Jeb is the real deal
by digby
People keep saying that Jeb Bush will have a problem with the social conservatives because he’s allegedly so middle of the road. But that’s nonsense.
They know they can count on him:
On sustained, concentrated display, seen in thousands of pages of court records and hundreds of emails he sent, was Jeb the converted Catholic, Jeb the pro-life conservative, Jeb the hands-on workaholic, Jeb the all-hours emailer—confident, competitive, powerful, obstinate Jeb. Longtime watchers of John Ellis Bush say what he did throughout the Terri Schiavo case demonstrates how he would operate in the Oval Office. They say it’s the Jebbest thing Jeb’s ever done.
The case showed he “will pursue whatever he thinks is right, virtually forever,” said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida. “It’s a theme of Jeb’s governorship: He really pushed executive power to the limits.”
“If you want to understand Jeb Bush, he’s guided by principle over convenience,” said Dennis Baxley, a Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives during Bush’s governorship and still. “He may be wrong about something, but he knows what he believes.”
And what he believed in this case, and what he did, said Miami’s Dan Gelber, a Democratic member of the state House during Bush’s governorship, “probably was more defining than I suspect Jeb would like.”
Also too this:
[W]hile acknowledging that states should “have a right” to decide on the legalization of marijuana, Bush publicly opposed an amendment to legalize medical marijuana in Florida.
“Florida leaders and citizens have worked for years to make the Sunshine State a world-class location to start or run a business, a family-friendly destination for tourism and a desirable place to raise a family or retire,” Bush said before the November midterm election. “Allowing large-scale marijuana operations to take root across Florida, under the guise of using it for medicinal purposes, runs counter to all of these efforts.”
This won’t hurt either:
The Globe also spoke to some of Bush’s former classmates, who recalled a “physically imposing” young man who was seen as intimidating by some and a bully by others. Tibbetts recalled a story to the newspaper of an occasion during their boarding school days when he and Bush taunted a smaller student who lived in their dorm by sewing his pajama bottoms so that the student couldn’t put them on.
Bush told the Globe he didn’t remember the incident or any other bullying, and was surprised that some of his former classmates viewed him that way. “I don’t believe that is true,” Bush said, adding that it was more than 40 years ago and not possible for him to remember.
It isn’t the first time that allegations of bullying have surfaced about Bush’s high school years. Another classmate of Bush’s told Vanity Fair in 2001 that he remembered Bush as a bully as well, and that there was “a kind of arrogance” about him during his time at Andover.
These are considered plusses on the right. In fact, if Chris Christie looked different and hadn’t hugged Obama he’d probably be way ahead just on the bully level alone. But the bespectacled Jeb being seen as a bully type makes him far more attractive to the base. I’d bet they’ll make sure all the activists know about it.
He’s the real thing —just like his brother. Everyone in the beltway always wants to see the Bush family as a bunch of moderate Episcopalian Waspy Eisenhower Republicans but Poppy is a dying breed. (And frankly, he wasn’t that either.) They are Big Money Republicans who moved to Texas so they could be elected by the new GOP base that was centered in the South. They are now authentic wingnuts. Did we learn nothing from Junior?
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