Jeb Bush's extreme right-wing legacy

[YoungDemCA]

This man was no "moderate" - not even by Republican standards.

Bush hasn't always been the cheery moderate that he's presented as today. In fact, during his first campaign for governor of Florida in 1994, he was quite conservative.

In order to win the Republican nomination in that race, Bush ran as a hard-liner, staking out positions to the right of his GOP primary opponents on issues such as education, taxes, welfare and criminal justice. He eventually prevailed over the five other Republicans in the primary, though he lost the general election.

"A lot of Bush's ideas during his first run for governor in 1994 were really cutting-edge for the GOP," said Dr. David Colburn, director of the Askew Institute on Politics and Society at the University of Florida. "Bush was the fellow who was out in front and leading the charge with radical reforms."

The cornerstone of Bush's campaign was a sweeping set of conservative proposals that, if enacted, would have made Florida a virtual laboratory for far-right policy.

"I would abolish the Department of Education as it now exists, reducing the 2,000 person bureaucracy to about 50 to administer federal education funding and maintain minimum academic standards in Florida's schools," Bush told the Orlando Sentinel in a November 1994 interview.

Bush also laid out a plan to require that any proposed new taxes be approved directly by Florida voters, a strategy that would have made it nearly impossible to pass them. What state revenue there was, Bush said, should be used whenever possible to hire private corporations to replace state employees.

"We must push privatization [of government] in every area where privatization is possible," Bush told the Sentinel.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/08/jeb-bush_n_6436546.html

Jeb Bush has a reputation as one of the most moderate GOP presidential candidates. But while governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, he actually racked up an extremely conservative record.

This disparity between his language and his policies isn't an accident. While he's long held strongly conservative views, Bush concluded two decades ago that the best way for a Republican to get elected is to use very compassionate and appealing rhetoric — and he's used that strategy ever since.

This approach was inspired by failure. During Bush's first campaign for governor of Florida, he called himself a "head-banging conservative," talked about "blowing up" state agencies, and said he wanted to "club this government into submission." He didn't carefully watch his words, and ended up causing controversy when, asked what his administration would do for the African-American community, he responded, "Probably nothing." (He intended to make a point about not governing based on race.)

Despite a nationwide landslide for Republicans that year, Bush lost. The lesson he took, as he told the Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson this year, was that "the thing I didn't do was show my heart." He thought he turned off voters by hard-line rhetoric and failed to show he cared about them.

So over the ensuing four years, Bush gave himself a political makeover. He embraced education reform as a major issue where he could combine conservative principles with a positive message, he launched high-profile efforts at outreach to the African-American community, and he focused his message on opportunity and compassion. But, Bush told Ferguson, "The ideology that I believe, the belief in limited government — that didn't change."

And once Bush won the 1998 election and took office, he proved that, pushing through a variety of very conservative measures in what had been one of the most progressive states in the South.

As governor he slashed taxes, rolled back regulations, vetoed $2 billion in legislative spending requests, and privatized a wide variety of government functions. He overhauled the state's public school system, trying to apply market forces like choice and accountability to it. He lifted restrictions on guns (including passing the nation's first Stand Your Ground law), passed pro-life bills, and fought to prevent Terri Schiavo's husband from having her feeding tube removed.

http://www.vox.com/cards/jeb-bush-issues-policies/jeb-bush-record-governor

What is interesting about all this caterwauling from the right about Jeb Bush is that on most issues, he is as conservative as it gets. "He was really reactionary on education, criminal justice, taxes, and privatization, but he is regarded as a moderate because he speaks Spanish and has a Mexican wife, and supports more effective immigration laws," Susan Greenbaum, Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of South Florida and the author of the forthcoming book Blaming the Poor: The Long Shadow of the Moynihan Report on Cruel Images about Poverty, told me in an email exchange. In reality, says Greenbaum, "he is clearly no moderate."

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/why-doesn-t-the-right-wing-like-jeb-bush-he-s-one-of-them