Even more than George W. Bush’s own brother, Rubio tried to make himself an heir to Bushism, and to build a bridge between the last Republican administration and the one that he aspired to lead.
.. In domestic politics, that synthesis had four pillars:
- a sincere social conservatism rooted in a personal narrative of faith;
- a center-hugging “compassionate conservatism” on issues related to poverty and education;
- the pursuit of comprehensive immigration reform as a means to win Latinos for the G.O.P.;
- and large across-the-board tax cuts to placate the party’s donors and supply-side wing.
In foreign policy, Bushism began with the promise of restraint but ultimately came to mean hawkishness shot through with Wilsonian idealism, a vision of a crusading America whose interests and values were perfectly aligned.
.. For all his blunders, George W. Bush is still the only Republican candidate for president to win the popular vote in the last 25 years, and the only figure to successfully unite and lead a fractious party.
.. And they did want a kind of hawkishness — but not a Wilsonian hawkishness, in service to an ambitious grand strategy to stabilize or remake the Middle East. No, they wanted a Jacksonian hawkishness, one that promised to rain destruction on our enemies without the mess of nation building.
Trump: Nemesis Of The GOP
The conventional narrative told by antiwar critics is that the Bush administration told itself (and the American public) a story it wanted to believe, to justify war on Iraq, engaging in a massive — and massively consequential — episode of confirmation bias. That is bad, but it is not the same thing as deliberately lying for the sake of starting a war.
And oddly enough, instead of letting Jeb carry the anchor of his brother’s administration in that debate, Rubio stupidly volunteered to do it for him. “I just want to say, at least on behalf of me and my family, I thank God all the time that it was George W. Bush in the White House on 9/11 and not Al Gore,” said Rubio. This got a wildly enthusiastic response from the partisan Republicans in the hall.
.. And by the way, to the extent that Bernie Sanders lays into Hillary Clinton for the sins of the Democrats in doing Wall Street’s bidding under her husband’s presidency and beyond, he is serving a similar constructively destructive role in his party.
Maureen Dowd: Escape From Bushworld
When Poppy Bush ran against Bill Clinton, he simply assumed that the public would not choose a draft-dodging womanizer over him. “His ambient reality was that a president was above all a figure of dignity and decorum,” Bush senior biographer Jon Meacham said. “Clinton went on Arsenio Hall. Bush 41 probably thought Arsenio Hall was a building at Andover.”
.. Despite all the talk about civility, the Bushes threw out the red meat whenever they had to, from Lee Atwater and Willie Horton in ’88 to W.’s supporters whispering in 2000 that John McCain came home from Hanoi with snakes in his head, to the W. 2004 campaign strategy of encouraging gay marriage ballot initiatives to rile up the evangelicals, to Jeb spending a fortune on ads this winter eviscerating the character of the man he deemed the disloyal protégé, Marco Rubio.
.. Trump stunned everyone by pointing out the obvious: W. and Condi were not on the ball before 9/11, when W. was mountain-biking and ignoring memos headlined, as Bill Maher drily put it, “Osama bin Laden is standing right behind you.” Then, after 9/11, they played right into Osama’s recruiting plans by invading and occupying two Muslim countries, instead of simply going after the guilty party, as W. had promised to do when he yelled through the bullhorn at ground zero.
.. The country is now aflame with anger and disgust about politicians and bankers who conned trusting Americans and never got punished for it. That fury has led to the rise of wildly improbable candidates in both parties. As the Bush dynasty falls, it must watch in horror knowing that it is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump Escalates Rhetoric Before South Carolina Primary
“Overwhelmingly, most Republicans disagree with his criticisms of George W. Bush, but most Republicans also don’t want to debate” Mr. Bush’s legacy, said Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who was a top adviser to Mr. Bush’s 2004 campaign.
Most people share Mr. Trump’s view that the war was a mistake, Mr. Schmidt added, and in a state heavy with military members, many families have grown weary of repeated deployments.
.. But when he had a dust-up with Mr. Bush during the final debate in New Hampshire and the audience booed Mr. Trump, he made the most of it, saying they were against him because they were major donors and he could not be controlled.
He has since used that line repeatedly on the campaign trail, even singling out Mr. Bush’s finance chairman, the billionaire Woody Johnson, as an example of the type of donor who is working against Mr. Trump — never mind that Mr. Trump and Mr. Johnson are actually friends.
.. That coarsening of the language in the campaign, Mr. Schmidt argued, reflects the toxic culture of social media, and such behavior is no longer considered as much of a risk.
.. “Accusing President Bush of lying about the war adds to the hard cap of Trump’s ceiling,” said Rob Stutzman, a California-based Republican strategist and a supporter of Jeb Bush. “But I don’t think it matters until this is a two-man or three-man race.”