The Indian-American Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal has said Republicans thinking about the 2016 presidential race need to get their “head examined” as the party must win the “debate of ideas” after losing two consecutive bids to the White House.

“Anybody on the Republican side even thinking or talking about running for president in 2016, I’ve said needs to get their head examined and the reason I say that is we’ve lost two presidential elections in a row. We need to be winning the debate of ideas — then we’ll win elections,” Jindal said on Fox News’s ‘Fox & Friends’.

“The country doesn’t need four years of non-stop presidential — we just inaugurated a new term of this President’s second term.”

41-year-old Jindal, often mentioned as a 2016 contender, said last month in a speech at the Republican National Committee’s meeting in Charlotte that the GOP needed to “stop being the stupid party”.

He reiterated those sentiments during the interview and said that Republicans need to rethink how they’re talking to Americans.

“A majority of American voters think that the government is trying to do too much. They want smaller government yet they still voted for President Obama — that means we’re not winning the conversation. We’re not presenting our ideas”.

“We’re not in that debate as well as we should be,” he said.

He continued: “If Ronald Reagan were alive today, if he were running for office today — this is what he would say about that poor person on food stamps or welfare or signing up for unemployment”.

He’d say, ‘This poor woman wants a better quality of life for herself and for her children.’ He would honour the dignity of that person and say, ‘I can provide her a better economic future by putting in place policies that actually work.’ We need to be having that kind of debate.”

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