Jeb Bush Has a Millstone Around His Neck

ZVUGKTUBM wrote:His brother Dubya's foreign policy decisions are taking their toll on Jeb's prospects. He is damned if he agrees that George W.'s foreign policy decisions were good ones, and he dare not ever say that they were bad ones, because that makes his brother's legacy and the GOP as a whole look bad.

He therefore must engage in mind-numbing doubletalk. I would say he is in the long-run, fucked. He should just give up and go home.  

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/14/politics/jeb-bush-confronted-college-student-isis/index.html

ZVUGKTUBM wrote:He therefore must engage in mind-numbing doubletalk. I would say he is in the long-run, fucked. He should just give up and go home.  

Then, about a week ago, The Washington Post reported that during a private meeting with rich Manhattan financiers, Bush announced that his most influential adviser on Middle Eastern matters was his brother George.

This was a surprise on many fronts. For one thing, Jeb had apparently missed the memo on how everything you say to potential donors at private meetings can wind up on an endless YouTube loop for all eternity.

Also, he had begun his all-but-announced campaign for the presidency with an “I’m my own man” sales pitch. Now he was saying, in effect, “Well, I can always ask my brother.”

Then, on Monday, Fox News aired an interview in which host Megyn Kelly asked Jeb whether “knowing what we know now” he would have authorized the invasion of Iraq.

“I would have, and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody,” Bush replied.

Now no one, including Hillary Clinton’s worst enemy in the entire world, thinks that if she could go back in time to 2002, knowing that the invasion of Iraq was going to be a total disaster and that she would lose the presidential nomination in 2008 to a guy who ran on that very issue, she would still have voted to authorize the use of force. So, obviously, Bush misheard the question, right?

Apparently not. He then went on: “I mean, so just for the news flash to the world if they’re trying to find places where there’s big space between me and my brother, this might not be one of those.”

We had now learned that: 1) Jeb Bush still thinks invading Iraq was a good idea; and 2) he has inherited more of the family syntax issues than we knew.

Fast-forward one day: “I interpreted the question wrong, I guess,” Bush told Sean Hannity in a radio interview. “I was talking about given what people knew then, would you have done it, rather than knowing what we know now. And knowing what we know now, you know, clearly there were mistakes.”

He still didn’t claim that he’d have done anything different than his brother had done. (“That’s a hypothetical.”) But he was really nailing down that business about mistakes.

KarlRove wrote:Wasting bandwidth worry about another Bush. It's not happening. He can't win the GOP nomination. He disgusts everyone.

ZVUGKTUBM wrote:

KarlRove wrote:Wasting bandwidth worry about another Bush. It's not happening. He can't win the GOP nomination. He disgusts everyone.

No matter who wins the GOP nomination, you can be rest assured it will be a clown, looking at the current crop of contenders.

The Tea Party wants to weigh-in on the GOP nomination; then I recently read that radical evangelicals are going to also push hard into the process. The result is going to be that an unelectable clown will become the GOP nominee.

So, the true 'waste of bandwidth' is any discussion of Republican victory prospects for 2016.

boards of FL wrote:

ZVUGKTUBM wrote:He therefore must engage in mind-numbing doubletalk. I would say he is in the long-run, fucked. He should just give up and go home.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/14/opinion/gail-collins-wow-jeb-bush-is-awful.html

Then, about a week ago, The Washington Post reported that during a private meeting with rich Manhattan financiers, Bush announced that his most influential adviser on Middle Eastern matters was his brother George.

This was a surprise on many fronts. For one thing, Jeb had apparently missed the memo on how everything you say to potential donors at private meetings can wind up on an endless YouTube loop for all eternity.

Also, he had begun his all-but-announced campaign for the presidency with an “I’m my own man” sales pitch. Now he was saying, in effect, “Well, I can always ask my brother.”

Then, on Monday, Fox News aired an interview in which host Megyn Kelly asked Jeb whether “knowing what we know now” he would have authorized the invasion of Iraq.

“I would have, and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody,” Bush replied.

Now no one, including Hillary Clinton’s worst enemy in the entire world, thinks that if she could go back in time to 2002, knowing that the invasion of Iraq was going to be a total disaster and that she would lose the presidential nomination in 2008 to a guy who ran on that very issue, she would still have voted to authorize the use of force. So, obviously, Bush misheard the question, right?

Apparently not. He then went on: “I mean, so just for the news flash to the world if they’re trying to find places where there’s big space between me and my brother, this might not be one of those.”

We had now learned that: 1) Jeb Bush still thinks invading Iraq was a good idea; and 2) he has inherited more of the family syntax issues than we knew.

Fast-forward one day: “I interpreted the question wrong, I guess,” Bush told Sean Hannity in a radio interview. “I was talking about given what people knew then, would you have done it, rather than knowing what we know now. And knowing what we know now, you know, clearly there were mistakes.”

He still didn’t claim that he’d have done anything different than his brother had done. (“That’s a hypothetical.”) But he was really nailing down that business about mistakes.