This week, Jeb Bush officially joined a group of Republican contenders in a no-holds-barred battle for power for the 2016 GOP Presidential nomination. In my new column, “Game of GOP Thrones: Jeb Bush has no mercy,” I break down the parallels between the best quotes from the Season 5 Game of Thrones season finale (“Mother’s Mercy”) and the fledgling candidacy of the Bush political dynasty scion, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
“You will receive what is yours by right.”
International Business Times reported that “while Jeb Bush was governor of Florida, state pension officials committed at least $1.7 billion to financial firms whose executives were “Pioneer” fundraisers for his brother’s presidential campaigns. To achieve Pioneer status, the fundraisers had to amass at least $100,000 worth of bundled contributions to one of George W. Bush’s campaigns.”
Rest assured that Jeb’s massive and ballooning Super-PAC “Right to Rise” (which incidentally sounds like a male enhancement or erectile dysfunction pill for conservative men) has been calling in favors from those “Pioneer” fundraisers. U.S. News and World Report noted that Jeb acted as a campaign finance reform “outlaw” by obfuscating about his intentions to run while stockpiling cash for his war chest (pun intended) through “Right to Rise.”
“How’s it feel to be friends with the most hated man in Castle Black? You were friends with me when I first came here.” “And I wasn’t winning any elections back then.” “Here’s to us, then.” “Long may they sneer.”
Jeb Bush asserted that ISIS developed due to Barack Obama’s withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. At a town hall event in May in Reno, Nevada), 19-year-old University of Nevada student Ivy Ziedrich informed Jeb Bush about the consequences of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. She stated: “The threat of Isis was created by the Iraqi coalition authority, which ousted the entire government of Iraq. It was when 30,000 individuals who are part of the Iraqi military – they were forced out. They had no employment, they had no income, yet they were left with access to all the same arms and weapons.” Ziedrich proceeded to (accurately) tell Jeb Bush: “Your brother created ISIS.”
“Which means that the last thing that I’ll see in this world will be the look in her eyes when I fail them. And I’d rather see a thousand white walkers than see that.”
There exists no better example of Jeb Bush’s autocratic and tyrannical style than his behavior during the tragic Terry Schiavo case while governor of Florida. As University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett told Politico: “It’s a theme of Jeb’s governorship: He really pushed executive power to the limits.”
“He’s the toughest man with no balls I ever met.”
Michael Schiavo called Jeb Bush a “vindicative, untrustworthy coward.”
“I’m glad the end of the world’s working out well for someone.”
Jeb Bush recently had some quality snuggle time with many of the nation’s leading coal barons at a secretive retreat. I cannot wait to learn about his proposals to slow climate change and save the environment.
“Ramsay needs you. Though I suppose he doesn’t need all of you. Just the parts he’ll use to make his heir, until you’ve given him a boy or two and he’s finished using them. Then he’s got incredible plans for those parts.”
This past November, Jeb Bush’s son George P. Bush was elected commissioner of the Texas General Land Office, which manages the mineral rights to millions of acres of state-owned property. George P. Bush has consistently backed the state’s efforts to end municipal fracking bans.
AlterNet helpfully listed “5 Weird and Frightening Effects of Fracking You May Not Know About.”
“What I’m trying to say– what I’m trying and failing to say– I know what you’re trying to say.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcnKMW8dWSw
“The queen intends to remove your family from power. And I intend to help her do it.”
Jeb Bush faces stiff competition for the affections of Wall Street in the person of Hillary Clinton. Politico reported that “the darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation. One top Republican-leaning Wall Street lawyer said “If it turns out to be Jeb versus Hillary we would love that and either outcome would be fine. We could live with either one. Jeb versus Joe Biden would also be fine. It’s Rand Paul or Ted Cruz versus someone like Elizabeth Warren that would be everyone’s worst nightmare.”
“Any advice for an old comrade? Information is the key. You need to learn your enemy’s strengths and strategies. You need to learn which of your friends are not your friends. If only I knew someone with a vast network of spies.”
Jeb Bush on civil liberties: “I would say the best part of the Obama administration has been his continuance of the protections of the homeland using the big metadata programs, the NSA being enhanced.”
“A grand old city choking on violence, corruption, and deceit. Who could possibly have any experience managing such a massive, ungainly beast?”
Jeb Bush presided as Governor of Florida for the “election” of his brother George W. Bush as U.S. President in 2000. Occupy Democrats remind us that “Katherine Harris, Jeb’s secretary of state and the co-chair of the George W. campaign, organized the election system that somehow ended up losing or spoiling the ballots of hundreds of thousands of African-American voters, who just so coincidentally tend to vote Democratic.”
“B-tch! Brother f-cker! – Whore! – Shame.”
Jeb Bush’s (ironically named) 1995 book “Profiles in Character” had a chapter “The Restoration of Shame” which argued that unwed mothers should be publicly shamed.
“You want a good girl, but you need the bad pussy.”
Jeb Bush observed (in “Profiles in Character”) that “infamous shotgun weddings and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter are reminders that public condemnation of irresponsible sexual behavior has strong historical roots.”
“If they’re gonna live in the Seven Kingdoms, safe behind our Wall, they ought to fight for the damn place.”
Real American Hero Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders took Jeb Bush to task regarding Bush’s plan to raise the retirement age, in effect cutting Social Security benefits. Sanders implored: “It is unacceptable to ask construction workers, truck drivers, nurses and other working-class Americans to work until they are 68 to 70 years old before qualifying for full Social Security benefits.”
Tactics like raising the retirement age and means-testing for Medicare and Social Security are schemes designed to weaken and destroy these programs. The equation is very simple: means-testing will turn these benefits that people pay for as they work into poverty programs which often suffer from poor public support (i.e., “welfare,” “hand-outs,” and/or “entitlements”).
“The Myth of Obama Moving to the Left” in Truthout addresses the charges by conservatives (such as Dick Morris) following President Obama’s State of the Union address this year that Obama had a “new radical left-wing agenda.” The article noted that Obama “does not want to nationalize all industry and he does not want to redistribute all wealth. All he wants to do is tweak around the edges of an out-of-control jungle-capitalism system and put into places changes that will make our economy and body politic a little fairer for working people…..He’s just an Eisenhower Republican proposing center-right reforms that conservatives in countries like Germany and Sweden would support without even thinking about it.” As evidence of how far right-ward the Republicans lurched following the Reagan Revolution, the Truthout article authors cited the 1956 Republican Party platform which “called for raising the minimum wage, endorsed equal pay for equal work, supported collective bargaining rights for workers, and even celebrated the GOP’s role in expanding Social Security.”
PoliticusUSA recently observed, in their article “According to polls most Americans are socialists like Bernie Sanders,” that “Republicans have for too long enjoyed success by labeling progressives, liberals, secularists, and indeed Democrats as some kind of anti-American monsters.” Indeed, as noted in the aforementioned PoliticusUSA article, the promotion of progressive policy positions as “good for all Americans” will help expose the “Republican label machine” as “contrary to the popular will of most American people.”
Howard Simon, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida succinctly summarized Jeb Bush’s political track record. Jeb Bush’s past and present statements and actions reveal him as a great enthusiast for privatization of public services. Despite his reputation as a “moderate,” or “Republican In Name Only (RINO),” there is no doubt that Jeb Bush, if elected President, would continue to lead the United States of America in a regressive and conservative direction.