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Jeb Bush: ‘I don’t know’ if Obama is a socialist.

When asked by Tucker Carlson in an interview for Esquire magazine if he considered President Obama a socialist, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) said, “I don’t know. Define socialism for me.” But then, after calling Obama a “collectivist” — a common synonym for socialist or communist — Bush said the he believed the word “‘socialism’ was a pejorative, and ‘didn’t help’ the GOP make its case.” Bush said further that he didn’t think that Obama would have been elected had he “been honest with Americans about his agenda”:

Bush’s response appears to follow the lead of other prominent Republicans, like his brother former President Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). In May, the former president declared that “the verdict is out” on whether Obama’s a socialist. And while RNC Chairman Michael Steele has refrained from labeling Obama a socialist, he — like Jeb — said that he viewed Obama as a “collectivist.”

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