Washington, Nov. 25 : Louisiana’s 37-year-old governor Bobby Jindal is the rising star of the Republican Party, an unnamed senator of the party has said.

In an interview with the website Politico. com, the GOP senator also threw up the names of Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty and Charlie Crist.

He rather forlornly said: “I don’t think we have learned much from the election in terms of what people want to see. We have the same gridlock.”

“We need someone who speaks from the center,” he said, adding that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was not the voice of the party.

“We have to become much more attuned to the rhetoric and issues that Hispanics care about. We have to talk about education, family, and moral issues like gay marriage and abortion,” he said.

Small government — the mantra of the Republican Party ever since Ronald Reagan — will not work anymore, the senator said.

“John McCain was not a good messenger once you got past the issue of Iraq. He was a horrible messenger. Obama was never off message for one second, except maybe [when he met] Joe the Plumber. John was a very undisciplined politician running against a very disciplined politician,” he said.

“Over the next couple of years, we need to be pragmatists. Our battles should not be over ideology; they should be about getting things done,” he concluded. (ANI)