Jeb Bush: As Dumb as His Idiot Brother

It speaks volumes about the intellectual bankruptcy - and plain lack of common sense - that the so-called GOP establishment still sees Jeb Bush as its savior and standard bearer.   But then again, these are the same geniuses who welcomed the Christofascists and white supremacists into the GOP with no thought about the long term peril it would pose to the party as the nation's demographics turned against tide of shrinking numbers of angry white Christian extremists on which the party's future was staked.  As for Jeb! himself, he talks about the Florida economy under his governorship leaving out the major fact that it was largely built on a housing bubble that hit Florida very hard.  And then there's Jeb! continued lunatic efforts to say that his idiot brother's years of misrule were a good thing.  A piece in Salon looks at the debacle.  Here are highlights:

One of the most entertaining spectacles of this election cycle is watching Jeb! Bush try to marry his genial, moderate patrician demeanor to the kind of sneering, condescending Tea Party dialogue that, having incubated for years in right-wing media, has now burst out of the host Republican Party’s abdominal cavity to spray acid in the eyes of anyone who dares get near it. It’s the same awkward fusion Mitt Romney attempted four years ago, though no one really noticed until the general. Jeb has the decency to do it during the primaries so we’ll all have more time to enjoy watching him flail.

Bush followed up his recent “hey black people, no more free stuff for you!” moment by sitting for an interview with John Harwood on CNBC, and hoo boy, does the former Florida governor sound like a man so far down the rabbit hole he might emerge on the other side of the planet. 

 Over the course of just a few minutes, he manages to twist himself into so many knots trying to rescue his brother’s legacy while simultaneously suggesting that President Obama is several steps to the left of Vladimir Lenin, by the end you could salt him and sell him from a Times Square pretzel cart.

Take this answer to Harwood’s question about why the country has seen more economic growth when Democrats have held the White House versus Republicans over the last 35 years.

BUSH: First of all, I think you have to factor in that policies have long-term impacts. So the tax reform of the 1980s created an environment that President Clinton took advantage of. The PAYGO budget compromise, where there was an increase in taxes, but there was, more importantly, a rule that every dollar of additional spending required a cut in spending, was very effective in restraining government during the Clinton era, as well.

So President Clinton, who raised the top marginal tax rate from 31 percent to 39.6 percent in 1993 (after Bush’s own father George H.W. Bush had raised it from 28 to 31 percent in 1990) got lucky by taking advantage of…Ronald Reagan’s tax reforms that lowered the top rate to 28 percent in the first place?

And considering that domestic programs have been cut to the bone during the wild budget battles of the Obama era, can Bush name what he’ll cut in order to lower tax rates and keep the deficit down? I’d have liked to hear that answer.

The Congressional Budget Office, of course, has consistently found that Obamacare will not increase the deficit in the medium- to long-term. Medicare Part D blew a huge hole in the deficit that part of Obamacare in fact has tried to fix. To put the two programs in the same category is disingenuous at best.

[I]t’s an article of faith on the right that he [Obama] hates America and wants to destroy it from within, so Jeb! Bush has to pay lip service to that idea. Even though he knows deep down that it is nuts. 

Jeb goes on to yada yada his brother’s terrible economic record in order to push his line that hey, forget about history, this time tax cuts will work, trust me! He would have made a fortune as a travelling hair tonic salesman in the Old West.

If his polls are any indication, even the Republican base isn’t falling for the Bush family con job this time around. But there is still plenty of time before the voting starts.