Bobby Jindal's campaign staff blame the 'bizarre race' for their candidate's failure

Bobby Jindal's presidential campaign never really got off the ground, but his advisers and staff don't blame themselves or their candidate for the failure to launch. It was just a really odd year.

"It's been a bizarre race. I don't know that anyone else can explain it," Jindal's chief campaign strategist, Curt Anderson, said on Tuesday.

Jindal's team had thought their candidate had a fighting chance because he is a strong debater, but he was relegated to the undercard debates due to low poll numbers. This frustrated Anderson, because the stage placement decisions were made based on national polls, not early state polls — and ultimately primaries aren't based on national polling, anyway.

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"It never occurred to us at the time that he could be excluded from the debate stage, but I think that this whole debate gambit, the criteria used, was a bad idea from the start," Jindal's campaign manager, Timmy Teepell, told reporters. Anderson added that anyone who could have predicted the Republican frontrunners — Donald Trump and Ben Carson — is "smarter than anyone else in the world."

But everyone on Team Jindal agrees this isn't the end. "[Jindal] was the youngest candidate running. He has a bright future. And I don't know exactly what he'll do next, but I know that he will keep driving the debate," Teepell said.