Is Bobby Jindal the GOP’s Obama-slayer?

All eyes will be on Bobby Jindal tonight. He is the Indian-American governor of Louisiana, and the man the Republican Party have chosen to respond to President Barack Obama's televised congressional address this evening.

There's a lot at stake: if the 37-year-old performs well he's likely to generate the sort of heat Obama did when he first came on the scene, and will undoubtedly put himself in the frame for a presidential run in 2012. Many Republicans already feel that Jindal, who is a conservative on both social and economic policy, is their great new hope. And his being given the plum job of responding to the president will give him a significant leg-up over his rivals, offering millions of viewers their first opportunity to see if he has what's needed to take on the charismatic - and at present almost universally admired - Obama.

Jindal's rise certainly shows the extent to which the Republican party, for so long dominated by wealthy, old, white men, is taking seriously its efforts at coming up with fresh talent. Jindal, whose parents are from the Punjab, has followed a similar career trajectory to the new president. Like him he was a member of the House of Representatives before he made his run for the Louisiana governor's office, becoming in January the first person from a non-European background to represent a southern state.

His given name is Piyush, but he chose to rename himself, aged just four, to Bobby after a character in the 1960s sitcom, The Brady Bunch. He converted from Hinduism to Catholicism when he was at High School. From there he went onto Brown University, graduating with honours in biology and public policy. After that he crossed the pond, attending New College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar, and then worked at McKinsey as a management consultant. Politically he is firmly on the Republican right: he is opposes abortion, embryonic stem cell research and gay marriage. He himself is married with three children.

Professor Jeffrey Sadow, a political scientist at Louisiana State University who has watched Jindal's career, predicts he will deliver this evening: "He will have a lot of positives and not many negatives... He has a tendency to talk rapidly so, as long as he doesn't get too excited, he'll do fine." ·