Ran across this item at a PBS blog:
Democrats may have used the strategy to win elections in 2006 and 2008, but Jeb Bush has a stern message for those seeking the GOP nomination in 2012: “You can’t just be against the president.”
The former two-term Florida governor warned the field of Republican presidential hopefuls that they risked alienating moderate voters with a campaign based solely on criticism of President Obama.
“I think the president means well, but his policies have failed, and to point that out — nothing wrong with that. That’s politics,” Bush told Fox News host Neil Cavuto in an interview Tuesday. “But just to stop there and say I’m going to win because I’m against what’s going on is not enough. You have to win with purpose if you really want to make these big changes.”…
“I think the president was dealt a tough hand. He didn’t have the experience on how to deal with it. He made a mistake of outsourcing big policy decisions to Congress, to Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and her leadership team, and that was a disaster. He’s made a situation that was bad, worse. He is deserving of criticism for that,” Bush said. “He’s not deserving of criticism of everything, the common cold all the way up the chain.”…
This tells us several things:
- Jeb Bush isn’t running for president. Hence the “above-the-fray” tone.
- Maybe there’s something to the old saw about, “If you had a family member who…” You know, like, “If you had a family member who was gay, you’d be for hate crime laws,” or whatever. In this case, maybe if you had a family member who was president, and was the target of a lot of hatred from the other party…
- He knows a thing or two about independent voters, things that pols in his party have largely forgotten in their terrified eagerness to please the Tea Party: We don’t like hearing the kind of stuff that appeals to the angry extremes. We don’t like Obama Hatred any more than we liked Bush Derangement Syndrome.
Which might make you curious which candidate Jeb Bush likes for president:
“I am neutral in the presidential race, but I am an admirer of Gov. [Mitt] Romney’s and I’m excited that he’s laying out a jobs agenda to set the agenda a little bit, because the conversation needs to get to how do we grow so we can create jobs over a long period of time, not just short term,” Bush said.
By the way, PBS got this from an interview on FoxNews.
Related Posts
