Jeb Bush & the political dynasty issue

[iiandyiiii]

@GrandWino

Jeb Bush says that even knowing what we know now, he would have still invaded Iraq in 2003.

Is he toast already? Does he just not understand the concept of “what we know now”?

Have to expect that he’s going to walk this back. Though I hope he doesn’t.

[Boyo_Jim]

@iiandyiiii

Have to expect that he’s going to walk this back. Though I hope he doesn’t.

There’s a good chance that after the primaries he’ll deny he ever said it.

[GrandWino]

This bit from the same interview seems to only bolster the statement:

“So just for the news flash to the world, if they’re trying to find places where there’s big space between me and my brother, this might not be one of those,” he added.

[hajario]

@GrandWino

Jeb Bush says that even knowing what we know now, he would have still invaded Iraq in 2003.

Is he toast already? Does he just not understand the concept of “what we know now”?

What he actually said was, given the evidence that we had at the time, he would have done the same thing. Also, that Hillary supported it at the time based on the evidence to the extent that there was any.

If the General really is Jeb vs Hillary, anyone taking a shot at Jeb for this will be taking a shot at her too.

[ElvisL1ves]

It also means that’s another charge Hillary’s immune to, assuming Jeb is the nominee (which, since the only voter, Sheldon Adelson, has already cast his ballot, he will be).

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@hajario

What he actually said was, given the evidence that we had at the time, he would have done the same thing. Also, that Hillary supported it at the time based on the evidence to the extent that there was any.

If the General really is Jeb vs Hillary, anyone taking a shot at Jeb for this will be taking a shot at her too.

I can only conclude that he really doesn’t know what “what we know now” means, as GrandWino suggested.

[ElvisL1ves]

Maybe he really doesn’t know, even now. Dubya doesn’t seem to.

[GrandWino]

@hajario

What he actually said was, given the evidence that we had at the time, he would have done the same thing. Also, that Hillary supported it at the time based on the evidence to the extent that there was any.

If the General really is Jeb vs Hillary, anyone taking a shot at Jeb for this will be taking a shot at her too.

He’s not answering about what he’d do based on “what we knew then” though, in which case it would be absolutely fair to put Hillary in that same camp. He’s saying that if he had a time machine and could back to 2003, he’d still invade Iraq. He’s going to try and walk it back I’m sure but I have a feeling it’s an attack that’s going to stick because there is already worry about how much like his brother he is, and this isn’t a topic he should brag about not having a “big space” between him and his brother on.

[Little_Nemo]

@iiandyiiii

Have to expect that he’s going to walk this back. Though I hope he doesn’t.

Are we sure he understood the question? I’m not being sarcastic here. He followed up his answer by saying “And so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.”

So he appears to be saying he would have invaded Iraq based on the information that was available in 2003.

[hajario]

@Little_Nemo

Are we sure he understood the question? I’m not being sarcastic here. He followed up his answer by saying “And so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.”

So he appears to be saying he would have invaded Iraq based on the information that was available in 2003.

Yes. That’s how I read it. It could be parsed either way but I think that’s what he meant and it’s certainly what he’s going to claim he meant.

[GrandWino]

Even conservative radio show host Laura Ingraham can’t believe how Jeb is stepping in it with this one.

“You can’t still think that going into Iraq, now, as a sane human being, was the right thing to do,” Ingraham said on her radio show.

“If you do, there has to be something wrong with you,” she added.

Bush made the remark in an interview set to air Monday night, after Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked him if he would have ordered the invasion of Iraq in 2003, “knowing what we know now.”

“I would,” he said. “And so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody.”

This did not fly with Ingraham.

“No Hillary wouldn’t!” Ingraham said on Monday. “Hillary wouldn’t authorize the war now, if she knew what she knows now.”

At one point she began laughing, and doubted that Bush was “his own person” capable of breaking with his brother, President George W. Bush.

“That’s just a fun hypothetical, but you have to say no to that!” she said.

The radio host said the exchange did not bode well for Bush if he were to secure the GOP nomination and face off against Clinton and the press.

[GrandWino]

Some interesting thoughts from TPM’s John Marshall on the topic:

Bush is helped slightly by the fact that Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War resolution. But not much. Hillary has already bit this bullet. In her memoir she stated unequivocally that the Iraq War was a mistake and that she was wrong to support it. As a Democrat she’s much better positioned to do this, since the war was never popular with the base of her party and has grown only less so over time. And in fact Bush’s wrestling with this question, though incidental in itself, may serve as a turning point of sorts for public opinion on the entire war.

Here’s why.

As the Bush presidency recedes into the past, Republicans feel less and less ideological commitment to support the Iraq War. It’s becoming part of history and something most Republicans don’t feel on the line for in partisan terms. There is a decent number of voters who weren’t even adults when the war started. That’s shifted the ground a great deal since the 2008 campaign and even the 2012 campaign. But there are so many other foreign policy challenges and crises today that the actual decision to invade Iraq, as opposed to cleaning up the various messes that the decision created or made possible, gets fairly little attention. Only another Bush can really make the decision to invade Iraq a newly relevant question. And now, loosened up from some of its ideological moorings and seen in its totality, the Iraq War seems a lot more clearly, and to a lot more people, to have been a mistake of truly historic proportions. Indeed, a purely voluntary and self-inflicted catastrophe of staggering proportions.

It had not occurred to me that Iraq could be such a significant issue for Bush or that he couldn’t manage to find a more artful way of squaring the circle. But now I think it will and that he can’t.

[Omar_Little]

I got to meet Jeb this past weekend. First time to see him in person. He’s a likeable guy and seems genuine about what he says…but he physically he’s a taller lankier version of his big brother. He talks just like W, uses the same mannerisms and expressions as well. He will be a train wreck if he makes it to the general election. Every time he speaks on television, people will just see W.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

GWB barely spoke English. Jeb speaks perfect Spanish. Obviously, it’s not a substantial difference but it’s definitely a distinction.

[Omar_Little]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

GWB barely spoke English. Jeb speaks perfect Spanish. Obviously, it’s not a substantial difference but it’s definitely a distinction.

That might be a tactic he should use to distance himself from his brother…speak exclusively in Spanish with an interpreter.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Somehow, I suspect that will not be advantageous in the primaries.

[Donald_Rump]

I suspect that Jeb will issue a statement saying he misconstrued the question and missed the “knowing what we know now” part. It’s the only plausible way to walk back the blunder and there’s no reward AFAICT for claiming the mantle of Iraq War dead-ender in the 2016 campaign, primary or general.

[ElvisL1ves]

His advisers might coach him to do it, but if he genuinely believes what he said, it’s going to come out that way in some of the many times he’d be asked about it.

Wonder if Adelson is reconsidering his choice?

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

He’s got plenty of time to pick another guy. It’s not like he hasn’t done it before when his preferred candidate did badly in Iowa, I expect.

[racepug]

I don’t know about anybody else but it’s a pretty big issue with me. I find it a little hard to believe that in this country of 300+ million people that the wife of one recent former president and the brother of another are actually running for president themselves (personally, if it were up to me, I’d enact a law to prevent that). Granted, the majority of us have little (if any) say in who “throws his (or her) hat into the ring” but we DO, of course, have a say in who’s left standing at the end (of either the primaries or the general). Maybe Jeb Bush would be a good president (after seeing what his nincompoop brother did to this country for 8 years I cannot beLIEVE that I just typed that) and maybe H.R.C. would be able to appeal to the masses (as President) even more than her husband did. But I don’t want to find out. Leave dynastic rule OUT of the U.S. That’s why I don’t think I’d seriously consider voting for either of those candidates, even if they’re the ones going up against one another in November of next year. Frankly, I’d rather vote for one of my pugs.