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Politics

Jeb Bush: ‘There Should Be No Surprise’ That Republicans Keep Losing The Minority Vote

By Zack Beauchamp and Scott Keyes on Apr 19, 2013 at 12:30 pm

MIAMI — At a conservative Latino conference where the mere mention of his name as a presidential candidate drew wild applause, former Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) delivered a blistering critique of Republican outreach to racial minorities, calling the GOP a “reactionary party” bereft of ideas both for appealing to minority voters and for repairing the country more broadly.

Bush’s comments came at the annual Hispanic Leadership Network conference, where “right of center” Latinos meet to discuss politics and policy — this year’s focus is comprehensive immigration reform. The governor delivered the keynote address at the conference’s Thursday afternoon session, which is where he leveled his bleak assessment of the GOP on race:

BUSH: Immigration is a gateway issue. It’s not the dominant — you ask people the polling, immigration’s important — but it’s not the dominant [issue]. Education’s more important, health care’s more important. Jobs are more important. [...] But if you send a signal, “yeah yeah, we want your vote” — Of course we want your vote, everybody wants your vote, but you can’t be part of our team, you can’t join our club, you’re not who I am. We don’t have a set of shared values.” You think people are going to embrace that kind of attitude? That’s exactly what we’ve done in about six election cycles in a row. So it should be no surprise that we have the result we have.

Watch it:

Bush has recently gotten into hot water with factions both to his right and his left. He claims to support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but has taken a muddled and at times contradictory position on the issue in recent weeks. Not only is this stance unpopular on the anti-immigration reform right, but Bush’s frequent criticisms of the GOP’s hard-right wing swing have angered some grassroots conservatives.

ThinkProgress attempted to ask Bush about how he would reach out to another group of minority voters, LGBT Americans, but Bush wouldn’t listen to the question.

LGBT

Republicans Admit Intention To Sugarcoat Their Opposition To LGBT Equality

By Zack Ford on Mar 26, 2013 at 11:47 am

The Republican Party continues to struggle with its intentions moving forward in regards to LGBT equality. In its autopsy report of the 2012 elections — its “Growth & Opportunity Project” — the gay community was the one group that the Party was not actually interested in reaching out to. Instead, the plan was to convince young people to support conservative principles even if they support LGBT rights. Since then, GOP chairman Reince Priebus has attempted to model this by citing his own marriage as an example for building bridges and suggesting Mike Huckabee, a very vocal opponent of equality, be an ambassador on gay issues.

This week, both Priebus and potential presidential prospect Jeb Bush have both been a bit more candid about their intentions to simply sugarcoat their opposition to equality so it doesn’t sound so anti-gay. Bush told Newsmax that a different tone that expresses opposition to same-sex marriage “in a civil way” that is “not judgmental” would help keep conservatives united:

BUSH: I know for a fact that as it relates to gay marriage and other social issues there is growing divergence of opinion on this. When we talk about it, we ought to talk about it with a different tone — and we ought to talk about it recognizing that there is more than one point of view, and we should talk about it in a way that is not judgmental. If we can get to that point where people who have diverging points of view and express them in a civil way, the conservative coalition can stay intact.

Priebus, in turn, told USA Today that opposition to equality can be presented with “grace and respect”:

“We do have a platform, and we adhere to that platform,” Priebus said in an interview Monday on USA TODAY’s Capital Download video series. “But it doesn’t mean that we divide and subtract people from our party” who support the right of gay men and lesbians to marry.

“I don’t believe we need to act like Old Testament heretics,” he said, saying Republicans “have to strike a balance between principle and grace and respect.”

What the Republican Party cannot seem to accept is that no polishing of this message amounts to respect, grace, or civil discourse. Inequality is inequality, and no changes in tone can change that the GOP platform specifically calls for one group of people to be treated as second-class citizens.

Immigration

In A Matter Of Minutes, Jeb Bush Flip-Flops On Immigration Reform

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Mar 10, 2013 at 10:52 am

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush went on a Sunday talk show offensive this week to try to clarify his position on immigration reform, but he only managed to create more confusion.

Bush last week drew the ire of Republicans and Democrats alike when a leaked copy of his new book revealed that he considered it “absolutely vital” to deny citizenship to undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. The outrage prompted him to contradict himself and say that he is, in fact, for a pathway to citizenship.

But on Sunday, Bush — who, it is widely expected, will throw his hat in the race for the 2016 presidential election — tried to have it both ways, saying that he is both for and against a path for the undocumented to become citizens. On Fox News Sunday, Bush told host Chris Wallace that he supports a type of second-class citizenship for unauthorized people currently in the country:

BUSH: People can stay here. Sixty of the people that were granted a process of legalization and citizenship in 1987 did not apply for citizenship. They stayed, as legal residents of the country. And so it is much different than to say, you know, you have the ability to be able to have a chance to come out from the shadows.

Just minutes later, Bush again reversed his position, saying that he backs the efforts of a bipartisan group of senators who are pushing a path to citizenship:

BUSH: Now, I also think a path to citizenship, so long as the ability of someone to come legally, is easier, and less costly than coming illegally, that the path to citizenship is appropriate and I applaud the work of the senators and others in the congress, that are working to try to craft a consensus and a compromise on the issue.

Bush has attempted to defend the contradictions between his book and his speech by point out that it was “written last year in a certain environment. The goal was to persuade people against immigration reform to be for it.” But with a possible presidential bid up his sleeve, it’s likely that he is trying to strike the balance between appealing to Latino voters — a constituency his party has outwardly claimed it is trying to court — and keeping with the anti-immigration reform Republican base.

Health

Now That Jeb Bush May Run For President, He Won’t Publicly Admit He Opposes Medicaid Expansion

By Tara Culp-Ressler on Mar 5, 2013 at 1:50 pm

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) appeared on MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown on Tuesday morning to discuss, among other things, a potential presidential run in 2016. And his future political aspirations are already forcing him to choose his words carefully. Even though Bush is an ardent opponent of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in private, he wouldn’t go on the record to oppose Gov. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) recent decision to extend health coverage to an estimated 1.3 million low-income Floridians.

Obamacare’s state-level Medicaid expansion is popular with the public, and an increasing number of GOP leaders — including Florida’s — are finally awakening to the reality that accepting federal funds to expand Medicaid is the right move for their constituents as well as for their state budgets. That shift is forcing anti-Obamacare politicians like Bush to mask their opposition to expansion. When host Chuck Todd asked Bush whether he agreed with Scott’s new position on Medicaid expansion, the former governor claimed he’s been too “busy” to form an opinion on the subject:

TODD: Did you think it was the right decision? Would you have made that call?

BUSH: Anytime you have a chance to advocate reform, you should. So Medicaid needs to be reformed. If you’re going to expand it by 50 percent, it sure better be a dramatically different system. And in Florida, there’s a waiver that has been approved that could be that reform — that expands on the reforms that I had a chance to advocate when I was governor. So if the focus is on making Medicaid work for people and that it won’t create this out year costs that people anticipate, that somehow the reform will yield a better result, then okay. Then give him credit. But I haven’t heard that yet –

TODD: You’re not there yet.

BUSH: I guess I’ve been busy, I haven’t been watching the specifics of it. If that’s the case, kudos to the governor. If it isn’t, then he’s put the state in a precarious position three or four years out.

It’s likely not a politically smart move for Florida’s former governor to publicly come out in opposition to extending health coverage to low-income residents in his state, which has one of the highest uninsurance rates in the nation. As of two weeks ago, however, Bush had made up his mind enough to privately pressure Florida lawmakers to oppose expanding Medicaid — urging them to stand in direct opposition to Rick Scott and come up with an alternative to expansion. Those efforts may have paid off. The state’s GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted to reject Medicaid expansion on Monday, effectively stalling reform.

Bush demurred on his personal position on Scott’s decision, but he did indicate his support for Florida’s Medicaid waiver — which is essentially a proposal to shift the program’s beneficiaries toward private managed care. If Bush does begin paying more attention to the specifics of health policy, he may be interested to learn that Florida’s push to privatize the public program would likely be even more expensive than accepting Obamacare’s traditional expansion, since Medicaid is currently much cheaper than private insurance.

The GOP’s potential presidential candidates are split on the issue of Medicaid expansion. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie agreed to expand Medicaid just last week — a position that may have landed him in hot water with the conservative establishment — but Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal remains opposed it, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has rejected Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion in favor of a risky proposal that may end up providing his state’s poor residents with a lower quality of coverage.

Update

CNN reports that Jeb Bush is cautiously expressing “doubts” about Florida’s Medicaid expansion. “I have doubts because I think if three years from now, as I understand it, three or four years from now, the deal is that the fed match goes from 95 back to what it is now, which is about 55 in Florida,” Bush said.

Immigration

Jeb Bush Disagrees With His Own Book Hours After It’s Published

By Igor Volsky on Mar 5, 2013 at 7:58 am

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday that he would support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants “if you can craft that in law where you can have a path to citizenship where there isn’t an incentive for people to come illegally” — a position that puts him at odds with his new book, out today from Simon & Schuster.

In Immigration Wars, co-authored with immigration lawyer Clint Bolick, Bush agues that denying a path to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrations is “absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences.” Those who enter the country illegally, Bush contends, should “start the process to earn permanent legal residency” after pleading guilty to breaking the law and paying “applicable fines or perform community service.” But they should not have access to “the cherished fruits of citizenship”:

It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences— in this case, that those who violated the laws can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship. To do otherwise would signal once again that people who circumvent the system can still obtain the full benefits of American citizenship. It must be a basic prerequisite for citizenship to respect the rule of law. But those who entered illegally, despite compelling reasons to do so in many instances, did so knowing that they were violating the law of the land. A grant of citizenship is an undeserving reward for conduct that we cannot afford to encourage. [...]

Our proposal imposes two penalties for illegally entry: fines and/or community service, and ineligibility for citizenship. Yet it allows for illegal immigrants who have proven themselves to be otherwise law-abiding members of the community to remain in our country.

In promoting the book today, Bush justifies his change of heart by explaining that “we wrote this book last year, not this year” — after a bipartisan consensus has formed in favor a path to earned citizenship — suggesting that his position on the issue is guided by the political winds within his own party and that he would have included a path had he known that a group of Republicans would endorse it in their reform principles. Watch his appearance:

Immigration Wars does offer undocumented immigrants “the choice of returning to their native countries and applying through normal immigration processes that now would be much more open than before.”

The earned citizenship path envisioned by reformers could last at least 13 years and would require immigrants to pay penalties, learn English, pay back taxes, and pass numerous background checks. Bush also seemed to support the path in editorials and television appearances earlier this year and last.

Immigration

Jeb Bush: Denying Undocumented Immigrants Citizenship Is ‘Absolutely Vital’

By Igor Volsky on Mar 4, 2013 at 2:55 pm

In “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution,” former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (R) argues that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be eligible for American citizenship, breaking from the growing bipartisan consensus surrounding reform and contradicting his own position on the issue earlier this year. The book, written with attorney Clint Bolick, will be published on Tuesday.

According to an advanced copy obtained by the Huffington Post’s Elise Foley, Bush writes, “It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences — in this case, that those who violated the law can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship.” “To do otherwise would signal once again that people who circumvent the system can still obtain the full benefits of American citizenship,” Bush adds. He opens a crack in the door for the unauthorized population, however, noting that those who wish to become citizens, must first return to their home country:

“A grant of citizenship is an undeserving reward for conduct that we cannot afford to encourage,” they write. “However, illegal immigrants who wish to become citizens should have the choice of returning to their native countries and applying through normal immigration processes that now would be much more open than before.”

Asking 11 millions undocumented immigrants to leave the country — “three-fifths of whom have lived in the United States for more than a decade” — isn’t only impractical, but could disrupt businesses and economies and create a permanent underclass of Americans.

Unauthorized immigrants would face the choice of remaining in the country without all of the rights and privileges of citizenship or abandoning their jobs, families, and communities to travel back to a native country that they haven’t seen in years. At least 4.5 million native-born U.S.-citizen children who “have at least one unauthorized parent” could be separated from their mother or father.

Bush would allow young DREAM-eligible immigrants to apply for citizenship while remaining in the country, but his stance on the wider population positions the former Florida governor to right of Republicans like Marco Rubio (R-FL), John McCain (R-AZ), and brother George W. Bush — all of whom support a path to earned citizenship. And for good reason: under the bipartisan immigration principles advanced by the Senate and President Obama, undocumented immigrants would have to learn English, pay taxes, and undergo numerous background checks before qualifying for permanent status. As Rubio explains, immigrants who register with the government and receive probationary status “will not be allowed to apply for a green card for a substantial period of time,” waiting “in line behind everyone who has applied before them.”
Read more

Election

After Republicans Restrict Early Voting Hours, Floridians Wait More Than 6 Hours To Vote

By Judd Legum on Nov 4, 2012 at 10:33 am

Last year, Florida’s Republican dominated legislature “rolled back the number of early-voting days from a maximum of 14 days to eight days.” The result? Floridians are finding it much more difficult to vote, with voters in some counties waiting in line for hours:

Long lines were reported across the state, including a six-hour wait time at one early-voting site in Miami-Dade County. Monroe County Supervisor of Elections Harry Sawyer asked for more early-voting time, but was told by state officials that no emergency existed to justify an extension.

“As state officials, we are bound to follow the law,” Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner wrote Sawyer.

James Colimon was waiting in line at the early voting site at the Winter Park library in Orange County but he had to leave two and a half hours later to pick up his daughter.

Florida’s Republican Governor, Rick Scott, has refused to extend early voting hours to accomidate more votes. In response, Miami-Dade County will allow in-person absentee balloting on Sunday from 1PM to 5PM.

Further, the Florida Democratic Party has filed a lawsuit to force Governor Scott to extend the early voting period. Republican Governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist extended early voting hours in response to record turnout.

Update

In Miami-Dade yesterday, some voters in line at 7PM didn’t get to vote until 1AM.

Update

Full text of the lawsuit to extend early voting hours HERE.

Justice

Jeb Bush: GOP Should ‘Stop Acting Stupid’ With Latino Voters

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Aug 29, 2012 at 5:03 pm

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has often disagreed with the Republican party’s increasingly hardline immigration positions. He called GOP immigration policies “short-sighted” in June. And in January, he said that “it makes no sense” for states to pass harmful anti-immigrant laws like Arizona’s and Alabama’s — both written by Kris Kobach, the Romney campaign’s informal immigration adviser — because they turn off Latino voters.

Bush repeated his criticism of his party’s immigration policies Tuesday:

Speaking at a panel discussion at the Republican National Convention, Bush repeated his frequent warning that the party must change its tone, an admonition he has frequently raised about the party’s hardline position on immigration.

“The future of our party is to reach out consistently to have a tone that is open and hospitable to people who share values,’’ he said, adding “the conservative cause would be the governing philosophy as far as the eye could see … and that’s doable if we just stop acting stupid.”

In an interview yesterday, Bush told Univision’s Jorge Ramos that the Republican party has an issue with its tone when talking to Latino voters, and he said “there’s a price to pay” for continuing to focus on extreme immigration laws. “You have to show a respect that the louder, angrier voices of the Republican party don’t understand,” Bush added.

Increasingly, the Republican party is becoming more extreme on immigration issues. Mitt Romney staked out most far-right positions on immigration during the GOP primary, and the only area of immigration policy where he has been consistent is his support for harsh enforcement measures, like state laws to mirror Arizona’s SB 1070 and encouraging self-deportation. The GOP’s platform even calls for cutting off federal funds from colleges that offer in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants, which would endanger Pell Grants and research funding.

As Ann Romney insists that Latino voters need to “get past some of their biases” and support Republicans, it’s unlikely that GOP officials will take Bush’s advice and moderate their immigration policies.

Election

Jeb Bush: GOP ‘Needs To Change… Reach Out To A Much Broader Audience Than We Do Today’

By Judd Legum on Aug 26, 2012 at 10:16 am

This morning on NBC, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush delivered a pointed critique of the modern Republican party. Bush acknowledged that that the GOP “needs to change” and “reach out to a much broader audience.”

Bush insisted, however, that the problems with the Republican Party would not impact this year’s election. Watch it:

A recent NBC poll found that Romney trailed Obama among African American 94% to 0% and among Latinos 63% to 28%.

LGBT

Jeb Bush: Loving Same-Sex Parents Should Be ‘Held Up As Examples For Others’

By Guest Blogger on Jun 11, 2012 at 12:52 pm

In an otherwise comfortable interview with Charlie Rose last Thursday, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush (R) struggled to answer questions about his stance on marriage equality. Although his brother supported a constitutional ban on gay marriage as president, the younger Bush believes America needs all forms of families as parenting examples. He clarified that he personally still opposes same-sex marriage, but despite his platitudes offered a contrast to many of his GOP cohort:

BUSH: I don’t think people need to be discriminated against because they don’t share my belief on this, and if people love their children with all their heart and soul and that’s what they do and that’s how they organize their life that should be held up as examples for others to follow because we need it. We desperately need it and that can take all sorts of forms, it doesn’t have to take the one that I think should be sanctioned under the law.

Bush’s statement is not an endorsement of marriage equality. Still, coupled with his other observation about how his father and Ronald Reagan would have a hard time finding common ground in today’s GOP, it does show the potential of a party shift on marriage equality similar to President Obama’s own evolution.

–Steven Perlberg

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