You got only half of that right, Porky. There is no more place (Thank God) for your loser one-term father and your faux family “dynasty” of Progressive Republicans. Your brother’s squishiness lead directly to Barack Obama (by the way who did you and your family vote for in 2008?). How did we wind up with Bob Dole, W., John McCain and now Mitt Romney if we are so extreme?
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said today that both Ronald Reagan and his father George H. W. Bush would have had a difficult time getting nominated by today’s ultra-conservative Republican Party.
“Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad — they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party — and I don’t — as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement, doesn’t allow for finding some common ground,” Bush said, adding that he views the hyper-partisan moment as “temporary.”
“Back to my dad’s time and Ronald Reagan’s time – they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan suport,” he said. Reagan “would be criticized for doing the things that he did.”
Bush cited, in particular, “the budget deal my dad did, with bipartisan support — at least for a while — that created the spending restraint of the ‘90s,” a reference to a move widely viewed now as a political disaster for Bush, breaking a pledge against tax increases and infuriating conservatives. It was, Bush said, “helpful in creating a climate of more sustainted economic growth.”
“Politically it clearly didn’t work out — he was a one term president,” his son said.
Bush called the present partisan climate “disturbing.”
“It’s just a different environment left and right,” he said of “this dysfunction.”
And Bush also blamed President Obama for much of the conflict.
“His first year could have been a year of enormous accomplishment had he focused on things where there was more common ground,” he said, arguing that Obama had made a “purely political calculation” to run a sharply partisan administration.
His remarks to a group of reporters and editors at the headquarters of Bloomberg LP in Manhattan were the latest in a series of concerns Bush, one of the best-respected figures in his party, has raised about its current direction. Other Republicans, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, have suggested that this GOP wouldn’t nominate Reagan, who raised taxes and made grand bargains with Democrats on immigration and fiscal issues. Bush also repeated criticism of the “tone” of the discussion of immigration issues.
Bush said that Mitt Romney’s move to channel Republicans’ anger over immigration in the primary has put him “in somewhat of a box” in the general election. He advised Romney to offer a “broader and more intense” approach to the issue. He suggested Romney continue to campaign in Hispanic communities, that he recast immigration as an economic issue, and that he focus on the question of education.
“I do feel a little out of step with my party on this,” he said.
Bush also had praise for Rep. Paul Ryan for proposing a budget and disdain for Democrats for refusing to engage it.
“It’s all about talking points rather than engagement,” he said of Congressional hearings on the Ryan budget, during one of which, he said, he was grilled by Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC Chairwoman.
“She clearly doesn’t like me — not from Washington, from past battles,” he said.
Bush said he finds reason for optimism in statehouses, and cited two governors as particular models: Indiana Republican Mitch Daniels and Colorado Democrat John Hickenlooper.
Bush did offer Obama one point of agreement: That the economic “headwinds” the president has been mocked for citing are real.
“We’ve got major headwinds with Europe and the slowdown in Asia as well,” Bush said, predicting weak economic growth in the short term.
But Bush sounded a remarkably gloomy note about the present moment: “We’re in very difficul times,” he said. “We’re in decline.”
Tags: Jeb Bush
Reagan would be too Conservative for today’s Republican Party. The GOP just nominated Mitt Romney who is probably the most Liberal Republican since Nixon. Jeb Bush is just angry he knows he will never be President.
Maybe on Social issues the GOP is ultra-Conservatives, but that is a Statist Big Government position, not small government one. The GOP is a Center-Left Liberal Party on economic/fiscal maters. There’s nothing Conservative about today’s GOP.
I bet you they voted for Barack Hussein Obama.
@ Rodan:
And don’t forget what Nixon ran on back in ’68….
I saw a photo of Jeb in the article, he has more chins (as the joke goes) then a Chinatown phonebook.
There is a reason I refer to him as porky.
@ Speranza:
He does look like Porky Pig.
the Gop seems ultra conservative on socon stuff because the left is organized and attacking them relentlessly on it. The left is trying to take a false narrative and make it true by intimidation.
Romney should counterpunch that. first through the media talking heads, then through political targets.
The election will be won on the independent swing. If the socons get hurt and stay home they only have themselves to blame for their lack of liberty from 2012 to 2016
Shut the hell up Jeb and someone put a sock into the mouth of that overrated Karl Rove while we are at it.
McCain, most of the Bush’s, 8 or 10 of the RINO’s in the Senate and around 40 of the RINO’s in the House will join the commie Democrats if the conservatives get the upper hand on the RNC ect.
They have been ready for some time now all they are looking for is an excuse of U.S. taking the country back from the two party evil money cult.
Their last hope is the power of the unions and the money they can draw on.
“Do not let the door hit you on your RINO ass’s on the way out.”
Well, since I’ve already pledged never to vote for another member of his family it really doesn’t matter that I find his opinion moronic and deeply offensive.
The GOP has nominated a conservative only three times since WWII and never since 1984. That makes the party something, but clearly not “conservative”.
The irony of this whole thing is that in 1980, George HW Bush did his damnedest to keep Reagan from getting the nomination in the first place.
He was the one who came up with the term “voodoo economics” during the primaries, which was later seized upon by the Dems.
@ lobo91:
GHWB was the choice of the Republican Establishment in 1980, not Ronald Reagan.
I have no illusions of Reagan. He did much tactical good, but no fault divorce and Justice O’Conner strategically wiped out any short term gains. We must look further back and further ahead. In 1963 we eliminated the bible, turning public schools into Gov’t indoctrination camps. George W. said when this happens we must return the children to church for education. Looking Back to Get Ahead! All the good kings and prophets of the bible looked back to get ahead.
P.S. My 45th favorite book is “God and Ronald Reagan”