The Limits of Jeb Bush’s Compassionate Conservatism
In his stated concern for the poor, George W. Bush was almost certainly sincere. “If he’s trying to allege that I’m a hardhearted person and I don’t care about children, he’s absolutely wrong,” Bush fumed after Al Gore criticized his healthcare policies in Texas. But Bush’s heart was irrelevant; his policies were typical GOP fare. As governor, he had passed the largest tax cut in Texas history. And on his watch, Texas had been one of only three states that failed to make it easier for poor children to receive Medicaid, with the result that while Medicaid enrollment increased nationwide between 1997 and 1999, it dropped in Texas by more than seven percent. When Bush left the governor’s office, Texas had theseventh-highest poverty rate in the country and the highest percentage of children without health insurance.
.. If George W. in 1999 set out to prove that he’s not Newt Gingrich, Jeb is out to prove he’s not Mitt Romney, whose perceived callousness towards the 47 percent helped doom his presidential chances. So Jeb announced his candidacy at Miami-Dade College, two-thirds of whose students are Latino. He filled his announcement video with African American and Latino strivers, who credit him for their success. And he named his Super PAC, “The Right to Rise.”
.. But former University of South Florida education professor Sherman Dorn attributes that less to school choice than to Jeb’s laudable decision to hire more primary school reading specialists—a decision he doesn’t talk about much on the stump, perhaps because it sounds like big government.
.. In 2000, the press paid too much attention to George W.’s rhetoric and persona and not enough to his policies. Now journalists have the chance to learn from that mistake. When it comes to the poor, Jeb’s offering the same basic formula as Romney and most of his rivals: tax cuts, deregulation, and school vouchers.