Political Wire

It’s Going to be Hillary vs. Jeb

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Bill Scher: “That Hillary will coast I doubt surprises you. Sure, has her B-list challengers stoking the populist embers in the Democratic base. Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley are in. Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb may soon follow suit. Each may put up a good fight, raise some decent money and earn a moment in the sun. Collectively, they will force Hillary to finesse sticky issues that pit the Democratic Party’s working class against its donor class.  But they won’t fundamentally alter the trajectory of the race.”

“The Republican Party is just too splintered and too fractionalized. And any conservative consolidation project is severely hampered by the bottomless pit of Republican candidates.  Each of these hopefuls may be more implausible than the next. But the more candidates that can claim their own chunk of the conservative base—Santorum’s blue-collar social conservatives, Graham’s hard-core hawks, Trump’s angry rich guys who dole out ‘wife bonuses’—the harder it is for conservatives to pool their resources.”

“And if there’s one thing Jeb Bush will have that the rest of the field won’t, it is resources. His latest round of ‘I haven’t made a final decision’ coyness is just so can he legally milk every last dollar from the Bush family’s vast donor network for his Right to Rise Super PAC before he becomes an official candidate and canvasses his rich friends all over again for direct donations.”

Bush Wants to Push Back Retirement Age

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Jeb Bush wants to push back the retirement age for Social Security by as many as five years, The Hill reports.

Said Bush: “I think it needs to be phased in over an extended period of time. We need to look over the horizon and begin to phase in, over an extended period of time, going from 65 to 68 or 70. And that, by itself, will help sustain the retirement system for anybody under the age of 40.”

“At the same time, Bush said that he would be open to cutting back benefits for wealthy people and their beneficiaries, a reform proposal known as means testing.”

Bush Outsourced His Campaign Before

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“As Jeb Bush circa 2015 considers pushing the campaign finance envelope by offloading expenses to an outside group, he has a ready model to emulate: Jeb Bush circa 1998,” National Journal reports.

“That’s the year the Republican Party of Florida paid for his TV ads, his polling, and even his campaign staff’s salaries as he ran for governor. The advantage was millions of extra dollars. There was a $500 limit on individual contributions to Bush’s regular campaign, but the state party could accept unlimited contributions from individuals and corporations. So Bush spent less time at fundraisers than in his previous run, but socked away far more money thanks to five- and six-figure checks.”

Extra Bonus Quote of the Day

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“I want to win. I want our party to win. I want the next president to be a Republican, to be a conservative. We can talk about things until the sun goes down, we can yap about things all the time, we can say how bad things are, but we need to win. And that means winning in places where Republicans haven’t won recently.”

— Jeb Bush, quoted by the Washington Post.

Bush’s Role on Corporate Boards Could Invite Scrutiny

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“During his transition from Florida governor to likely presidential candidate, Jeb Bush served on the boards or as an adviser to at least 15 companies and nonprofits, a dizzying array of corporate connections that earned him millions of dollars and occasional headaches. Bush returned to corporate America after leaving the governor’s mansion in early 2007, and his industry portfolio expanded steadily until he began shedding ties late last year to prepare a run for president,” the Miami Herald reports.

“Executives who worked alongside Bush describe him as an engaged adviser with an eye on detail. Yet experts question how anyone could serve so many boards at once effectively.”

Jeb Bush Offers Rare Criticism of His Brother

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Jeb Bush “put a bit more space between himself and his brother, part of a slow-motion and seemingly reluctant distancing effort as he moves toward a White House bid,” the Washington Post reports.

“After being asked by a questioner at a sports bar here whether there is any ‘space’ between the Bush brothers on issues, Jeb Bush pointed to the scale of government spending during the George W. Bush presidency.”

Said Bush: “I think that in Washington, during my brother’s time, Republicans spent too much money. I think he could have used the veto power — he didn’t have line-item veto power, but he could have brought budget discipline to Washington, D.C.”

Bush Says Science Isn’t Decided on Climate Change

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Jeb Bush hit back against President Obama’s claim that climate change runs an immediate risk, adding that while it shouldn’t be ignored, it’s still not “the highest priority,” CNN reports.

Said Bush: “For the people to say the science is decided on this is really arrogant, to be honest with you. It’s this intellectual arrogance that now you can’t have a conversation about it, even. The climate is changing. We need to adapt to that reality.”

GOP Hopefuls Step Up Attacks on Bush

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“Attacks on Jeb Bush are ramping up even before he enters the 2016 presidential race, with fellow Republicans questioning everything from his conservative bona fides to whether he is prepared for a long campaign to become the party’s nominee,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“It highlights the core challenge of Mr. Bush’s expected formal entry into the campaign: a family name that has given him outsize attention and access to an unparalleled fundraising network that at the same time could make it difficult for him to forge a political independence. It also shows that even though Mr. Bush’s political standing is weaker in Iowa than elsewhere, he remains the focus of the race, with the other presidential hopefuls implicitly defining themselves against him.”

Bush Sees No Right to Same-Sex Marriage

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Jeb Bush reiterated that he doesn’t believe that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the Washington Post reports.

Said Bush: “It’s at the core of the Catholic faith, and to imagine how we are going to succeed in our country unless we have committed family life, a committed child-centered family system, is hard to imagine. So, irrespective of the Supreme Court ruling — because they are going to decide whatever they decide, I don’t know what they are going to do — we need to be stalwart supporters of traditional marriage.”

Quote of the Day

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“I’m not going to go out of my way to say that, you know, my brother did this wrong or my dad did this wrong. It’s just not gonna happen. I have a hard time with that. I love my family a lot.”

— Jeb Bush, quoted by ABC News, on disagreeing with his family.

Jeb Bush Finally Says He Would Not Have Invaded Iraq

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“After a week of painfully struggling to talk about the war in Iraq started by his brother,” Jeb Bush (R) said definitively “that he would not have invaded that country based on the intelligence failures that now are known,” the Washington Post reports.

Said Bush: “Knowing what we now know, I would not have engaged. I would not have gone into Iraq.”

“Bush said the lives of U.S. armed forces were not lost in vain -– ‘their sacrifice was worth honoring, not depreciating’ — but that given the intelligence failures that have since been established, he would not have led the country into war in Iraq.”

National Journal: Bush’s four different answers to the same Iraq question

Quote of the Day

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“That’s part of the process. You can’t script your way to the presidency — put yourself in a protective bubble and never interact with people, only talk to people who totally agree with you. It’s not going to work.”

— Jeb Bush, quoted by the New York Times, on Hillary Clinton avoiding reporters.

Bush May Skip Iowa Caucuses

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BuzzFeed: “Jeb Bush’s decision to forego this summer’s Iowa Straw Poll has roiled many conservatives in the state, but that snub might only be the beginning: According to three sources with knowledge of Bush’s campaign strategy, the likely Republican presidential candidate does not plan to seriously contest the first-in-the-nation caucuses — and may ultimately skip the state altogether.”

Jeb Bush Struggles to be His Own Man

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Jeb Bush “is struggling to navigate his relationship with George W. Bush and his legacy. He has fumbled the most basic, predictable questions about the Iraq war — while behind the scenes, he has assured skeptical conservatives that he draws wisdom and important counsel from the former president,” the New York Times reports.

“The uneasiness stems in part from the two men’s awkward relationship, which was never close and was often competitive. But it also reflects Mr. Bush’s challenge in trying to deal with a fractured electorate in which some conservatives cling to the former president, but he remains a focus of anger across much of the rest of the political spectrum.”

Washington Post: “The stumbles mark the toughest period yet for Bush’s still-undeclared campaign and have lit a fire under his likely GOP opponents, many of whom have happily proclaimed that they would not have authorized the Iraq invasion under those conditions. Many conservative leaders and pundits are also lacerating Bush as appearing unprepared to address an obvious topic and are casting him as a tone-deaf relic of the GOP elite. “

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard

Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.

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