Tag Archives: Jeb Bush

The GOP Candidates Debate on CNN

17 Sep 2015 By in Candidates and Campaigns Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

I expect Donald Trump’s support to wane slightly after last night’s debate.  Of the eleven Republican presidential candidates to appear, several of his rivals are likely to gain.

Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio pulled out strong performances; Chris Christie had some effective moments, too.

Scott Walker was allowed plenty of airtime but came off as bland; Mick Huckabee came across as pleading for our indulgence (he had least business being on the stage).  Ben Carson lost ground by relying too much on low-energy generalities.  Kasich had one or two strong moments but relied too much on his record of performance in Ohio and the Senate.  The demand was for vision, and a sharp take on policy.

The moderator, Jake Tapper, with occasional questions from Dana Bash and radio personality Hugh Hewitt, did a great job of keeping the three-hour debate focused.  It was a strenuous format.  Candidates were called on unpredictably.  Tapper shifted the topic of debate often and quickly, sometimes arbitrarily cutting off comfortable discussions.  By and large, candidates spoke spontaneously and avoided boring set speeches.  Ted Cruz and Scott Walker were the worst when it came to spontaneity.  Cruz, of all the major candidates, is the most personally unappealing.  And, although Fiorina came across as powerful and poised, she fell back on rehearsed remarks too much, both in her discussion of the military and in the closing.

It was fascinating to hear how the candidates varied.  Their discussions of the legalization of marijuana, of the consequences of US’s military involvement in Iraq, the Iran nuclear deal, immigration reform, and the role of the Supreme Court under John Roberts, were particularly revealing.  Only Rand Paul and Ben Carson resolutely refrained from saber-rattling.  The other candidates vied to out-do one another with violent promises.  Scott Walker promised that if elected President, he would undo the nuclear deal with Iran ‘on day one.’  Fiorina likewise asserted that we should have no dealings whatever with Vladimir Putin, a position that Bush, Trump, and Paul all used to draw a contrast.  Several of the candidates invoked Reagan, insisting that the US is strongest when engaged diplomatically with the world’s scariest players.

Trump claimed that he would restore respect for America and ‘get along with everybody,’ but, when asked about his limited knowledge of foreign affairs, said only that he would put together a first-rate team.  Bush pleaded, more effectively than did Kasich, for a foreign policy committed to multilateralism and steady global engagement.  When one of Bush’s rivals tried to attack his brother’s record after 9-11, Bush’s simple response, ‘he kept us safe,’ drew sustained applause.

Cruz’s worst moment came when he tried to disavow his one-time support for John Roberts, whom he now depicts as an arch-enemy.  Trump’s worst moment came when he tried to compliment Carly on her beauty.  He also failed to summon a convincing reply when Bush accused him of having tried to get concessions on casino gambling from Hillary after giving her campaign money.

Bush’s best moments came when he admitted having smoking pot forty years ago, when he argued for a nuanced approach to immigration, and when, in the debate’s closing moments, he threw out the goal of propelling the US toward a high-growth-rate economy.  Marco Rubio showed his command of a rational immigration reform plan, but looked callow when he proclaimed that he had missed votes in the Senate because (essentially) the entire direction of Congress is mistaken.  His announced determination to leave the Senate in order to seek the presidency shows how unprepared to be president he really is.

All in all, the debate was refreshing in its breadth and intensity.  In the press of competition, the candidates, desperate to differentiate themselves from one another, came across quite candidly.  The bracing back-and-forth of this, the second GOP debate, casts into relief the dangerously lackluster character of the Democratic field.   A Democratic contest between Hillary and Bernie is going to make for poor entertainment indeed.  For now, the energy is with GOP field.

Should Leaders Who Can’t Govern Their Party Govern the Country?

11 Jun 2012 By in The Republicans Tags: , , , , , , , , 14 Comments

This is the question that the turmoil within the Republican Party prompts these days, as the moderate wing of the party battles to maintain control over a grass-roots extremism it has legitimated.

Is this what a dying political party looks like?  This is what flashes through my mind when I read or hear about the Republican Party.  The party isn’t dying, at least not yet: but the very forces of intolerance and intransigence it encouraged are assailing it from within.  Unless the moderate wing of the GOP can reassert itself and prevail, the party will continue its disastrous turn to the right.  Not only will its prospects for power dim, but the entire country will suffer, too.

Extreme conservatism is a minority view
Despite the media hype—fanned by talk radio and cable TV—extreme conservatism is not the dominant American viewpoint.  We are not a nation of extremists.  The desire of the country’s majority for sophisticated, moderate leadership was expressed in its 2008 rejection of Sarah Palin and, more recently, in Republican voters’ resounding rejection of conservative presidential hopefuls Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry.  Each of these candidates received lavish publicity, arousing fears that they represented the new face of America; in each case, support for these candidates proved meager indeed.

Weakening the fiber of nation and party
Yet the fate of the Republican Party is being directed by this assertive minority.  It’s the faction that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich chose to pander to.  It’s the faction that hates the separation of church and state, that would attack the independence of our judiciary.  It’s the faction that’s against modern medicine.  That’s against female contraception.  That’s uncomfortable with racial equality.  In their quest for power, these conservatives have begun chipping away at principles and institutions that formerly sacred to all Americans and protective of us all.

Moderate Republicans are captive
In the face of this, the only Republicans to speak out against extremism have been members of the Bush family.  During the primary season, Jeb Bush distanced himself from the new conservatism while signalling disappointment at the Party’s loss of vision.  Barbara Bush has repeatedly expressed dismay at Republicans’ uncivil conduct and their disavowal of compromise.

These, though, are just two voices in a party that, by and large, has chosen to amplify and accommodate spurious right-wing demands.  Prior to 2010, there were reasons to hope that the social conservative wing of the party, for want of a victory, was moving into a more quiescent, marginal phase.  Unfortunately, the emergence of the Tea Party, with its new crop of faces, its fiscal focus, and its idealistic hatred of our federal tradition, has given new energy to the disparate elements that make up social conservatism.

Citizens United has further exaggerated the significance of rabble-rousing candidates like Newt Gingrich, whose funding was all out of proportion to the support he enjoyed. 

A terrible tactical decision
All along, moderate Republicans could have tamped down and disavowed right-wing extremism as it began taking hold, like crabgrass, on their impeccably manicured property.  Republicans could have chosen not to assimilate the Tea Party.  They could have refused funding to candidates whose intolerance is extreme enough to qualify as unpatriotic. They could have silenced the racist “dog whistle” that goes by the name of the birther movement.  Instead, moderates have chosen to go along and get along with a dangerous minority.  Why?  Because they need the support and approval of these voters too badly.  Without this virulent sub-population, moderate Republicans cannot hope to attain the majority needed to elect a president or control Congress.

Consumed by a wasting disease from inside
Now this emboldened faction is paralyzing and destroying moderate Republican leaders.  In recent primaries, Tea Partiers have targeted old-line Republicans like Richard Lugar for defeat.  They have reduced House Speaker John Boehner to impotence by stalemating last year’s negotiations over the debt ceiling by refusing to compromise.  Boehner bristled at David Axelrod’s recent allusion to a “Republican reign of terror” but, in truth, moderate Republicans are beginning to bear the brunt of  a “reign of terror” that their conservative wing is waging from inside.

Is Mitt Romney the man to speak truth to power?
It’s hard to imagine Mitt Romney, who wants so badly to be liked, disciplining and harmonizing the unwieldy elements that now constitute “the Grand Old Party.”  In his eagerness to gain office, Romney has promised to be the conservatives’ standard-bearer, while hoping the rest of us won’t consider what that means.  Unlike Jeb and Barbara Bush, Romney lacks the gumption to speak out against a strain of political intolerance that could spell the ruin of Republicanism—and that’s begun to harm the republic, too.

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Is the Republican Party Dying?