{"id":973,"date":"2015-05-11T19:49:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T00:49:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=973"},"modified":"2015-05-11T19:49:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T00:49:58","slug":"gop-strategy-it-may-be-terminal-ctd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/05\/11\/gop-strategy-it-may-be-terminal-ctd\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP Strategy: It may be terminal, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeb Bush <\/a>gets on the right page – Steve Benen of MaddowBlog<\/strong><\/em> reports how Republicans never make a mistake<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush would have authorized the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as his brother and then-president George W. Bush did, he told Fox News\u2019 Megyn Kelly in an interview to be aired Monday<\/span><\/span>. …<\/p>\n

Note the evolution in Jeb Bush\u2019s approach to the issue. Just three months ago, asked about the disastrous war in Iraq, the Florida Republican told reporters<\/a>, \u201cI won\u2019t talk about the past\u2026. If I\u2019m in the process of considering the possibility of running, it\u2019s not about re-litigating anything in the past.\u201d Soon after, Jeb Bush was willing to concede \u201cmistakes were made<\/a>,\u201d but he wouldn\u2019t say who made the mistakes or how he would have done anything different.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jon Green at AMERICA blog <\/a><\/strong><\/em>thinks Jeb is doing the right thing:<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing: despite\u00a0the baggage George W. Bush would bring as a surrogate,\u00a0Jeb probably loses less by embracing his record\u00a0than he gains by distancing himself from it. No matter what he says about the previous Bush administration, he\u2019s going to be tied to it. If he runs from it, it\u2019ll be seen as a political dodge. Owning the issue tells voters that he doesn\u2019t think it\u2019s a liability, so they shouldn\u2019t, either. Given that Hillary\u2019s position on the Iraq War is, for all intents and purposes,\u00a0the same as Jeb\u2019s\u00a0\u2014 \u201cWe made the best decision we could given the information we had.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Jeb\u00a0does more to defuse Iraq as a 2016 campaign issue by\u00a0embracing the invasion\u00a0than he does\u00a0by criticizing\u00a0it. As there is no clear separation between any of the 2016 frontrunners on the issue, none of them feel any particular need to play defense on it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This may be true for the Republican base, to which he is initially playing, but Independents, who he would have to win over for the general election, should have more critical faculties and be willing to say, If he doesn’t seem Iraq as a critical mistake, even a lie as Andrew Sullivan <\/a>eventually decided, then why should we cast a vote for him?<\/p>\n

This is, at best, a roll of the die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeb Bush gets on the right page – Steve Benen of MaddowBlog reports how Republicans never make a mistake: Former Florida governor Jeb Bush would have authorized the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as his brother and then-president George W. Bush did, he told Fox News\u2019 Megyn Kelly in an interview \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}