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Oceander

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Get Ready for Jeb Bush
« on: April 01, 2014, 02:49:57 am »
The American Conservative

Get Ready for Jeb Bush
He may be the GOP establishment’s pick for 2016. But is he more like his father or brother—and is either what Americans want?

By W. James Antle III • March 31, 2014

Michael Dukakis ran against George H.W. Bush in 1988, making the case that the election should be about competence, not ideology. Dukakis lost. George W. Bush a dozen years later became one of his father’s successors, presiding over an administration known much more for ideology.

Would a more competent proponent of George W. Bush’s agenda have been a better president? Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush may seek to provide an answer to that question. Republican establishment bigwigs are apparently coming around to the idea of a third Bush presidency.

“Concerned that the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal has damaged New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s political standing and alarmed by the steady rise of Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.),” the Washington Post reports, “prominent donors, conservative leaders and longtime operatives say they consider Bush the GOP’s brightest hope to win back the White House.”

Elephants never forget, the cliché goes, but these Republican pachyderms have very short memories. Our last President Bush left office with a 34 percent approval rating, according to Gallup. On the eve of the 2008 election, in which the Republicans were routed, 70 percent disapproved of Bush’s performance in office while 25 percent approved.

As Dubya cratered, Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress. Democrats nearly won a filibuster-proof Senate majority in 2008—which they ultimately secured with Arlen Specter’s defection—just four years after the GOP took a 55-45 majority.

The senior George Bush didn’t leave his party in much better shape. His share of the popular vote tumbled 16 points from 1988 to 1992, ending up with the worst showing of any Republican nominee since Alf Landon in 1936 and of any incumbent president since William Howard Taft in 1912.

Comes the rejoinder: as bad as things looked for Bush 41 in ’92, Republicans won majorities in both houses of Congress—their first time controlling the House in 40 years—just two years later. By 1999, Republicans were ready to nominate another Bush for president. The polls suggested the country as a whole was ready to elect him.

Notwithstanding how close and contentious the 2000 election results turned out to be, that’s all basically true.

Imagining a Jeb Bush presidency has actually been a political parlor game for quite some time. If Jeb had won his first campaign for governor in 1994, he likely would have been the 2000 Republican presidential nominee. Instead he lost to Lawton Chiles while his brother George beat Anne Richards in Texas.

During the run-up to the 2000 Republican primaries, Jeb—who finally did win the Florida governorship in 1998—hadn’t served long enough to be a credible presidential nominee. His brother was then in his second term as governor of Texas. The rest was history.

Republicans have always had reason to regret this twist of fate. Jeb likely would have won Florida cleanly and convincingly, without the hanging chads or Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision. He might have won the popular vote too.

But Jeb’s reputation as a policy wonk, far more engaged than his brother in the details of governing, has also led many to wonder what might have been. Even the columnist Joseph Sobran, writing late in life when he was far removed from Republican circles, mused, “Jeb might have been an intelligent and tolerable president.”

Some even hope Jeb will be more like his father and less like his brother. Bush 41 richly deserved that 1992 primary challenge, but he was more prudent on foreign policy than many Republicans who have come after. And Dukakis was ultimately wrong about him: George Bush was competent and, for both good and ill, not terribly ideological.

Alas, Jeb is giving little reason to think a third Bush presidency would mark the reemergence of a Brent Scowcroft-style realism. He has been recycling the usual hawkish lines about President Obama encouraging “American passivity” and Paul promoting “neo-isolationism.”

“He showed a lot of knowledge about foreign policy that he must have been working hard to acquire,” said Ari Fleischer, the former Bush 43 press secretary whose boss’s “knowledge about foreign policy” gave us the Iraq War. The setting was an event hosted by casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who has suggested dropping an atomic bomb on Iran.

So far there is little serious indication that Jeb Bush is getting ready to run for president, but he doesn’t have to start yet. He could mobilize the fundraising and campaign infrastructure quickly—the Post quotes a Republican bundler as saying “the ‘vast majority’ of Romney’s top 100 donors would back Bush in a competitive nomination fight.”

Competitive it may well be. If—and this is a big if—conservatives don’t hopelessly split their votes between several semi-serious candidates, they may be facing the party establishment on the closest thing to even terms since Reagan. If Bush and Christie both run, it may be the establishment that is split. A Bush candidacy would likely prevent Marco Rubio from running; it would also make things harder for Paul Ryan.

Do the American people even want another Bush vs. Clinton presidential contest, turning the 2016 campaign into the latest front of a tired dynastic war? And this month, George P. Bush—Jeb’s son—won the Republican nomination for Texas land commissioner.

W. James Antle III is editor of the Daily Caller News Foundation and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?

Offline MBB1984

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Re: Get Ready for Jeb Bush
« Reply #1 on: April 01, 2014, 12:11:25 pm »
Jeb Bush:  A candidate ready made for democrat victory.

Offline aligncare

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Re: Get Ready for Jeb Bush
« Reply #2 on: April 01, 2014, 12:32:47 pm »
Quote
“Concerned that the George Washington Bridge traffic scandal has damaged New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s political standing and alarmed by the steady rise of Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.),” the Washington Post reports, “prominent donors, conservative leaders and longtime operatives say they consider Bush the GOP’s brightest hope to win back the White House.”

I have never been less sympathetic to the Republican Party's political future then I am right now.

Just being against liberal Democrat socialists is simply not enough. I hope voters 2014 begin turning back the tide.

Offline alicewonders

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Re: Get Ready for Jeb Bush
« Reply #3 on: April 01, 2014, 01:51:51 pm »
I have never been less sympathetic to the Republican Party's political future then I am right now.

Just being against liberal Democrat socialists is simply not enough. I hope voters 2014 begin turning back the tide.

I completely agree.  Instead of spending valuable time and resources on planning the defeat of the Democrats - they are obsessed with fighting their own base! 

Don't tread on me.   8888madkitty

We told you Trump would win - bigly!

Offline massadvj

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Re: Get Ready for Jeb Bush
« Reply #4 on: April 01, 2014, 02:12:10 pm »
Jeb Bush is conservative enough for me.  Jeb Bush is the most qualified candidate in the stable.  If he had any other last name, many of us would be very enthusiastic about him.  So why is Jeb's name a liability but the name Clinton is not a liability to Hillary?  I'll tell you why.  George Bush has too much class.  He rode off into the sunset instead of confronting his adversaries.  The Clintons, on the other hand, never stopped attacking and campaigning.

I'd prefer Jeb did not run.  I intend to support Rand Paul.  But we could do worse than Jeb Bush.  Christie, for example.

Oceander

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Re: Get Ready for Jeb Bush
« Reply #5 on: April 01, 2014, 02:49:56 pm »
Jeb Bush is conservative enough for me.  Jeb Bush is the most qualified candidate in the stable.  If he had any other last name, many of us would be very enthusiastic about him.  So why is Jeb's name a liability but the name Clinton is not a liability to Hillary?  I'll tell you why.  George Bush has too much class.  He rode off into the sunset instead of confronting his adversaries.  The Clintons, on the other hand, never stopped attacking and campaigning.

I'd prefer Jeb did not run.  I intend to support Rand Paul.  But we could do worse than Jeb Bush.  Christie, for example.

Slick Willie will have been out of office for 16 years come the next presidential election; GWB will have been out of office only 8.  GWB was also much more polarizing than Willie was and left with a large resevoir of sympathy-based political capital courtesy of the GOP's asinine attempt to impeach him.  Hillary gets the benefit of a lot of that.

If the only two choices were Jeb Bush or Chris Christie, I would have to go with Bush, but I would also start getting ready early for 8 more years of democrat party (mis)governance.

Offline Fishrrman

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Re: Get Ready for Jeb Bush
« Reply #6 on: April 02, 2014, 02:41:58 am »
[[ Jeb Bush is conservative enough for me.  Jeb Bush is the most qualified candidate in the stable.  ]]

I've saved the following post for a long time in my archives.
I didn't write it.
I can't vouch for it's veracity. It may be a total lie.
You read. You decide:
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As for anyone who would even think about another Bush as Prez (Jeb!), check out the background on his wife, Columba. Jeb met her while on some some trip to Mexico when he was in college. She says she was from a poor family and her father was a “migrant laborer.” After meeting Jeb, she chucked her life in Mexico and took off for Texas. Was she in the country legally when she married Jeb? No one seems to ask those questions and actually get answers. Recently, Jeb & Columba issued a public statement about how “hurtful” all this anti-immigrant talk is. That’s ridiculous seeing how none of this is about legal immigration -— just the lawbreakers need be offended. There has to be more to this story, and why George is so out front on this issue. Out of his own lips: “America is an idea, not a place.”
227 posted on 05/29/2007 11:28:20 AM PDT by Sioux-san (God save the Sheeple)  [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1841475/posts?page=227#227
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Offline collins

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Re: Get Ready for Jeb Bush
« Reply #7 on: April 02, 2014, 05:20:14 am »
Yuk, just what the country needs, another Bush, and an even bigger amnesty whore than the rest of his family. And it could be Hillary on the other side, 1992 deja vu.

Wait, we need a nut to run third party to be totally authentic.

Online rustynail

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Re: Get Ready for Jeb Bush
« Reply #8 on: April 02, 2014, 10:28:58 am »
A Clinton connection? Jeb backwards is BeJ.