motivated.

'He saves these sort of things until four-and-a-half months before the general election,' he told CBS.

'I think the timing is pretty clear. If he really wanted a solution that dealt with these kids or illegal immigration in America, then this is something he would have taken up in his first three-and-a-half years, not in his last few months.'

Winner: Obama with his wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha on Election Night in Chicago

According to exit polls, Romney secured 59 per cent of the white vote while Obama was backed by 93 per cent of black voters, 71 percent of Hispanics and 60 per cent of voters younger than 30, according to exit polls.

On the conference call, Romney said that Obama directed his campaign according to the 'old playbook' of targeting specific groups with promises of legislation that would persuade them to vote a certain way. 

'In each case they were very generous in what they gave to those groups. With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest, was a big gift.

'Free contraceptives were very big with young college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people.

'They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008,' he said.

Paul Ryan, Romney's vice-presidential running mate, has blamed the Republican defeat on high turnout among urban voters. 

'I think the surprise was some of the turnout, some of the turnout especially in urban areas, which gave President Obama the big margin to win this race,' he told a television station in Wisconsin. 

'When we watched Virginia and Ohio coming in, and those ones coming in as tight as they were, and looking like we were going to lose them, that’s when it became clear we weren’t going to win.'

Romney told his finance team that the sting of his loss was still too strong to begin mapping out his plans and the future of the party.

'I am very sorry that we didn’t win. I know that you expected to win. We expected to win… It was very close, but close doesn’t count in this business.

'And so now we're looking and saying, "O.K., what can we do going forward?" But frankly we’re still so troubled by the past, it’s hard to put together our plans from the future.'

Representative Chris Van Hollen, a leading Democrat, told CNN that he agreed with Jindal 'that Governor Romney's remarks were way off base'. and served as a reminder of the controversial '47 per cent' video that was secretly taped at a private Florida fundraiser for Romney earlier this year. 

'There are 47 per cent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,' Romney said in the video. 

'All right, there are 47 per cent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it.

'My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.'