Republicans can breathe a sigh of relief.  Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal took valuable column inches at the Wall Street Journal the other day to tackle a critical issue -- one on whose resolution rests the nation's fortunes.  Jindal refuted the agitprop that Republicans are trying to ban contraceptives.  Sandra Fluke and legions of sexually frisky lassies can now forgive and reconcile with once-heartless Republicans.    

Jindal pushing the nation past the IUDs and birth control pills controversy means that Americans can unite to address lesser issues, like a sagging economy, reckless profligate government, the prospects of another sharp recession, failed appeasement of Muslims, the Benghazi cover-up (remember that?), ongoing terrorist threats to the homeland, border security (what border?), and Chinese and Russian shenanigans.  Petty stuff, to be sure, when matched against the gravitas of access to birth control.  Do Republicans hand out medals?  If so, Jindal should get one.  At least the Pelican State's chief executive should make the cover of TIME magazine.  Person of the Year, with olive branches festooning his hair and birth control pills like confetti swirling around him.      

Not that Mitt Romney and other Republicans -- and yes, those Darth Vader-like conservatives -- didn't offer plenty of refutations to the Obama campaign's and Democrats' steady drumbeat of disinformation about Republicans being anti-birth control during the presidential sweepstakes (disinformation eagerly disseminated by the lapdog media).  But Bay State Mitt, Cheesehead Paul, and GOP flacks stoutly said no such thing was so, this lie about preventing young ladies from bedding young metrosexuals without much fear of pregnancy (at least 94.7% of the time, or whatever the stat is for the Pill) -- though STDs, sans condoms, is another matter.  But, shortly, ObamaCare will provide free health care for the sexually diseased-distressed, so no worries.    

Yet, if one may be cheeky, what was the value in Bobby Jindal's scribblings for the Wall Street Journal?  What new ground did the governor break in The Great Birth Control Controversy of 2012?  It seems that Jindal is unnecessarily conceding strategic ground to the Democrats.  Jindal acknowledging that the president's bogus birth control argument merits further, high-profile refutation broadcasts that it matters over and above the genuine existential threats the republic faces, now and in the not-distant future. 

The politically savvy certainly don't let negatives go unanswered.  But, Bobby, one doubts that many sexually active single women are reading the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal.  We're talking about lassies who are taking women's studies at community colleges or waitressing or hairdressing or toiling for left-wing green causes or left-wing lesbian causes or, via PETA, making the world safe for polar bears and hamsters -- you get the picture.  For your message to resonate with these gals, you need to be hitting the niche communications routes straight to their hearts.  Maybe your article should have run in In-Style magazine?  Or you could have ponied up for an infomercial on the highly popular Models of the Runway TV show.  Perhaps Rachel Maddow would book you?  Maybe Greenpeace would let you post at their website for a small fee?        

Who, through the auspices of the Wall Street Journal, was your audience, Bobby?  Like-minded conservatives and Republicans?  Ah, Republicans -- establishment Republicans, whose pliant, quisling minds are susceptible to the left's bullying and who are wooed by the Democrats' use of feathery distractions to give Mr. Obama one more term.    

If single young XX-chromosome nitwits aren't already convinced that Republicans don't mind their having easy and affordable access to already easily accessible and affordable contraceptives, what does Jindal's WSJ article really accomplish?  Belief often trumps facts, and if the girls want to believe Democrats' lies, good luck in changing their minds -- if that's the governor's goal.      

Will the girls-gone-wild constituency be lost to the GOP forever if they stay convinced that Republicans aim to keep garden-variety contraceptives -- and, at your suggestion, Bobby, birth control pills -- off store shelves?  Or do girls eventually grow up, and will events of real weight force the Pill to the backs of their once-randy minds?    

Governor Jindal, of course, has his eyes on the White House in 2016.  One tends to think that Jindal's article wasn't so much attempting to persuade birth control pill-popping gals as much as trying to persuade establishment Republicans that he's serious about what they're serious about: playing the Democrats' game, somewhat, by addressing as important an issue that is a straw man's straw man.  After all, establishment Republicans have moneybags, and their voters matter in presidential primary and caucus outcomes, particularly if the conservative vote is splintered among conservative candidates (per 2012).

If Governor Jindal wants to position for the White House four years hence, he'd be well-advised to drop the peripheral issues.  To borrow from Churchill, there are gathering storms on the nation's horizon -- real storms, with the capacity to shatter fortunes and lives, rip up the nation's social fabric, and compromise national security as a frightening result.   

Yeah, we know, Americans aren't ready for Churchillian warnings that the nation is imperiled.  Americans aren't going to hear talk of Bernanke's crazy fiscal policies, Mr. Obama's giant unpayable national debt, and a Muslim world emboldened, not pacified, by the president's lame policies toward them.  A majority of Americans want bread and circuses and the "rich" fleeced.  Got it.    

But whether Mr. Obama's majority knows it or not, the nation badly needs an adult in the room.  In fact, more than one adult -- indeed, many.  This indispensable service -- maturity -- is something the right and the GOP need to furnish -- that is, if the GOP can lift itself up from the cringing, backpedaling, and pandering that its leaders are displaying since the elections. 

When the excrement hits the nation's fan -- and it will hit the fan in loads -- desperate voters won't turn to patronizing and conniving political lightweights to confront dire challenges.  Gone will be the gibberish about access to contraceptives, class-envy pettiness, and whether or not Mitt Romney or some rich Republican has bank accounts in Bimini, Bermuda, or Timbuktu.  Americans will be crying out for serious leaders who look at the nation's threats unblinkingly and offer game-changing solutions to long-festering problems.   

True leadership is about courage.  Expediency, pandering, diversions, and placating are in the hacks' tool bags.  Real leaders -- Ronald Reagan, for instance -- often stand up to voice truths that are unwelcome and unpopular for a time.  But events have a way of conspiring to catch up with truths told, and the men and women who have been in the public eye as the truth-tellers cease to be unwelcome guests and are embraced as prophets and leaders in times of distress and peril.   

Jindal's pushback against Romney's assertion that Mr. Obama's voters are takers was wrong, a pander.  Romney was right.  Jindal knows better, but politically, he wanted to distance himself from a truth that doesn't fit well with a culture of bennies, handouts, and graft that makes the Democratic Party what it's been for eons: The Party of the Take.  Why vote Democrat if you can't get something for nothing?  Jindal would have been better off keeping his own counsel. 

No point in brown-nosing libidinous single girls, Governor -- or intimidated establishment Republicans.  Look to Churchill and Reagan as your examples.  Those men's principled approaches might get you elected president someday.