They hated each other to death

Among the many highlights of the final week of the very special 2015 election season was the part where Bobby Jindal descended from the heavens.. or from Iowa... to disrupt David Vitter's last minute strategy.  Vitter had been trying to build late momentum by flogging the Syrian refugee controversy du jour.  Jindal interrupted that by suddenly dropping out of the Presidential race, returning to Louisiana and forcing both candidates to talk about the state budget instead.  

Then on Wednesday afternoon, Jindal floated a new budget plan, a move that further sucked up the political oxygen Vitter’s campaign desperately needs. A press conference on the refugee crisis originally planned to be held in front of the Catholic Charities’ refugee assistance office was scraped at the last minute in favor of one focused on the budget on the state capitol’s front steps.

Vitter may have been seeing a shift in voter sentiments, “but then Bobby Jindal parachuted in,” said Edward Chervenak, director of the Survey Research Center at the University of New Orleans.

Jindal is currently embarked on a Legacy Tour Of Louisiana. If you happen to cross paths with him this month, remember to say thank you.  He did his small part to help end David Vitter's political career. That's a legacy deserving of commemoration.

Or maybe we should just thank David Vitter.  Oyster argues this week that Vitter's troubles were a major factor in ending Jindal's Presidential campaign in the first place.

Jindal had to decide whether to drop out to 'pre-frame' a potential Vitter defeat, or continue running for President in Iowa and endlessly explain why Edwards' resounding win wasn't a rejection of his policies. He chose the former.

So the failure is circular, really.  Bobby Jindal and David Vitter have long been political enemies. But this year, in particularly, each needed each other to succeed to some degree in order to further his own ambitions.  In the end, they hated each other too much to let that happen.