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The war in Iraq -- the issue that defined George W. Bush's presidency and haunted candidates from both parties on the 2008 campaign trail -- is back. And this time it's creating headaches for Jeb Bush. In his clearest declaration yet on his feelings about his brother's invasion of Iraq, the former Florida governor said Thursday that "knowing what we know now, ...I would not have engaged." "I would not have gone into Iraq," he said. The comments marked the fifth time this week that Bush sought to explain his position on Iraq

On Wednesday afternoon, just as she sat down to watch TV and eat a corn dog, Ivy Ziedrich’s phone rang. It was her sister in Montana. “I am so proud of you,” her sister said, “for yelling at a politician.” It was the first inkling that Ms. Ziedrich, a 19-year-old college student with a passion for the debate team and the finer points of Middle Eastern policy, had gone viral. Her confrontation with Jeb Bush, in which she told the former Florida governor a few hours earlier, “Your brother created ISIS,” was suddenly everywhere online, casting an unwelcome hue on...

Let’s discuss Jeb Bush’s terrible week. I’m really troubled by his awful performances, and I’m generally a person who takes bad news about politicians pretty well. For instance, a friend just sent me a story about the Texas agriculture commissioner’s vow to bring deep-fried foods back to school cafeterias. (“It’s not about French fries; it’s about freedom.”) I would classify this as interesting, yet somehow not a shocking surprise. But today we’re talking about Jeb Bush. As a presidential hopeful, Bush’s most attractive feature was an aura of competence. Extremely boring competence, perhaps. Still, an apparent ability to get through...

Jeb Bush found himself on defense after his town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada yesterday after a young voter told him, “your brother created ISIS.” Ivy Ziedrich, a 19-year-old student at University of Nevada who said she was a registered Democrat, approached Bush after the event and told the likely presidential candidate he was wrong about the origins of the terror group... Ziedrich said she is a member of the Young Democrats at her university although in an interview with ABC News yesterday she said she was not speaking as a representative of the group. She said she likes to...

Sometimes politicians do things so inexplicable that it makes you wonder, well, just what the heck are they thinking? Witness Jeb Bush's answers over the course of this week when asked whether, knowing what we know now, he would have authorized the war in Iraq begun by his brother, former president George W. Bush. On Monday, Jeb seemed to mishear Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly -- answering the Iraq question without understanding the all important "if you knew then what we know" caveat. Okay, fine. Seemingly embarking on a bit of necessary cleanup duty Tuesday, Jeb called into Sean Hannity's...

RENO, Nev. — “Your brother created ISIS,” the young woman told Jeb Bush. And with that, Ivy Ziedrich, a 19-year-old college student, created the kind of confrontational moment here on Wednesday morning that presidential candidates dread. Mr. Bush, the former governor of Florida, had just concluded a town-hall-style meeting when Ms. Ziedrich demanded to be heard. “Governor Bush,” she shouted as audience members asked him for his autograph. “Would you take a student question?” Mr. Bush whirled around and looked at Ms. Ziedrich, who identified herself as a political science major and a college Democrat at the University of Nevada....

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), a likely 2016 presidential candidate, faced off against a hostile college student on Wednesday. The student, identified in reports as 19-year-old Ivy Ziedrich, introduced herself as a young Democrat attending the University of Nevada, Reno. She quickly moved on to accuse Bush's brother, former President George W. Bush, of laying the groundwork for the rise of the Islamic State jihadist group (also known as ISIS). Ziedrich argued that the US didn't do enough to take care of former Iraqi soldiers after Geroge W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. "The threat of ISIS was created...

It is nearly axiomatic that presidential contests tend to shine a harsh light on conservative Christians — inasmuch as they are viewed as the Republican Party’s base and are, therefore, deemed fair game. Of course, religious folks come in a variety of stripes, checks and polka dots. Many are Democrats. But it is the members of the Christian right — evangelicals and Catholics, especially — who are treated every four years to the sneers of lefties, academics, proud atheists (allow me to quote myself: “There’s no dogma like no dogma”) and certain but not all media. Roger Ailes’s Fox News...

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Yesterday, led by Alabama’s principled limited constitutional conservative Senator Jeff Sessions, a small band of the Senate’s “populist conservative” Republicans joined with Democrats to, temporarily at least, derail the “fast track” Trade Promotion Authority bill (TPA) now working its way through Congress. The TPA bill is backed by a strange alliance of Big Business, establishment Republicans and, wait for it – Barack Obama. Only one Democrat, Sen. Tom Carper, voted for the bill. The Wall Street Journal attacked conservatives opposing the bill as “No-Growth Republicans,” but the clear winner in the battle so far has been Senator Sessions, who has...

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie attempted to draw a bright line between himself and Jeb Bush on the Iraq War in a CNN interview on Tuesday, definitively stating that given the absence of weapons of mass destruction he wouldn't have authorized the war. "I think President [George W.] Bush made the best decision he could at the time, given that his intelligence community was telling him that there was (weapons of mass destruction) and that there were other threats right there in Iraq," he told CNN's Jake Tapper on "The Lead." "But I don't think you can honestly say that...

“Either a path to citizenship, which I would support and that does put me probably out of the mainstream of most conservatives; Or a path to legalization, a path to residency of some kind…” Bush told Charlie Rose in 2012. During an appearance on “The Kelly File” on Monday, Jeb Bush disagreed with Megyn Kelly when she pointed out that, in the past, he had supported a path to citizenship (though he then went onto say he’d be open to it as part of a “compromise”). Kelly questioned the former governor of Florida about his past positions on immigration, specifically...

Lotta buzz about this in the political Twittersphere this afternoon. I can’t figure out why. The likely Republican presidential candidate will instead attend a competing event, the RedState Gathering in Atlanta, the day of the Iowa event, GOP sources in Iowa told The Des Moines Register Tuesday. A spokesman for Bush confirmed the report…

Ted Cruz responds to Jeb Bush's stance on immigration, Iraq - Breaking News 5/12/2015 --

Ted Cruz is breaking from former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) about whether or not he would have ordered the U.S. military into its eight-year war in Iraq. “Knowing what we know now, of course we wouldn’t go into Iraq,” the Texas Republican told The Hill on Tuesday. “At the time, the intelligence reports indicated that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction that posed a significant national threat to this country. That’s the reason there was such widespread bipartisan support for going into Iraq,” he added. “We now know in hindsight, those intelligence reports were false.” “Without that predicate,...

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, facing opposition from some conservatives who say he supports amnesty, says undocumented workers should be able to earn legal status, “not necessarily citizenship.” Mr. Bush was seeking to clarify his immigration policy in an interview scheduled to air on Fox News Channel’s “The Kelly File,” on Monday evening, two days before a scheduled trip to Nevada, a swing state with a large Hispanic population. “The plan, in our book and the plan that I’ve suggested when I go out and speak, which is almost every day on the subject, I’m talking about a path...

Likely GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush says he will try to convince grassroots groups of parents who oppose the Common Core standards to flip-flop and embrace the education initiative. When Megyn Kelly of Fox News Channel’s The Kelly File observed how unpopular the Common Core initiative is with grassroots conservatives in particular, Bush responded: “Common Core means a lot of things to different people, so they could be right, based on what’s in front of them…but the simple fact is we need higher standards; they need to be state-driven. The federal government should play no role in this – either...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush believes he can convince conservative primary voters that illegal immigrants should be “punished”–by being granted a path to amnesty. In an interview from Liberty University that aired Monday on Fox News, host Megyn Kelly told him, “you know that there’s a core wing of the party for whom this will be a deal breaker.” Bush replied, “I don’t know that.” “I’ve been traveling over the last three months. I get a sense that a lot of people can be persuaded, to be honest with you,” he said. Polls, though, have shown conservatives in early primary...

Opposing in-state tuition for illegal immigrants is going “over the line,” according to former Florida Governor and likely GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush. In an interview that aired Monday on Fox News, Bush, who supported granting in-state tuition for illegal immigrants when he was governor, noted that Florida’s version of the DREAM Act was recently passed by a “conservative Republican legislature led by a very courageous Speaker of the House” and signed into law by Republican Governor Rick Scott. “I supported that,” he said. “If you’ve been here for an extended period of time, you have no nexus to the...

The former governor of Florida, John (or as he prefers to be called, Juan) Ellis Bush, doesn't appear to have a lot of support among Republicans, as opposed to Republicans in Name Only (RINOs), who absolutely adore him. But Juan isn't sweating it. He's rolling in dough, and more importantly, he's rolling in opponents. Have you ever heard of a "straw" candidate? When you have a weak front-runner that can't reach 50 percent, often a third, or a fourth, or even a fifth candidate suddenly jumps into the race. If he has a name similar to that of the strongest...