Posted on 10/19/2015 5:20:28 PM PDT by jimbo123
Inside a sleek Denver condominium, George W. Bush let a hundred donors to his brother’s campaign in on a secret. Of all the rival Republican candidates, there is one who gets under the former president’s skin, who he views as perhaps Jeb Bush’s most serious rival for the party’s nomination.
It isn’t Donald Trump, whose withering insults have sought to make Jeb pay a political price for his brother’s presidency. It also isn’t Marco Rubio, Jeb’s former understudy who now poses a serious threat to his establishment support.
It’s George W. Bush’s former employee — Ted Cruz.
“I just don’t like the guy,” Bush said Sunday night, according to conversations with more than half a dozen donors who attended the event.
One donor in the room said the former president had been offering mostly anodyne accounts of how the Bush family network views the current campaign and charming off-the-cuff jokes, until he launched into Cruz.
“I was like, ‘Holy shit, did he just say that?’” the donor said. “I remember looking around and seeing that other people were also looking around surprised.”
“The tenor of what he said about the other candidates was really pretty pleasant,” another donor said. “Until he got to Cruz.”
Bush took a harsh view of Cruz’s apparent alliance with Trump, who stood with the senator at a Capitol Hill rally last month in opposition to the Iran deal. While Trump, the current GOP poll leaders, has attacked most of his competitors in the 2016 field, he has avoided criticizing Cruz.
One donor, paraphrasing the former president’s comment in response to a broad question about how he viewed the primary race and the other Republican candidates, said: “He said he found it ‘opportunistic’ that Cruz was sucking up to Trump
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
He finally steps up to criticize someone, and it's NOT the bamster, or Hillary, or the rat party of Reid/Pelosi.
He saved his ammo for Cruz.
“So is Laura Bush.”
You’re exactly right and their Bushes involvement with Planned Parenthood goes back to days of it’s founding.
He wouldn’t defend himself, his policies, his administration, his intervention in Iraq, his search for WMDs.
But he will go after Cruz.
The only logic is that Cruz will decide the vote split in too many states...including Texas.
I assume Cruz is knocking Jeb’s plan off track. (After Trump and Carson, of course.)
I guess the fight between Cruz and Jeb is over with benefactor is going to back them. We need to know who who they are going to be beholden to before the primaries.
This is probably good for Cruz, but I think it makes Trump a big winner in the dust up of the last week.
Just like Mitt....wouldn’t go after Obama, but would trash Newt, Santorum, etc.
This is what the ESTABS DO.
“Dubya has never criticized a single thing Obola has done.
But he has no problem criticizing a Republican.
That’s what I thought. I am not a Cruz supporter, but I thought this was a low blow by Bush. The comment was based on personality rather than substance. Bush is shallow.
Bush’s true character is revealed. Anyone who can consider Bill Clinton another brother has got to be pretending to be a conservative.
Doormat is a great description of GW. I kept thinking it was some kind of rope-a-dope, and then he’d do an Ali and come out swinging. But, no. His was a perpetual rope-a-dope. Even Cheney has recently said that he now considers it a huge mistake.
Which means IT WAS POLICY.
McCain wouldn’t go after Obama, either.
I have no doubt that a Jeb campaign would not go after Hillary on anything.
He’d want to share cookie recipes, maybe. But that might be too in depth.
If you want someone destined to fold, give up, retire, then support Jeb. He will “start slow...and power down.”
I’m afraid my opinion of W is much darkened by his comments.
And so disappointing with him going after Cruz. I think he's drunk so much Potomac water he has no idea how this makes him look. Going after a conservative after being silent for so long about the totalitarian left is just plain despicable.
Years and years ago, the Army assigned me, a young private, to DC. This was still “anti-Vietnam demonstration” days, so quite a while ago.
We used to walk from Ft Myer over the Potomac to the monuments and to Georgetown.
The river was filthy then. You didn’t want to get near it. I don’t suppose it’s a mountain spring now. But when they talk about ‘drinking too much of the Potomac’, that’s the picture in my mind.
Polluted, stinking filth.
If this is true that GW is saying this about Cruz, then I no longer mind if Trump blames 911 on him, or calls it on his watch whatever.
Strikes me GW reportedly said something very unkind about Sarah but then openly denied that he said it.
So George you are not looking very good in my mind
You've hit on all of Erick Erickson's points from this morning. This is very good for Ted Cruz.
I voted twice each for G W and H W, they got my vote by default, another Bush will not get my vote. Senator Cruz is what all the Bush candidates claim and claimed to be, Conservative.
Except on immigration. Cruz is all for H1-B, and its variants. No sale.
Just another reason to cheer having a Ted Cruz on the ticket. Cruz-Trump or even a Trump- Cruz
Just think, if the loud-mouthed Clayton W. Williams, Jr., had won the 1990 race against Ann Willis Richards, there would have never been a Governor or President GWB.
Cruz has as much government experience as GWB had in 2000. Counting time as TX solicitor general
Ted Cruz is an accomplished lawyer and academic - smart people rub not so smart people the wrong way sometimes.
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