Donald Trump has deviated from Republican orthodoxy on foreign interventionism, and the Republican establishment may throw its support to Hillary Clinton (see “The Fix Is In,” SLL, 10/21/15). From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:
You may not like Donald Trump, for any one of a number of reasons, but anti-interventionists have to give him some credit for opening up the presidential debate to a critique of US foreign policy that hasn’t been seen or heard since the Ron Paul campaign. On Syria and on Iraq, he challenges the GOP/neoconservative orthodoxy in a way that Sen. Rand Paul hasn’t been able to do: indeed, one could argue that Trump has stolen Rand’s thunder – such as it is – in sounding the anti-interventionist note. And now Trump is upsetting the conventional GOP wisdom in an even more fundamental sense by challenging the “he kept us safe” theme that Jeb Bush has been pushing on behalf of his brother – you know, that former chief executive who left office with a popularity rating lower than any President in recent memory.
The Jeb-Trump contretemps played out over the weekend’s talk shows, with The Donald telling Fox News:
“Look, Jeb said we were safe with my brother – we were safe. Well, the World Trade Center just fell down. Now, am I trying to blame him? I’m not blaming anybody. But the World Trade Center came down. So when he said, we were safe, that’s not safe. We lost 3,000 people, it was one of the greatest – probably the greatest catastrophe ever in this country if you think about it.”
Ouch!
Jeb came back at him on CNN, the cable station nobody watches, protesting that brother George “united the country,” and going on to aver:
“I don’t know why he keeps bringing this up. It doesn’t show that he’s a serious person as it relates to being commander in chief and being the architect of a foreign policy. Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things that – as though he’s still on The Apprentice.”
I’m sure Jeb has never seen a single episode of “The Apprentice,” and that’s because he’s a Very Serious Person who is fast becoming the architect of his own defeat. This kind of condescending snootiness is a definite turnoff for voters, many of whom have seen “The Apprentice” and don’t appreciate being talked down to. Because in talking down to Trump, voters feel Jeb is talking down to them. That Jeb and his advisors don’t get this is the chief reason why the Bush campaign is sinking like a stone.
And just how serious is Jeb’s critique of Trump? If you parse it, it makes no sense: what does being commander-in-chief have to do with Trump’s criticism of brother Bush that, after all, the twin towers came down on his watch? What does being “the architect of a foreign policy” have to do with Trump’s assertion that the hijackers wouldn’t have even been allowed into the country if he had been President at the time? And what, exactly, does “across the spectrum of foreign policy” mean, anyway?
To continue reading: Trump vs. Jeb
From Paul B. Farrell, on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:
“Who will get the Dreary Recovery Going?” taunts Mort Zuckerman in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. The head of U.S. News & World Report warns America that a recession is coming: “They occur about every eight years and America is ill-prepared to weather the one on the horizon.” Ill-equipped.
Yes, the clock is ticking, every 8 years. 2000. 2008. Next 2016, even with a President Trump.
Another great newsman, Bill O’Neill, publisher of Investors Business Daily, author of perennial best-seller “How To Make Money in Stocks,” agrees: Markets have peaked and crashed roughly every four years for the last century, with bigger crashes, long recessions, every eight years. And still most investors will be ill-prepared.
Sounds like a double-teamed confirmation of Jeremy Grantham’s famous BusinessInsider prediction for 2016: “Around the presidential election or soon after, the market bubble will burst, as bubbles always do, and will revert to its trend value, around half of its peak or worse.”
Get it? A mega crash is coming, dropping half off its peak, down below Dow 5,000. Not just another 1,000-point correction like last month. But a heart-stopping collapse coinciding with the 2016 elections … then a long systemic recession … probably lasting till the 2020 presidential election, maybe longer … no matter who’s in the White House, Doanld Trump, Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton.
Yes, recessions hit every eight years. The last was just about 8 years ago, warned Zuckerman with these facts: “The period since the Great Recession ended in 2009 has seen the weakest U.S. recovery since World War II,” Our aging bull is actually warning us … recession dead ahead.
Why no “urgency from the White House,” no push to strengthen the U.S economy, avoid the coming recession? asks Zuckerman. Why? GOP candidates are worse, immature teenagers offering a “handful of Band-Aids.” Any leaders? Trump the egomaniac? God help us.
Next another disturbing Journal op-ed gets tossed into the mix: Dick Cheney is on the attack, sounding like fellow Republican Trump’s motto, “Make America Great Again.” Build a bigger Pentagon war machine, says the architect of the $5 trillion Iraq War fiasco. His latest rally cry: “Restoring American Exceptionalism.” Sorry folks, but the GOP’s relentless efforts to sabotage the White House the last six years (like 50 repetitive and futile House votes to repeal Obamacare) was the exact opposite, an “exceptional” failure of leadership.
The former vice president also quoted conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer: We’re at a “hinge point in history.” And former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges one-upped Cheney in Salon.com: The “world is at a crisis point the likes of which we’ve never really seen.” Like the 1848 European revolutions. Hedges even warns liberals, “climate change is the least” of the world’s problems, don’t even think that “voting for Hillary will make any difference.”
Tell Trump the ISIS War will increase taxes, add trillions of new debt
Yes, folks, the GOP neo-con hawks are back at it again, want new wars … liken Obama to Hitler … fueling Cheney’s latest bout of extreme hubris … arming another Bush effort to take over America a third time … Cheney claims America is weaker today than at the start of his costly ill-fated Iraq War. He should endorse Trump, they both want a new superpower military ready to start new wars, fight revolutionaries, add big debt, run up casualties.
To continue reading: 100% risk of a 50% stock crash
Posted in Debt, Foreign Policy, Other Views, Politics, War
Tagged Jeb Bush, Neoconservatives, Republicans, Trump
A couple of nonentities who owe it all to their last names will probably be running against each other next year, and you can just feel the tedium mounting. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:
The Floridian clod seeking to don the mantle of Millard Fillmore made an amazing foreign policy speech at an economic conference in Berlin last week. Inveighing against Russian President Vladimir Putin, he gave a very vivid impression of a man who has no idea what he is talking about.
“Russia must respect the sovereignty of all of its neighbors. And who can doubt that Russia will do what it pleases if its aggression goes unanswered?”
Jeb Bush was averring elliptically to the failed state formerly known as Ukraine, trying to put over the shopworn story that Russia was needlessly making war on its neighbor (and former province).
“Bush called for increased clarity on what type of sanctions would be imposed on the country if Prime Minister Vladimir Putin does not back down against a united international front…. ‘I don’t think we should be reacting to bad behavior [Bush said]. By being clear what the consequences of “bad behavior” is in advance, I think we will deter the kind of aggression that we fear from Russia. But always reacting, and giving the sense we’re reacting in a tepid fashion, only enables the bad behavior of Putin.’”
Note, by the way, that here is yet another scion of the Bush clan who was inexplicably brought up speaking Ebonics: “What the consequences… is?” Say what?
Ukraine became a failed state due to a coup d’état engineered by Barack Obama’s state department. US policy wonks did not like the prospect of Ukraine joining Russia’s regional trade group called the Eurasian Customs Union instead of tilting toward NATO and the European Union. So, we paid for and enabled a coalition of crypto-fascists to rout the duly elected president. One of the first acts of the US-backed new regime was to declare punishment of Russian language speakers, and so the predominately Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine revolted. Russia reacted to all this instability by seizing the Crimean peninsula, which had been part of Russia proper both before and through the Soviet chapter of history. The Crimea contained Russia’s only warm water seaports and naval bases. What morons in the US government ever thought Russia would surrender those assets to a newly-failed neighbor state?
Was Vladimir Putin acting irresponsibly in this case? The opposite would be a much more logical conclusion. And what interest does the United States have in Ukraine? Surely no more than Russia would have in Texas. And when else in the entire history of the USA all the way back to George Washington did any government official declare Ukraine to be America’s business? Answer: Never. Reason: we have no legitimate interests in that corner of the world. So why in the early 21st century are we making this such a sore spot in our foreign relations? Because our waning influence in the world, in turn a product of our foolish inattention to our own economic problems and failing polity at home, is driving America batshit crazy.
The rest of the world sees this for exactly what it is, friends, former friends, and adversaries alike. I wonder what the Germans thought of Jeb’s intemperate and idiotic speech. Eyes must have rolled in the meeting hall. After all, Russia is their natural major trading partner. How do US-orchestrated economic sanctions against Russia work in their interest? Answer: they don’t. The Germans have been making a lot of discreet noises the past year about dissociating from America’s stupid program of antagonizing Russia. Perhaps Jeb’s jingoistic utterances in Berlin will finally push them over the line.
Meanwhile, Hillary (no last name required) steps out of the starting gate this week, too, pretending to be the incarnation of Robin Hood, as if she would ever shut down the financial rackets that have at once impoverished the former middle-class and enriched grifter opportunists such as Hillary herself. Her event on Roosevelt Island, New York City, looked like unintentional self-satire, as if it were staged by the late-great director Robert Altman for one of his wacky political movies. Hillary’s handlers missed one touch though: a cape would have gone nicely with that electrifying blue pant-suit. As for the speech itself, a bigger bundle of platitudes and insincerities has not been served up since the heyday of Nixon. As the politicians are so fond of saying these days, make no mistake, Hillary is the New Nixon.
From Jeb Bush, on the “Hugh Hewitt Show,” as reported on breitbart.com:
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush stated that he is “nervous” about criticism of the NSA and that he wished the president would do a better job defending government surveillance systems on Monday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show.”
Bush said that lone wolf terrorism “is a serious threat in a world where we’re so connected with the rest of the world. We have people moving in and people moving out. People get their information now, not everybody gets to listen to your show to get all their information. People get their information in different ways. They get disaffected, disillusioned, preyed upon, and so yeah, I think that this is an ongoing threat, and I hope that our counterintelligence capabilities are always vigilant. I’ve always been nervous about the attacks on the NSA, and somehow that we’re losing our freedoms by keeping the homeland safe. I think we need to be really vigilant about that.”
He added, “I think the President has to lead, has to explain to people. He’s actually enhanced the intelligence capabilities, in many ways, because technology has gotten better. But he never defends it. He never explains it. He never tries to persuade people that their civil liberties are being protected by the systems we have in place. If people knew that, I don’t think there’d be any doubt that they would want to have the ability to identify people from the outside that may be trying to coordinate with some people in the inside.”
Not that he had much of chance, but this probably dooms Mr. Bush with libertarians and the libertarian wing of the Republican party. It should doom him with everyone else as well, but there are a lot of people who will gladly exchange their freedom for a government promise of “security,” and who wouldn’t recognize the Fourth Amendment if it was read to them.
Democrats have one political imperative: to expand the size and power of the government. That leaves anyone who thinks it should shrink three options: the Republican party, a “fringe” party, or political independence. Republican worthies mumble rhetoric of limited government and individual freedom, but their policies departed from those lodestars long ago. Jeb Bush is the perfect Republican establishment candidate: distinguished lineage, fund-raising titan, former Southern governor, pro-business, and most importantly, he supports all the Republican policies favored by the worthies. Unfortunately for them and him, his candidacy is drawing little support from actual Republican voters; his poll numbers for a candidate with his name recognition are abysmal (see “Jeb and the ‘Immortal 306,’” weeklystandard.com).
Those numbers highlight a critical issue for the Republicans: its elite is out of step on key issues with a substantial number of not just Republicans, but fringe party members and independents who might vote Republican. These differences cannot be finessed or “Big Tented” away. They are:
Immigration The Republican elite may take comfort from their big victory in 2014, but their voters were usually voting for candidates who pledged to do something about immigration. That something was not “immigration reform” that amounts to a ticket for welfare-state benefits and eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost a primary in a huge upset because of this issue. Republican voters were incensed by President Obama’s “executive order amnesty,” despising both his policy and tactics. The “do something” Republican voters had in mind was to do something about it. Republican stalwart Ann Coulter has said: “If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can’t stop Obama from issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again” (“GOP Double-Crossing Traitors,” anncoulter.com). She is far more in tune with the average Republican voter than immigration reform touting Bush and his big money Republican donors.
Education Education in this country is a mess and the government’s fingerprints are all over it. At the local, pre-collegiate level, public schools are Democratic satraps. The teachers’ unions are the Democratic base, and surprise, surprise, government schools teach government propaganda! Why is anyone shocked that by the time students get to college, many need remedial classes and the majority are committed statists? College is increasingly financed by the government, turning graduates into debt slaves, and now Obama wants to grant another government goody—”free” community college. Steps towards reform that actually reform education would be in the direction of markets, those clever arrangements that promote free choice, reward the most efficient producers, supply consumers with what they want, and have propelled humanity from the Dark Ages to the modern era.
If we must have government schools, an incremental move towards the diversity characteristic of markets would be reinstating local control, to promote a variety of educational approaches that competed with each other and might lead to gradual, across-the-board improvement. Government standard-setting—Common Core—is a step in the opposite direction. Now that parents have seen Common Core’s bizarre pedagogical techniques, especially for mathematics and science, and its embedded propaganda, they have ignited a grass roots revolt. Jeb Bush endorses Common Core.
Foreign policy After Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the majority of Americans of all persuasions are against big new military commitments. Here the gulf between many ordinary Republicans—and a majority of the overall electorate—and the party’s elite may be at its widest. It’s not just that foreign wars cost American lives and trillions of dollars, it’s that the US gets less than nothing for its troubles. Since 9/11, the US government has been on a vicious circle in the Middle East. Each intervention has fueled new insurgencies and chaos, justifying (in the minds of the elite) further intervention, prompting (in the minds of most everyone else) skepticism and a marked reluctance to repeat the same mistakes. The Republican elite is making sure the candidates toe the line on this one, with only Rand Paul publicly expressing skepticism (undoubtedly dooming his candidacy). Jeb Bush has sworn fealty to the interventionists, bringing in many of his brother’s and father’s foreign policy advisors (see “Jeb Bush Exposed Part 1,” SLL, 2/20/15).
The national security state The war on terrorism has been used to justify a massive expansion of the government’s surveillance capabilities. It knows what you do on your computer, who you communicate with via your phone or the Internet and what you say, where you go in your car through either the car’s GPS or those ubiquitous cameras and soon-to-be ubiquitous drones, and what you buy and from whom you buy it. Televisions now have cameras and can spy on you, and it’s only a matter of time before your phone and appliances will be able to record and relay what you say. Anything with a microchip or plugged into the Internet gives the government a way to monitor you. This makes many Americans queasy; abuses have already been disclosed. There will be no defense of the Fourth Amendment from Mr. Bush. He has said that the National Security Agency’s program that collects bulk telephone records is “hugely important,” and that “For the life of me, I don’t understand the debate” over it (see “Jeb Bush Exposed Part 2,” SLL, 2/20/15).
What’s a plutocrat to do, if the peasants won’t do as their told? Fortunately for the Republican elite, there is one candidate who presses all their hot buttons and is imminently electable; who gets the automatic votes of the bought-off 47 percent (now more like 49 or 50 percent), and who epitomizes identity politics: Hillary Clinton. If the mass of Republicans and potentially Republican-leaning voters won’t follow where the elite lead, Hillary makes a fine fallback. Better a Democrat who stands for the “right” things than a Republican who doesn’t. The 2016 election will make it obvious to all but the most obtuse: there is one political party. It will continue to expand the government and its empire while the freedom of ordinary Americans continues to shrink.
WHAT FREEDOM FELT LIKE!
Posted in Civil Liberties, Education, Immigration, Intelligence, Politics
Tagged Jeb Bush, Republicans
From Justin Raimondo, who suggests the Republicans are trying to throw the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton, at antiwar.com:
You could hear the air in the inflated balloon of Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign leak out rather noisily as he made his debut foreign policy speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
As Dana Milbank ruthlessly pointed out in the Washington Post, the speech “combined his father’s awkward oratory with his brother’s mangled syntax and malapropisms” – not to mention the aura of a factually challenged foreign policy stumblebum. In what Juan Cole speculates may have been a “Freudian slip,” he said Iraq when he meant Iran: and in describing the Islamic State, Jeb claimed they have 200,000 fighters when the number is a bit closer to 20,000. His people later claimed he “misspoke,” but threat inflation is a distinctly Republican habit that seems inherent in the species – so who knows what he really thinks?
By the time he was through, you could see the relief on Jeb’s face as he manspreaded in his chair and took questions from the audience, at one point confessing his amateurism: “Look, the more I get into this stuff, there are some things [where] you just go, you know, ‘Holy schnikes.’ ”
The voters may well have a similar reaction to his candidacy, if this speech is any indication.
American power projected abroad, Jeb averred, “is a force for good.” The people of Iraq may contest this, but, hey, they aren’t voting in the next presidential election, now are they? It’s good, he says, because it’s “grounded in principle” – so what is the principle involved? Here it is:
“American leadership projected consistently and grounded in principle has been a benefit to the world. In the post-World War Two era, the United States has helped hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, secured liberty for an equal number, and has been a force for peace and security.
“Only our exceptional country can make that claim. This has happened because our presidents, both Republican and Democrats, have accepted the responsibilities of American power in the world with the belief that we are a force for good.
Let’s pass over the claim that US foreign policy has been a “force for peace and security,” and just let today’s headlines out of Iraq and the Middle East speak for themselves. What’s interesting is the assertion that America’s “responsibility” is to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty when our own country is going bankrupt in the process. I’m sure both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would agree with that – but what about Republican primary voters?
Back to the drawing board, Jeb!
Having no voice or views of his own when it comes to foreign policy, Jeb does his best Bibi Netanyahu imitation, launching into a lengthy condemnation of the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent World War III in the Middle East. Iran, he avers, has attacked US “troops directly” – without offering any specifics. When? Where? How? He doesn’t say. But who needs facts when you’re channeling the Israeli Prime Minister?
“Today, four world capitals are now heavily influenced by Iran and its proxies, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Saana. Iran’s ambitions are clear in its capabilities are growing. For many years they have been developing long range missile capabilities in their own nuclear weapon program. And during those years America has opposed those efforts.”
Ah yes, Baghdad – once a gleaming capital bereft of terrorists, lorded over by a former US ally, now a pile of rubble due to the deadly antics of brother George. If Jeb is going to mourn Baghdad’s fate then he’ll have to start a family feud, and that wouldn’t be very presidential, now would it? As for Beirut – the Bush II administration, like the would-be Bush III administration, stood by and cheered as the Israelis bombed the crap out of Lebanon. Is it any wonder the Lebanese seek what protection they can get from Tehran? On to Damascus – where the regime helped us track al Qaeda terrorists and in our gratitude we launched a campaign to unseat them. We withdrew our Ambassador, and snubbed theirs. Is it any wonder they’re turning to Tehran? As for Saana: what does this dolt even know about Yemen? If he’s so concerned about Saana, why not let those best friends of the Bush family, the Saudis, do something about it? Or are the weapons we sell them only for show?
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/02/19/holy-schnikes-its-jeb-bush/
To continue reading: ‘Holy Schnikes,’ It’s Jeb Bush!
From Michael Krieger, at libertyblitzkrieg.com:
In some ways I’m actually looking forward to the imperial spectacle that will be the Jeb Bush vs. Hilary Clinton Presidential contest in 2016. Just like an alcoholic or drug addict is often unable to shake the cycle of addiction until hitting rock bottom, so too it seems the American peasantry must hit political rock bottom before becoming fed up enough to do something about it; and I can’t imagine a more odious, absurd scenario than being forced to chose between another Bush and another Clinton.
I’ve given Hilary a lot of grief here at Liberty Blitzkrieg, primarily because she’s an oligarch coddling embarrassment (links at the end). Jeb Bush hasn’t received the same treatment as of yet, but I’m going to do my best to make up for lost time.
Just yesterday, I highlighted his unsurprising neocon foreign policy chops in the piece, Jeb Bush Exposed Part 1 – His Top Advisors Will Be the Architects of His Brother’s Iraq War. Specifically, we learned that:
According to Reuters’ Steve Holland, Bush has tapped a “diverse” roster of former George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush officials to advise his burgeoning campaign on foreign policy, including key architects of the 2002 invasion of Iraq.The list of advisers provided to Reuters by a campaign aid includes Paul Wolfowitz and Stephen Hadley, as well as former George W. Bush Homeland Security Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, and Bush adviser Meghan O’Sullivan.
Imperial war monger: Check. What about his view on let’s say the 4th Amendment of the Constitution? He doesn’t seem to want to be bothered with such trivialities. The Wall Street Journal reports that:
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is seriously considering a run for the White House in 2016, said Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program that collects bulk telephone records was “hugely important,” throwing his support behind the practice as Congress debates whether to reauthorize or limit it.
At an event on foreign policy hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Mr. Bush, a Republican, said, “For the life of me, I don’t understand the debate” over the metadata program.
The program’s many supporters say it helps the U.S. government prevent terrorist attacks. But its critics believe it exists with little oversight and few boundaries and could allow the government to spy on U.S. citizens.
To continue reading: Jeb Bush Exposed Part 2
From Michael Krieger, at liberty blitzkrieg.com:
According to Reuters’ Steve Holland, Bush has tapped a “diverse” roster of former George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush officials to advise his burgeoning campaign on foreign policy, including key architects of the 2002 invasion of Iraq.
The list of advisers provided to Reuters by a campaign aid includes Paul Wolfowitz and Stephen Hadley, as well as former George W. Bush Homeland Security Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, and Bush adviser Meghan O’Sullivan.
It may be hard to believe, but either one of the two status quo choices for U.S. President currently being force-fed down the American public’s throat will be almost unquestionably more imperial and warlike than Barack Obama. The reason is simple. Any society that apathetically stands by as one President after the other tramples on the Constitution will be subject to a litany of increasingly tyrannical, and even insane, leaders. This is why the oligarchy isn’t even pretending that we live in a Republic or a Democracy anymore. They are shoving our pathetic servitude right in our face by putting up these two preposterous and dangerous candidates.
If you still had any doubt, today we learn that Jeb Bush is actively surrounding himself with the exact same people who under the George W. Bush administration, masterminded the terrible tragedy known as the Iraq war.
To continue reading: Jeb Bush Exposed Part 1
From Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts and presidential candidate, according to an Associated Press story, “Mitt Romney Bows Out Of 2016 Race After A 3-Week Test Run”:
“I believe that one of our next generation of Republican leaders, one who may not be as well-known as I am today, one who has not yet taken their message across the country, one who is just getting started, may well emerge as being better able to defeat the Democrat nominee,” Romney told supporters on a conference call. “In fact, I expect and hope that to be the case.”
It’s nothing personal, Mitt, but Jeb Bush is the apple of Republican eyes this time. Granted, Bush is just as “pragmatic” as you; he’ll say whatever’s necessary and cut the deals he has to cut to get the nomination. However, he is far more wired into the Republican power structure than you could ever hope to be. There was the Mormon thing, which they were willing to overlook, but the Main Street wing has always viewed the Wall Street wing with suspicion and Private Equity is Wall Street to the tip of your wing tips (Bush, of course, has strong ties to Wall Street, but he doesn’t advertise them). You tried the “job creator” bit, which Ann Coulter fell for, but she’s nowhere near as smart as she thinks she is (the same can be said for most of her cohorts on Fox News), so she was easy to fool. After the election, David Stockman, who was in the same private equity racket and knows his way around financial statements, shredded your job creator myth in The Great Deformation, confirming widespread skepticism among both Republicans and Democrats. If you were to run again in a general election, the Democrats would make hay with Stockman’s book.
Republicans also had a tough time with your role in Massachusetts’ state-run health care system, which became the template for Obamacare. No matter how many times you tried to explain it, they just could not understand how you could sign into law a system that served as the model for the Obama legislation they hate the most. You held yourself out as a true blue Republican, but true blue Republicans don’t get elected governor of Democratic bastion Massachusetts.
So Jeb has been anointed. Main Street Republicans are not thrilled, but he’s got the machine behind him and they think the grass-roots will come around. They thought the same thing about Mitt Romney, too, and Jeb may get the same unenthusiastic response. For one thing, the Bush name and record aren’t that special to a lot of Republicans. George H.W. Bush lost his reelection after reneging on a promise not to raise taxes. George W. Bush got us into fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq; never did capture Osama bin Laden; presided over the most severe financial crash since the Great Depression; okayed a massive bailout of a lot of companies that should have been allowed to go under; and in true Democratic fashion, gave the US yet another welfare state entitlement—a prescription drug plan—it can’t afford. Also, Jeb has championed Common Core and immigration reform, both of which are anathema to Main Street Republicans.
So Mitt, if Jeb gets the nomination and loses to Hillary, you will get the last laugh. You’re bowing out gracefully now, nobody will blame you if Bush loses, and you’ve got $100 million, a great looking wife, and a fine family to fall back on.
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