The media villagers have been advancing a “Bush Dynasty” revival of late.
Every “lamestream” media source has forced upon us mindless drivel about G.W. Bush’s paint-by-numbers hobby in retirement. Who the hell cares?
Then there’s the Bush-a-Palooza Festival in Texas for “Poppy” Bush, Bush family, friends convene in Texas to celebrate H.W., and George H.W. Bush To Receive JFK Profile In Courage Award (this honor has now lost all meaning).
All of which is suspiciously timed and appears contrived for stories such as this, Influential Republicans working to draft Jeb Bush into 2016 presidential race, and this Jeb Bush says he’ll decide on candidacy by end of year.
Really? Outside of the sycophant former Bushies working as Beltway media villagers until another Republican is in the White House, is there anyone who wants to see another Bush in the White House?
George H. W. Bush barely evaded being charged in the Iran-Contra scandal, then he pardoned the convicted and soon-to-be convicted criminals in the biggest political scandal since Watergate. No “profile in courage” there.
George W. Bush, who always had something to prove to his Daddy, did him one better in the political scandal department: “W” was asleep at the wheel on 9/11, then he lied this country into an unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq, and used the fiasco he created to suspend the Bill of Rights, spy on American citizens, and authorized illegal torture, secret renditions to black site prisons, and indefinite detention of prisoners — all war crimes. Not yet done, “W” then used “trickle down” economics to destroy the financial markets and the world’s economy with the Bush Great Recession, the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression, Well, I guess he showed his Daddy!
Another Bush in the White House? What could possibly go wrong? (sarcasm).
Just remember folks: if you are foolish enough to elect a Republican in 2016 – – any Republican — many of those unindicted Neocon war criminals from the Bush-Cheney regime will be returning to power. As will the economic “geniuses” (sic) who gave us the Bush Great Recession. That’s the way the world works in Washington, D.C. No one is ever held accountable for their past sins, they just get a new job title.
The matriarch of the Bush clan, Barbara Bush, got it right last year. Barbara Bush: Jeb shouldn’t run for president: “There are other people out there that are very qualified, and we’ve had enough Bushes.” Damn straight, lady!
Of course, Jeb Bush, like his idiot brother “W,” is fully capable of ending any chance he has in a GOP primary with statements like this — Jeb Bush: Many illegal immigrants come out of an ‘act of love’:
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush said Sunday that many who illegally come to the United States do so out of an “act of love” for their families and should be treated differently than people who illegally cross U.S. borders or overstay visas.
Asked about immigration, Bush started by saying that a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate last year made “a good effort” at proposing ways to ensure that people overstaying visas leave the country.
* * *
But the way I look at this — and I’m going to say this, and it’ll be on tape and so be it. The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally, they come to our country because their families — the dad who loved their children — was worried that their children didn’t have food on the table. And they wanted to make sure their family was intact, and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family. I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime that there should be a price paid, but it shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families.”
The comments set Bush apart from other Republicans. Remember what happened to Texas Gov. Rick Perry in 2012 when he said during a debate “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they have been brought there by no fault of their own, I don’t think you have a heart”? Oops. Game over for Perry in the GOP primary.
Of course, Jeb’s attempt to revive the long-dead political marketing gimmick of “compassionate conservatism” is completely disingenuous. He has flip-flopped on immigration numerous times.
Jeb is joined at the hip with his ghost writer coauthor Clint Bolick from the “Kochtopus” Death Star, the Goldwater Institute, who is always disingenuous in their book, Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution.
PolitiFact (yes, I know) did a fact check in 2013, Has Jeb Bush flip-flopped on immigration and a pathway to citizenship? (spoiler alert: True!)
Jeb Bush was for it before he was against it.
And now he’s for it again?
That’s the refrain these days on where the former Florida governor stands on creating a process for people in the U.S. illegally to eventually become American citizens — or something secondary to that, such as legal residents. Since his new book Immigration Wars was released this week, Bush has been accused of changing position.
* * *
We found that Bush, now a definite maybe for 2016, has indeed said conflicting things over time about eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Bush, a Texas native who calls Florida his adopted home state, plunged into politics in 1994 with a run to unseat Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles.
Back then, there was virtually no talk of turning millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S. into citizens. When asked what to do with them, Bush had one word: deportation.
In an interview with the Miami Herald, he was asked, “There are something like 4 million illegals in the United States . . . . What would you do with the ones that are here?”
“Start deporting people,” he answered. “We have an asylum process . . . . It shouldn’t take five years. We need to reform our system. … I don’t blame them for wanting to come to our country, but I don’t believe it’s necessarily our responsibility to allow them to come in.”
* * *
By 2006, Bush was well-established as Florida’s chief executive, and he wasn’t afraid to criticize members of his own party. His views, it seems, had evolved beyond “start deporting people.”
In an email exchange with the Los Angeles Times that year, Bush weighed in with support for proposed federal immigration reform legislation, calling it “just plain wrong” to charge illegal immigrants with a felony and opposed “penalizing the children of illegal immigrants” by denying them U.S. citizenship.
He endorsed the idea of a broad guest-worker program, but the Los Angeles Times noted then that he “offered no specificity on how to treat current immigrants and whether they should be granted a path to citizenship.”
In 2009, Bush co-chaired a bipartisan task force for the Council on Foreign Relations, which studied immigration challenges and came up with a set of proposals. In an interview about the group’s recommendations, Bush said that if reform doesn’t happen, “we ignore an issue that needs to be solved, which is what do we do with people who are here permanently, who have made contributions, who if given a path to citizenship would do what’s right and take the necessary steps to achieve legalized status and citizenship.”
[In 2012], Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney declared that he would pursue an immigration policy so austere that illegal immigrants would self-deport — a position later faulted for Republicans’ poor showing among Hispanic voters.
Bush, meanwhile, continued his call for more welcoming rhetoric and a “broader approach” to legislation that dealt with issues beyond border security and cracking down on illegal migration. In an interview last summer with Charlie Rose, he made a clear declaration that he favored citizenship.
“You have to deal with this issue. You can’t ignore it. And so, either a path to citizenship, which I would support and that does put me probably out of the mainstream of most conservatives; Or a path to legalization, a path to residency of some kind,” he said.
Fast forward past the election. It’s now 2013, and Republicans are smarting from their losses and pledging to remake their platform into one that appeals more to Hispanics and other minorities. A bipartisan group of Senators is working on reform legislation that includes citizenship.
But Bush’s book, which reportedly went to the printer in late 2012, split the concepts of citizenship and legal residency. And in print, Bush opposed citizenship and instead proposed “a path to permanent legal resident status.”
“Permanent residency in this context, however, should not lead to citizenship. It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences — in this case, that those who violated the laws can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship. … A grant of citizenship is an undeserving reward for conduct that we cannot afford to encourage.”
Illegal immigrants, he and co-author Clint Bolick wrote, could return to their homeland and apply for citizenship through regular channels.
After immediately catching heat over the book — and how it conflicts with his past position — Bush began softening up.
“We wrote this book last year, not this year, and we proposed a path to legalization, so anybody that had come illegally would have immediately a path to legalization,” Bush said on MSNBC.
He added: “If you can craft that in law, where you can have a path to citizenship where there isn’t an incentive for people to come illegally, I’m for it. I don’t have a problem with that.”
* * *
Jaryn Emhof, Bush’s communications director, told PolitiFact in an email, “The book outlines a proposal by which immigrants — whether they are coming to work temporarily, to go to school, to live and work as permanent residents or seeking citizenship — can do so through an immigration process that would be much more open than before. So, it is talking about future immigrants, not those currently here illegally.”
We think it’s clear, however, that the book’s passages about legal status vs. citizenship very clearly refer to those already here.
* * *
• His “flop” came this month with the release of his book, in which he explicitly opposed citizenship, calling it an “undeserving reward” for people who came here illegally.
• That was followed by a quick “flip” back to support of either citizenship or permanent legal status in the heat of television interviews.
Over the years Bush has said he favored citizenship or legal residency, demonstrating openness to proposals that could be considered within a wider reform effort. So at times he has embraced both, or either one.
There’s no doubt, though, that the Jeb Bush in the book had a different opinion from the Jeb Bush on the book tour. We rate the flip-flop-flip claim True.
You really didn’t think I would forget about the book, did you you Clint?