Are the Bushes Still Republicans?
Florida is voting this Tuesday, Jan. 31, and the silence of its former Gov. Jeb Bush, son and brother of Republican presidents, is abysmal. Better still, he went even further this week. He accompanied his father, George H.W. Bush, to the White House on Friday to visit Barack Obama. At a time when candidates for the Republican primary return to Florida seeking votes, this is a real provocation, and it confirms for the tea party that political patricians get along at their expense. What game are the Bushes playing? Are they still Republicans?
The Bushes’ trip to the White House was not on Obama’s agenda. It became known only because of the photograph published by the press service once the meeting was over. Patricians know how to behave amongst themselves. One might as well say that the meeting looked like a red rag in the middle of the Republican primary. The president likes Bush Senior and consults him. He has already hosted him several times with Jeb, who is not a candidate.
Jeb Bush does not cultivate any mystery about his non-candidacy in 2012. The memory of his brother’s two terms is still vivid. The Bush brand is still far too much linked with W and his unpopularity related to the wars in Iraq and others. Jeb was pressed by his politician-friends to go on the visit. His sister-in-law Laura Bush expressed regret about it last week in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, saying that Jeb failed his brother, W, who is a supporter of Mitt Romney.
As a non-candidate, he could have chosen to support a candidate, and we know that the candidates have dropped to their knees to be endorsed. Romney has pleaded many a time, but without success. Yet he appears to be the most proper candidate. But no means no, and Romney knows full well why. He evades taking a stand on immigration by trying to stick to the anti-Latino conservative Republican electorate, and Jeb Bush, who is married to a Mexican woman, has always campaigned for a true immigration policy in his state, which has an electorate that is 25 percent Hispanic. His brother benefited from this constituency, which Obama got in turn in 2008.
So why not tell things as they are? The Bushes feel quite remote from what their party has become, with its drift toward the tea party. The not-so-traditional candidates in the primary — like Cain, Perry or Gingrich — represent everything they dislike. Their silence is like a total disapproval. So when the only “presentable” candidate, Romney, shows no courage in the state of Florida to tackle the real problem of immigration and build a policy coexistence, not only do the Bushes not support him... they seek refuge at the White House, where Obama gladly welcomes these domestic “immigrants.”
The Bushes’ trip to the White House was not on Obama’s agenda. It became known only because of the photograph published by the press service once the meeting was over. Patricians know how to behave amongst themselves. One might as well say that the meeting looked like a red rag in the middle of the Republican primary. The president likes Bush Senior and consults him. He has already hosted him several times with Jeb, who is not a candidate.
Jeb Bush does not cultivate any mystery about his non-candidacy in 2012. The memory of his brother’s two terms is still vivid. The Bush brand is still far too much linked with W and his unpopularity related to the wars in Iraq and others. Jeb was pressed by his politician-friends to go on the visit. His sister-in-law Laura Bush expressed regret about it last week in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, saying that Jeb failed his brother, W, who is a supporter of Mitt Romney.
As a non-candidate, he could have chosen to support a candidate, and we know that the candidates have dropped to their knees to be endorsed. Romney has pleaded many a time, but without success. Yet he appears to be the most proper candidate. But no means no, and Romney knows full well why. He evades taking a stand on immigration by trying to stick to the anti-Latino conservative Republican electorate, and Jeb Bush, who is married to a Mexican woman, has always campaigned for a true immigration policy in his state, which has an electorate that is 25 percent Hispanic. His brother benefited from this constituency, which Obama got in turn in 2008.
So why not tell things as they are? The Bushes feel quite remote from what their party has become, with its drift toward the tea party. The not-so-traditional candidates in the primary — like Cain, Perry or Gingrich — represent everything they dislike. Their silence is like a total disapproval. So when the only “presentable” candidate, Romney, shows no courage in the state of Florida to tackle the real problem of immigration and build a policy coexistence, not only do the Bushes not support him... they seek refuge at the White House, where Obama gladly welcomes these domestic “immigrants.”
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