“There are other people out there that are very qualified and we’ve had enough Bushes.”
—Barbara Bush: Jeb shouldn’t run for president
“Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida said his father, George Bush, and Ronald Reagan would find themselves out of step with today’s Republican Party because of its strict adherence to ideology and the intensity of modern partisan warfare. “Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, similar to my dad, they would have had a hard time if you define the Republican Party — and I don’t — as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement,” Mr. Bush said at question-and-answer session with reporters and editors held Monday morning in Manhattan by Bloomberg View. “Back to my dad’s time or Ronald Reagan’s time,” he said, “they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan support that right now would be difficult to imagine happening.” Mr. Bush’s comments help solidify his role as the Republican Party’s leading voice of moderation at a time when many in the party — particularly Tea Party adherents — are calling for ever-greater ideological discipline. And he continued a trend this campaign cycle of big-name presidential endorsers going off script from the campaigns they support. Mr. Bush has endorsed Mitt Romney’s candidacy. ”
—The New York Times, “Jeb Bush Questions GOP’s Shift Right.”
“Oh shut up, Jeb Bush, you communist sympathtizer!” the GOP responded.
“It’s a math question. Four years from now, Texas is going to be a so-called blue state. Imagine Texas as a blue state, how hard it would be to carry the presidency or gain control of the Senate.”
—Jeb Bush’s Complicated Legacy — New York MagazineIf you want us to stop blaming George W. Bush, stop running on his ideas.
nationalmemo.comBut seriously, I do have two recommendations for Jeb if he honestly wants the president and the more than two-thirds of Americans who blame his brother to bend to the Bush narrative.
First, if you want us to stop blaming George W. Bush, stop running on his ideas.
Now this isn’t a stricture that applies to Jeb Bush alone. Unlike a majority of Republicans in Congress, he is willing to consider tax increases to cut the deficit. He has also praised President Obama for controversial educational reforms that have largely been ignored by press.
Mitt Romney, however, is running entirely on a Bush agenda with few exceptions. Unlike W., Romney claims he’d make huge cuts in government –although the growth of government was responsible for just about the only jobs created during W.’s administration.
Romney has the same neo-conservative foreign policy advisors as W., the same across-the-board tax breaks that go mostly to the wealthy, and the same desire to regulate big business – meaning none.
If the GOP rejected the Bush-era dogmatism about tax cuts for the rich, coddling Wall Street and military aggression, it would be much harder to blame Bush.
Second, if you want us to stop blaming your brother, Jeb, tell the Republican Party to stop sabotaging our country. No one expects Republicans to suddenly become Democrats. But how can anyone look at what the GOP has done since this president was inaugurated and not see an outright attempt to prevent recovery? Forget voting against everything he proposed to put Americans back to work. Forget passing an endless series of bills that empowers polluters and calling them jobs bills. That’s pretty typical GOP nonsense.
What is unacceptable is that the Republicans who enabled Bush to spend the surplus are the same ones who held our economy hostage to raise the debt limit for the first time in American history. For months in the middle of 2011, as millions of Americans were out of work, they played a political game to get a debt deal they won’t even honor. The same gang is also holding up appointments of judges and public officials, wounding the ability of our democracy to function. To make matters worse, they’re almost guaranteeing a repeat of the debt limit crisis — despite knowing that even the spectre of another debt crisis threatens American jobs.
Going to constant extremes simply to injure this president proves that Republicans learned nothing from Bush’s failures. And since you, Jeb, seem to be planning on running this herd of clawing cats one day, getting them to take a little responsibility would be a good first step.
Until you do, we’ll just have another Bush to blame.
