Everyone Says Jeb Bush Is A Conservative – Except Conservatives

Conservative HQ ^ | 28 Dec 14 | CHQ Staff

[xzins]

We here at CHQ have observed an interesting phenomenon about former Florida Governor Jeb Bush – hardly a week passed after he met with Senator John McCain to discuss how to obtain the Republican presidential nomination without being a conservative until testimonials started flowing about how conservative Jeb is.

Of course these testimonials are mostly coming from Democrats and the establishment media, but they are slowly, but inexorably filling the top pages of Google, so that soon they will become the conventional wisdom.

Typical of this remaking of Jeb Bush were the comments former Democratic Florida State Senator Dan Gelber (and advisor to turncoat Republican Charlie Crist’s failed Democratic campaign for Governor of Florida) provided to Lloyd Dunkelberger, the Tallahassee bureau chief for Htpolitics.com, for a puff piece on Bush’s conservative credentials entitled “In past office, clues about the 2016 Bush.” (link at the end of this article)

Gelber, a former staffer to Georgia’s late Democratic Senator Sam Nunn said, “If you were in Florida any day he was governor, you knew he was a conservative… And I don’t say that as a compliment.”

As evidence of Bush’s conservatism Gelber or Dunkelberger, the article isn’t entirely clear who provided the analysis, says Bush “cut taxes for the wealthy, embraced anti-abortion and gun-rights legislation, privatized state services, battled teachers’ unions and expanded school vouchers.”

The problem with this list of allegedly conservative “accomplishments” is that some of them, such as cutting taxes for the wealthy, are merely liberal caricatures of conservatism and many of the others, such as Bush’s education “reforms,” while sounding good, did not actually translate into conservative policy results.

Take education "reform" for example. A foundational principle of conservative education policy is that local control is paramount, and that the parents and taxpayers who fund education should make the decisions regarding how their schools are run. The result of Jeb Bush’s education reforms were quite the opposite.

Just like Common Core is intended to accomplish on the national level, what Bush’s education reforms in Florida did was impose a rigid set of top-down standards that have resulted in a “teach to the test” curriculum that has stripped critical thinking, Western culture, life skills and citizenship out of Florida’s classrooms.

As Linda Kleindienst, then of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, wrote on January 7, 2007 as Jeb Bush left office, “Bush's legacy in this field [education] was mixed at best. Test results showed learning gains among fourth-graders, whose scores were easier to improve than those of older children, as well as minorities across all grade levels. But Florida's high school dropout rate and per-pupil spending continued to rank among the nation's worst.”

As we and many other conservatives see it, the result of Jeb Bush’s so-called reforms is a top-down education system and students who are taught to take multiple choice tests, but who can’t form a logical argument or name the three branches of the federal government – compliant drones for the Big Businesses that were the primary advocates of Jeb Bush’s “reforms” and that are now Common Core’s staunchest advocates.

Likewise Bush’s reputation as a fiscal “conservative” rests largely on his tax “reforms.” But the cost of government, as every principled conservative recognizes, isn’t what government collects in taxes, it is what it spends.

And on Jeb Bush’s watch Florida state spending ballooned by 52 percent, from $48.6 billion in 1999 to $73.9 billion in 2006.*And state expenditures per capita rose from $2,809 in 1999, to $3,942 in fiscal year 2006-2007.

Despite the establishment’s attempted remaking of Jeb Bush into a “conservative,” principled conservatives in Florida (and around the country) remember that, in a strange prequel to the imperial presidency of Barack Obama, when Bush left the Florida Governor’s mansion he was known as “King Jeb.”

As our friend Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute once observed, “The first President Bush was a disaster for advocates of limited government, as was the second President Bush, and there’s a very big reason at this point to be skeptical about version 3.0.” And that reason is Jeb Bush's real record, not the one the estabishment is peddling.

*South Florida Sun-Sentinel figures

For the 2007 version of Jeb Bush’s record click this link to read “The Jeb Bush Era Ends in Florida,” by Linda Kleindienst, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Sunday, January 7, 2007.

For the establishment’s remake of Jeb Bush as a “conservative” read, "In past office, clues about the 2016 Bush" by Lloyd Dunkelberger, Htpolitics.com Capital Bureau Chief, Saturday, December 20, 2014.

[snarkybob]

“I don’t find it upsetting. I’m used to conservatives getting beat.
But Christie, Bush or another RINO will not win either.”

I agree with you. I don’t at this point think Bush or Christie or Romney can win either.

[Theodore R.]

I’m afraid most Republican primary voters are too uninformed to think of any Bush as anything but a “conservative” despite the massive evidence. Particularly so in TX and FL

[Joe Boucher]

No Bush has been a true conservative
“I will not raise taxes” cost G.H.W. bush a second term. He lied and grew gub mint.
“Compassionat conservativism” of G.W bush was pure hog wash
And everyone knows Jeb is a progressive in favor of amnesty and common core. Truely Not a conservative.
Buy hey, lots of money can buy you any meme.
But no amount will get me to vote for Jeb. Again, No Bush is a conservative