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| Jeb Bush is mulling a presidential run in 2016 |
Richard Viguerie argues that Jeb Bush would be disastrous for the Republican Party and limited government advocates. The conservative Republican writer opines: "Yes,
social conservatives are inclined to think well of Jeb Bush because he
signed the law to keep Terry Schiavo from being taken off life support.
However, those who see in Jeb Bush a 'more conservative' Bush should
take off the blinders and look at his overall record as Governor of
Florida, which reveals him to be the same kind of big government
Republican that brought the Party to grief in 2006. Bush’s 'education reform,' like many of his other policies that sounded good in a speech, actually ended-up
taking away power from parents and locally elected school boards and centralizing power in the hands of bureaucrats in the state capitol. That’s
not the kind of small government constitutional conservatism that
elected thousands of Republican candidates in the Tea Party wave of
2010."
More commentary about Jeb Bush as a Big Government conservative: "Bush cited, in particular, 'the budget deal my dad did, with bipartisan
support — at least for a while — that created the spending restraint of
the ’90s,' a reference to a move widely viewed now as a political
disaster for Bush and the Republican Party; breaking his pledge against
tax increases and infuriating conservatives. It was, Jeb Bush said, 'helpful in creating a climate of more sustained economic growth.' Bush conveniently forgets that
both
his father and President Reagan got snookered in those 'bipartisan'
deals with Democrats because, while the tax increases are still with us,
the spending cuts never materialized – a fact that President Reagan had
both the grace and honesty to admit in his biography."
