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Jeb! on Trump and Clinton: “I Can’t Vote for Either One of Them”
Jeb Bush was interviewed by former GOP strategist Nicolle Wallace about his decision in November. And it appears he is both #NeverTrump and #NeverHillary.
“I’ve watched history unfold with kind of a front row seat,” said the former candidate, still smarting from his disastrous primary campaign. “The simple fact is there’s a threshold past which anybody who steps in the Oval Office must go past. And I don’t think either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump go past that threshold.”
“If you believe like I do that the Presidency is sacred ground and you want a President who upholds the Constitution — and I don’t think either of the candidates fulfill that primary kind of objective — then I can’t vote for either one of them.”
He gave a nod to the Libertarian ticket of Gov. Gary Johnson and Gov. William Weld, but fell far short of endorsing the third-party candidates. You can watch the interview here.
Published in General
A young Republican student asked House Speaker Paul Ryan at a CNN town hall on Tuesday night how he can morally support a nominee who is openly “racist.” As for him, he won’t be supporting Donald Trump come November.
“That means you’re going to help Hillary Clinton” get elected, Ryan responded.
Clinton represents everything the student stands against, the speaker argued. Why would he help hand her the keys to the White House?
Paul Ryan: “It’s a binary choice. It’s either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.”
The only candidate who talked about the debt was Trump. And it’s now 20 Trillion. He talked about it last night too.
Agreed about entitlement. Who in the GOP talks about that with any credibility?
This is establishment GOP media hype based on off-hand remarks, usually out of context and taken out of the intended spirt. Sad to see Republicans essentially demanding their candidates speak in air-tight soundbytes so as not to be deliberately misunderstood by their bitter and committed enemies.
Jeb, his donors and Fox news gave us Trump. The man remains clueless.
Cruz was also very popular with the alienated Republicans. Between Trump and Cruz they had the non-establishment oriented voters locked up. But it is precisely this factor that showed me that the GOPe was a cancer in the Republican party or conservatism. They hated Cruz too!
The same people hated Cruz who hated Trump. These are the same insiders, Senators-For-Life, pundits for left-wing rags masquerading as sober conservatives, all stymied Cruz.
The ‘wondrous nationalism…emoting…argument for “solutions” is typical beltway rhetoric.
And he was my first choice, long ago….
And he was also hated. Hated and reviled. Dismissed. Mocked by these same people.
So I’m very skeptical of all the Trump angst. I keep asking myself, How would this be different if somehow Cruz won the nomination or Rand Paul? It would be different – they wouldn’t have as much ammo to use against them – but not that different.
My experience tells me that with leftists, and now establishment Republican types, you can use anything to attack your opponent and pretend it’s the worst thing in the world. Newt had three wives! Romney had binders full of women! Romney beat up a kid in third grade!Cruz doesn’t play along with other Senators! Unacceptable for the Presidency!
These people have no real standards, just a personal agenda.
Ha! I’m becoming more and more amused (bemused?) by the “neither Hillary nor Trump is worthy to be president” argument. Yes, yes, almost everyone agrees, they’re both horrible. And, so????!
The primaries are over, folks. One of these two is going to be the next president. I see one of three choices: Will you have your vote counted? Will you hold onto the dream of a white knight riding in on his trusty steed to save the day? Or, will you abdicate your primary role as voter in this (formerly) great republic in disgust?
It’s grim, I know. I feel sad for us all. But, if it makes anyone feel any better, I think we passed the tipping point in 2012 — and possibly as far back as 2008 when we elected an anti-American, Alinskyite leftist with the middle name of our most recent vanquished enemy. We’re not really bemoaning the candidates. We’re in anguish over our fellow countrymen who fall for such people.
Trump voters, we the easily-led who don’t know what’s good for us, say “Thank you!”
Exactly true. These beltway rhetoric “arguments” have no purpose other than to try to justify to one’s self a decision to not vote for Trump. The mere existence of, with pure emotion at its core, this need to justify such a non-vote indicates how truly awful it is to come to this Jeb-like decision. The time for regret over the winner of the 2016 GOP POTUS primary is over. The Speaker, the head of the RNC, most of the other candidates have gotten over it already. The cheese has been moved. Deal with it.
After Barack Hussein 0bama, this nostalgia about crossing some fanciful Oval Office threshold is absurd. The bar is low. Few like the choice, but it is a binary decision. Some form of capitalism (even if ‘trumpian’) is infinitely better than a continuation of the socialism which would spew from a White House occupied by another lying democrat.
This is the kind of thing they would be saying about Cruz. These anti-Trump forces aren’t ONLY against Trump the personality. Let’s not fool ourselves.
You may want to consider something you didn’t hear much from our 2015-16 candidates, but which I think is true.
The increase in the notorious “low information voters,” the “fellow countrymen who fall for such people” that you bemoan, is the negative result of our glorious Pax Americana.
It’s not coincidence that the same interests who support a “muscular foreign policy” also favor increased Third World immigration into the US.
Small government is not the common feature of world super powers.
Massive debt is likewise a feature not a bug of an overstretched super power.
It is not coincidence that while our elites engage globally they also wall themselves off from the ruination their “creative destruction” causes at home.
Elites who are alienated from their own people and don’t preach what they practice are, to me, the product of a viewpoint which sees the world as its oyster and America as just another marketplace. They want both well-policed.
Even the despised “entitlement mentality” – does such an attitude arise from being too humble or from seeing oneself as dominant?
Randolph Bourne and James Madison agreed that war was the health of the state. Government’s gotten really “healthy” during Pax Americana.
America hasn’t.
So is this an example of Trump and “typical beltway rhetoric” being in synch?
What I am tracking from these comments is that every other GOP candidate will be dismissed as an “Establishment” stooge on the basis of any impure statement, but we can call balls-and-strikes on Trump’s comments in that anything on target is an absolute statement of intent and every other stupidity or inconsistency is off-the-cuff, not to be taken seriously, beltway commentary, and taken out of context. Did I get that right?
No.
I think you’re missing the resignation of a lot of Trump voters. I’m not alone in not defending the particulars of Trump. Out of the original 17 candidates, he was my 17th choice. But, Hillary is 18. I’d rather spend my time “educating” my fellow citizens on the unprecedented corruption of the Democrat nominee, even though I’m aware that a Donald Trump presidency is (far, far) less than ideal. He’s the only thing standing between us and the total left-wing take-over of the SCOTUS, the bureaucracy, the education establishment, and mass media. Our champion isn’t a white knight — he’s an orange one. We can work with it, or surrender.
Yes. And this divide isn’t new. There are people ostensibly conservative and Republican, who are perfectly fine with an Obama or a Hillary, and it shows with which Republicans they support and how those Republicans act in and out of office.
I have determined that most of them do not understand the nature of the enemy. They use the term left, but they don’t really know what it is. I see this constantly from the nevertrumpers here.
If you don’t understand what they are doing, and how, and maybe even why, you are not fit to lead. You are not fit to fight them. Then they lose. Then they blame their not pandering to Hispanics or some such idiocy. They are getting rolled and don’t even know it.
Then they cower at what others might think of them, when actually the only power the left has over them is their own fears. Unfounded name-calling; racist, xenophobe, sexist, homophobe, is done because it works!
Agreed. I would add that they seem to think they’ll have another at-bat in 2020, without understanding that the game was lost four or eight years ago (and, culturally, over the decades leading up to this). Trump is a rear-guard action for us resigned-Trumpers.
And once the left takes complete control, they will feed conservatives and whoever opposed them to the socialist alligators. In fact, they are doing it now.
You continue to see the surface of what is going on. Sanders is a wonderful example of the upheaval afflicting old political coalitions.
Look at him – he was a doctrinaire, preserved-in-amber Socialist who thought he was in the vanguard of the coming proletarian revolution transformed by events he could not control into a pro-immigration, race-and-gender obsessed icon of a Democratic party clique which is paradoxically 100% white and middle-class. What?!?
The new Democratic coalition is inherently unstable, a mix of Wall Street globalists, Silicon Valley billionaire entrepreneurs and the militant identity minorities who serve as its voting base. It is held together not so much by left-wing ideology as by the KKKrazy glue of racial animosity, rage and rent-seeking. Multiple agendas fused by the white heat of white-hate.
Like the Google employees riding in self-imposed obliviousness the air-conditioned company shuttle past the burgeoning favelas of their new servant class on the Peninsula, the Democratic party has no future because it is divided against itself.
It is up to conservatives to use the old Marxist tactic: heighten the contradictions.
And let’s not forget moral narcissism. What’s in it for Zuckerberg and the like to destroy the American order? Not much, except they feel so gloriously self-righteous in the pose.
Is there anyone in America who seriously does not understand the nature of Bill and Hilary Clinton? They are what happens when a crime syndicate takes over a government.
My NeverTrump position was sealed with his peddling National Enquirer stories about Ted Cruz’s father being linked to Lee Harvey Oswald ahead of the JFK assassination. I’m not even a Cruz fan, but at some point you just have to say I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of the insults against our own side, I’ve had enough of the slurs, I’ve had enough of the rambling speeches, I’ve had enough of strong-chest-thumpin’-statement followed by twitter-backtracking, I’ve had enough of seeking excuse for every act of poor judgment because he’s “not PC”, and I’ve had enough of complete ignorance on any subject that is of concern to me.
I listened to this guy for hours during those debates and my opinion diminished every time he opened his mouth. I would not invite him into my home. At this point, I really do believe Trump is as bad and will cause as much harm as Hilary Clinton. And no one can point me to anything that indicates that he is more honorable, more principled, more responsible, more trustworthy, or more accountable. Since he has already said he will negotiate away anything and no one seems to be able to exercise any influence with him, why should I accept any of the many theories about how he will govern as a conservative?
When this question was put forth during the primaries, people with my concerns were dismissed (as in these posts) as “GOPe” “inside the beltway” “CW” “Republicrat” hacks, whose votes were not necessary because a new, energized coalition was going to reorder the political landscape. If my vote doesn’t matter then why is it a wasted vote if I go third party or down-ticket in November?
If I am going to be asked to reconsider, then give me something upon which to make this decision. Show me that he can act like an adult and actually gain traction in polls by his own merits and persuasion and not just Hilary’s bad news. Maybe at the Convention we’ll see something new, but if Mike Tyson is still on the potential list of speakers then I expect the same-old, same-old.
We’ll see. Democrats have a long history of getting all riled up and then falling in line. That’s what I’m expecting and what indicators point to.
They have a desire to win first, ask questions later. If Democrats had such strong principles, they would have tossed Bill Clinton out on his ear in the 1990s. Instead, the worse the news about him, the more strongly they attached themselves to him.
There is a hierarchy: don’t let the other side win, first; figure out what you’ll do after you win, second; principles … last.
Concerning your first belief, that Trump is as bad and will cause as much harm as Hillary, I find it unsupportable given Trump’s list of potential SCOTUS nominees and Hillary’s declaration of a litmus test about Citizens’ United, same-sex marriage and Heller, a test which she will insist upon for her nominees. I also find it unsupportable given Trump’s position paper on immigration and border enforcement and Clinton’s positions on the same topics. So goodbye First Amendment, Second Amendment and the Republican Party. Against that you presumably weigh – a tariff?
Concerning your second belief I find it strange coming from a conservative. I point to the commonsense conservative view that a life in the private sector of a free enterprise economy building skyscrapers, hotels, world-class resorts and golf clubs actually does require more of the values you list than a life spent wholly in government service, especially accountability. Apparently to you playing with your own money requires no more character than playing with other people’s money. I respectfully disagree.
Because I take him at his word only as far as what he is saying at the moment. During the debates he would be asked about how he would get some difficult promised done and replay that it was negotiable. He said his list of judges was open to future changes. Chuck Schumer is his old buddy, why shouldn’t I expect him to negotiate away any of these promises to get his own priorities through? Do his promises sound better than hers? Most certainly, but I don’t trust either one not to change their minds later.
Yes, he has run a business. He has also run four (six by other counts) of his businesses into the ground by over-leveraging with other peoples’ money who had to take a haircut while he just got to walk away. He refuses to pay vendors in full (especially smaller guys who can’t fight his litigation machine). http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-business-plan-left-a-trail-of-unpaid-bills-1465504454
He avoids accountability because he is rich and he lawyers up and wears other people down. Sounds just like a big government mentality.
Romney’s business accumen wasn’t sufficient with “real conservatives” in 2012; why should I be awed by Trump’s roller-coaster business career?
Don’t get me wrong: I worked for a company that went bankrupt, and to a certain point I agree with Trump’s take that it is a business decision and it is an available tool. But behind these bankrupties is a pattern of mismanagement and unfair practices. Why should I praise him for that?
Yes. And respectfully, I think you are one of them. There is a difference between crime and self-enrichment and deliberately running a country into the ground and ruining freedom and prosperity for everyone.
What is taking over our government is organized leftism that will use the organs of the State, previously benign organizations (or quasi benign) to oppress and eliminate their political enemies. And their political enemies have a few things in common. They are the belief in freedom and free enterprise, personal propery rights and the tenets of our Constitution. They don’t just want to steal and break laws. They want to break the foundations of this country.
The left is organized and move in parallel. They aren’t mere ‘criminals’ they are meta-criminals – those who seek to change the justice system, the cultural background, the context of American life so as to make YOU and ME criminals and themselves our overlords. It’s way beyond simple criminality.
And this distinction becomes revealed when we watch people like David Brooks vote for Obama, or Peggy Noonan or Colin Powell and candidates McCain and Romney and the Bushes who seem to think they are playing a game of cricket with a rival prep school.
You actually think that Hillary will change her mind about her positions and govern like what – a conservative? A woman of character? Don’t you see now how your anti-Trump mindset twists you into a logical pretzel?
No one is asking you to praise him. It might be sufficient if the #nevertrumpers would simply hide their animus under a bushel for awhile. But seeing that you have such a knowledge of the Republican candidate’s shortcomings, why don’t you compile a bill of indictment against the Democratic nominee? I think both @franco and I would love to read it.
Or do you expect others to do that vital, useful work while you just complain?
Okay, fine. But until Trump gets a campaign in place that gets some traction on Hilary, it’s kind of hard for me to buy into this campaign strategy versus the alternative. Cruz was putting together an organization to win this thing with a serious ground game. The GOP lost that battle in the last two rounds. Rove put together a winning organization in 2004. So we know what needs to get done.
Trump needs to get this jalopy of a campaign moving or all this talk of political warfare on our side is nothing more than a game of Stratego.
So far Bill and Hilary have advanced through the years being pared against docile opponents. So far this year Trump has raised a lot of dust but other than calling her “Crooked Hilary” I’m still not seeing a serious effort.
This was a discussion that started with Jeb! and whether he was a sinister bunny rabbit and it evolved into a discussion about Trump’s merits (or lack). I was just told that I don’t understand Hilary’s nature so I may not be up to this effort. Do you need to be told of Hilary’s adventures?
The principle point of this discussion is whether Hilary’s vile nature is sufficient in its own right for any conservative to hold his nose and vote for Trump. Now you need a list in order to figure out how vile she is?
I’m sorry if this sounds like just complaining, but other than passion and bluster I don’t see a candidate in action, a plan to unify the party behind him (except through blanket demand), or the ability to draw in new voters to support him and win him the Electoral College. I’ve been listening for a year to complaining about “GOPe” candidates (you know, the ones with a track record for actually getting elected) and no one has been reticent about their short comings – this chain of posts very quickly started with some nasty swipes at a former candidate that no one seems to get over. I’m not going to just mutter happy talk in the mean time.
Over the years when talking to mainstream Republicans, there’s parallel they have with liberals when talking about America. Liberals feel obligated to criticize America. America can never be good enough, and we must acknowledge and apologize for our transgressions (Hiroshima, Japanese internment, slavery …) before we can hold the moral high ground. We can’t preach to others until we get our own house in order, and it’s obnoxious to presume that our system is superior to other systems or Constitutions.
The Republicans of whom I write strike me as similar when talking about the Republican Party and the GOP. We must always purge our own. Our party must not be tainted. We must disavow anyone in the ranks who might have a faint odor of racism, or can be perceived as racists or whatever. How embarrassing that Trump calls himself a Republican! Honestly, we aren’t all like that!
The fact is that they allow opponents to paint them with as broad a brush as possible, and then blame other nominal Republicans or conservatives for screwing these enemies. Adding to the ridiculousness is the utter futility of policing your own ranks from outliers and fringe elements sufficient to satisfy these enemies.
It’s not her nature, my friend. She can have her squalid, mercenary, grasping nature – it’s a free country. And, contra-@franco, it’s not even that she’s a left-winger who knew and admired Alinsky – people like that exist on every campus in America.
It’s what she will do. Don’t you understand that? It’s what her actions will mean to the demise of liberty in this country, not just for an administration, but very likely for decades, enough time to affect the lives and the culture of your children and grandchildren.
Trump is an amateur politician, a reality-show performer and something of a boor. But compared to Hillary Clinton and her legion of Kagans, Lerners, and open borders lunatics there is nothing he can do that will damage this country as much as would giving presidential power to Hillary.
Just face it, damn it.
Franco, the issue I have with all of this is that this is effectively a giant excuse factory for Trump’s incompetence and bad conduct.
I can buy a lot of what you say with the way people get the vapors if someone has a misstatement.
But when Trump has to be dragged kicking and screaming to grudgingly denounce a group of white supremacists, makes a habit of insulting the looks of women who criticize him, or he lashes out at a judge for criticism because he’s Mexican, why shouldn’t people be concerned about what this communicates about the Republican Party attitude to groups over voters — the people needed to help you win elections (the purpose of political parties and candidates).
This isn’t manufactured silliness like 47% or binders of women; this is the guy’s Twitter feed. Must we constantly make excuses for this guy?