Today's news brings yet more evidence of how smart, and how dangerous, Jeb Bush is. (As distinguished from G.W. who is just dangerous in a ham-handed way.) One part is the coverup of his involvement in Florida felon's list fiasco; the other part is his very smart announcement today that he won't run for President in 2008.
Jeb's brilliance is evident from his disclaiming any Presidential ambition for 2008. This will make his heavy-handed influence in the Florida polls seem a tiny bit less self-interested.
More importantly, though, this disclaimer reflects a shrewd calculation that Jeb would be unelectable in 2008. After all, there are only two possibilities: Either GW is re-elected or Kerry wins. If Kerry wins, odds are he governs as Clinton II and gets re-elected; any Republican nominated against him, especially a Bush, would lose. On the other hand, if GW gets re-elected, the dollar tanks, Iraq remains a quagmire possibly even requiring a draft, social security privatization either goes the way of Hillarycare or tears the country apart, and at the end of it all (barring death in office) Jeb would be even less electable in 2008 then he would be if he were running against Kerry. So better to disclaim now and take the credit. Smart. Very, very smart.
Read on the for the latest about the Florida felons list, the dangerous part.
Sunday's papers trumpeted that Jeb Bush was personally warned about the defects in the Florida felons list, but insisted it be used anyway. This list, you may recall, is the one that blocked many black voters who were not felons but somehow failed to block Hispanics even if they were…a fact that dovetailed conveniently with the Democratic voting patterns of black voters and the traditionally (if now “attenuated”:) Republican sympathies of Florida's Hispanics. The email “smoking gun” fingering Jeb is contemporary hearsay — according to the Tampa Tribune, that email reports on a conversation with Bush that the e-mail's author wasn't involved in but had no reason to lie about:
The e-mail describing Bush's decision to push forward with the purge was written by Jeff Long, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement manager who was responsible for providing the felon data used by election officials to create the purge list.
Long was writing to his boss on May 4 to relay information he had received earlier that day from Paul Craft, the Department of State's top computer expert in charge of creating the purge list.
According to Long's e-mail, Craft said that state department officials had asked Bush on May 3 to scrap the list because there were problems with the matching program that would be used to determine which registered voters had been convicted of felonies. Florida law prevents felons from voting.
It may be hearsay, but it's a contemporary record, and I would tend to believe it. Many things not good enough for court are good enough to suggest otherwise plausible political conclusions.
Jeb Bush knows, however, either that the email's account is incorrect, or else he has the confidence that if the truth hasn't come out before, the people involved are going to keep quiet. So he's denying everything.
(Unfair to tag Jeb with hearsay? Even if Jeb Bush wasn't personally involved in the voting list fiasco, he appointed the people who were, and they surely knew what he'd like. And they clearly didn't think Jeb wanted a fair-minded attempt to allow everyone to vote who had the right to do so.)
You’re still having trouble grasping this: Only one candidate this year seems to think we might need a draft, and he’s the same candidate who has come out in favor of manditory national service, so we know that he has no principled objection to conscripting an entire generation. In fact, he seems to think it would be good for them.
That candidate is Kerry, not Bush.
It’s become pretty obvious by now, that the Democratic line that Bush would bring back the draft, is nothing more than projection. You Democrats think he would, because you know that in his place, YOU would.
Brett: I think you meant to post that comment elsewhere on this blog. Professor Froomkin posted about Jeb Bush bowing out of the 2008 presidential election now and about his possible (seems very probable indeed to me) involvement in the Florida Felony Roll-Call Voter Disenfranchisement Folies Redux. The draft barely figures in it at all, merely as one likely possibility among many possible and probable disastrous consequences of a second Bush term. Checking the stories still on the front page of this blog I note no stories concerned with the topic of a probable draft should Bush win this election.
I can see how important it is though that the Republicans get their talking points out. Only problem is, you’ve become tone deaf. It’s obvious what dire straights the Army and the Marines are in. Did you see this story on Phil Carters blog, he links to an LA Times story about how the Army is sending the Blackhorse regiment to Iraq, that’s OPFOR, the guys who excel at playing the bad guys so the rest of the Army obtains realistic training. They’re sending the teachers Brett, the professors of war. The Army has run out of options, Brett. The Army is eating it’s seed corn.
Like I said Brett, you people have become tone deaf. Everytime you mention the word “draft” you just drive home the point as a stark real possibility. The kids know, you people keep saying it and they hear: “we might need a draft…Bush” not to mention Iraq, etc, and then the recent saber rattling at Iran.
They’re not stupid. And If they’ve just turned 21 they’d much rather sit in a bar with a crowd of their friends, chatting up cute members of the opposite sex (you won’t take them if they’re interested in the same sex). They’re into hanging out, enjoying some of the best years of their lives, and drinking beer, not your kool-aid.
Bush screwed the pooch big time Brett.
No one of draft age who isn’t a freeper or some other kind of wingnut knows that Bush cannot be trusted.
He lies like a cheap rug.
Where are the WMD’s?
What about Osama?
Wasn’t this supposed to be a cakewalk?
I read the NRO and they keep saying that things are really going great over there. But……..(take your pick here, plenty to fill it, how about the bombs going off in the Green Zone, like , the secured, safe, American Zone?
This is the biggest clusterfuck anyone living has ever seen. And Bush has shown he has neither a clue nor the inclination to do anything about it. He can’t do the job and frankly he doesn’t really seem all that interested in it either. Bush 2 will mean everything gets far worse in Iraq and that he spreads this shit elsewhere-Iran, Syria, etce,
The kids aren’t stupid Brett, they want to live. Let’em, Bush has made it hard enough to live right here in the USofA.
And if you’re going to attempt to pepper me with bullshit sunshine stories about Iraq, I could just direct you to Juan Cole’s indispensable blog. But I’ll ask a question I’ve been wanting to for some time:
How Many Iraqi Schools Would Jesus Paint?
And there’s a corollary, why does it seem like all the Bush boosters have been inhaling the paint fumes?
But that’s strictly rhetorical.
This has been a shrill post. But I’m so shrill that sometimes it seems only the cynics can hear me 😉
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagn’nagl fhtagn
Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!
I don’t think this observation of yours places you in the reality-based community.
Bush’s policies make a draft more likely, just as his policies made a deficit certain — despite any promises (or hopes) to the contrary. The army is clearly overstreached–witness the news yesterday that we are sending the “Black Horse” to Iraq.
Kerry’s policies include growing the regular army. Whatever the wisdom of this plan, it undoubtedly makes a draft that much less likely.
Yeah Brett, what’s up with that? C’mon get with the program already. Just what part of Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagn’nagl fhtagn don’t you understnd?
Sorry about the multiple postings. It was very shrill of me.
Yes, Jeb Bush is definitely the smart one. I saw him on the weekend shows,
he’s so much brighter, more articulate, and more reasonable than W.
But the FL voting scandals show he’s just as ruthless and dishonest.
It’s interesting to speculate what might have happened if Jeb had become
Preznit instead of W – surely he would have been more competent, whether
he would have pursued the same terrible corporatist/evangelist agenda as W
or been the moderate GHW-2 that we expected.
My own theory is that W got elected only because he was sufficiently vague
about his plans that people were free to assume he would act like GHW.
Fortunately from now on everyone will assume that Jeb will act like W –
most especially the big donors, after sinking $250M into W’s sinking ship
and seeing 4 Bush presidential tickets produce 3 consecutive popular-vote
losses, they’ll look elsewhere for the foreseeable future.
In any case with
the demographic trends favoring the Dems, and W having blown up the
Republican reputation for competence, the next 24 years look tough for
the right – Kerry/Kerry/Edwards/Edwards/Obama/Obama. The Republican
nutjobs’ insistence on valuing ideological purity over talent, charisma, and
competence has left them with a shortage of promising candidates for the
future – McCain is getting old, Frist has botched the Senate badly,
Delay is going to be fighting indictments, Arnold’s ass-grabbing past won’t
stand up to scrutiny in a long campaign, Hagel is ok but uninspiring.
“Just what part of Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wagn’nagl fhtagn don’t you understand?”
The part that makes you think he’s woken up, and moved to 1600 Pennsylvania avenue.
Look, I don’t doubt that, if Bush genuinely thought a draft was necessary, (Millions of heavily armed Mexicans are suddenly pouring across the southern border, and they’re NOT looking for jobs?) he’d push for one. I just doubt that, given that (Unlike Kerry) Bush hasn’t shown any tendency to like the idea of conscripting people, and given that he’s got umpteen different tools he could employ to increase force levels without resorting to press gangs, that he would actually THINK it necessary.
The draft is not a first resort, when you need more soldiers. At least, it isn’t if you’re not a Democrat…
“My own theory is that W got elected only because he was sufficiently vague
about his plans that people were free to assume he would act like GHW.”
Get real, that was his biggest obstacle to getting elected. Or maybe you didn’t notice that his daddy LOST his reelection bid?
Since we’ve switched this thread to the draft, I’ll chime in. I still don’t think Bush will implement a draft. Yes, his policies make the necessity for a draft much more likely, but he’s shown in the past that he’s perfectly willing to use inadequate force levels if it’s politically expedient. Afghanistan, Iraq, even the announcement of decreased forces in Korea during negotiations with North Korea. Heck, just look at how he handled the budget to see his approach. His dramatic increases in government spending made it vital that the government at least maintain the previous levels of revenue but he blindly continued with tax cuts and simply ignored the damage done by the massive deficits.
Regarding the original subject, I’m disappointed that you advocate believing this heresay evidence. If you wanted to criticize him for appointing the people who executed the fiasco and for failing to provide adequate oversight in an area where massive problems had previously occured and any monkey could see that it was important to get it right this time and even for his attempting to prevent exposure of the problems, I’d support you 100%. But this is just rumor mongering.