Bush reassures the GOP:
"Former President George W. Bush has a message for the Republican Party: "You will exist in the future."
"Former President George W. Bush has a message for the Republican Party: "You will exist in the future."
"In an interview with ABC News that aired on Wednesday, Bush added that his brother Jeb Bush would make a great candidate in 2016. "He'd be a marvelous candidate, if he chooses to do so," Bush said, adding, "He doesn't need my counsel 'cause he knows what it is, which is 'run!'"
"Bush's comments about the GOP come at a time when the party is working to rebuild after losses in the 2012 election. The Republican National Committee in March released a post-mortem on the election, which concluded that the party needs to adopt a more inclusive tone. That message has hit a few speed bumps at the local level."
"Bush has been on a media tour ahead of the opening of his presidential library in Dallas. Bush, President Obama and the other living U.S. Presidents are scheduled to attend the library's opening ceremony on Thursday."
Regarding Jeb, maybe Barbara Bush is right: we've had enough Bushes.
As far as Bush's message, is he really the one the GOP needs to be giving it? Sure Bush was successful himself in being elected twice but does the GOP really want him as their inspiration? During the Republican National Convention he was nowhere to be seen.
The question that begs is if the party will survive in the future, how they will do it. It seems to me that most of Bush's actual policies are losers going forward-the exceptions are immigration reform, and say aid to Africa.
Greg Sargent documents how their latest attempts to remake the party have again fallen flat like trying to undermine ObamaCare:
"The New York Times has a big story this morning reporting that Eric Cantor’s drive to soften the party’s image has run headlong into the intransigence of conservativesunwilling to deviate from their austerity-only ideology and agenda. The latest example: The Helping Sick Americans Now Act, which would create a federal “high risk pool,” funded with money from another part of Obama’s health care law, that would allow people with preexisting conditions to get subsidized coverage."
"The move was simultaneously designed to undermine Obamacare while portraying Republicans as compassionate towards those with preexisting conditions. But conservatives opposed it because it did not offer the promise of the complete destruction of Obamacare — a blow to the party’s effort to rebrand itself at a time when it continues to push for Obamacare repeal while offering no meaningful alternative. Yet this isn’t surprising. As Jonathan Chait argued recently in a different context, the GOP will not be able to offer any such alternative until the party untethers itself from the “decision that they’d rather keep taxes low than spend money to cover the uninsured.”
More and more they seem to be a party in search of an agenda beyond opposition to whatever Obama wants.
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