Jeb Bush Fires Back at Trump, but Is Anyone Listening?
Despite the sizzling Summer of Trump, Jeb Bush and the rest of the Republican establishment still don’t get it.
Bush just released an 80-second video entitled “The Real Donald Trump”, as flagged by Mike Allen in his Politico Playbook note this morning, in a slick effort to attack Trump by using his own words against him. That’s a classic campaign tactic, of course, and the effort by the Bush campaign is aimed at painting the bombastic real estate mogul from New York as a fake conservative – someone whose core values and views are anathema to Republicans in Iowa, where the Real Clear Politics poll average puts Trump in the lead for the GOP Caucuses with 21.3 percent.
Related: Two New Polls Show Exactly Why Donald Trump Is Winning
Here’s a sampling from the video:
Talking to Tim Russert on Meet the Press, 1999:
- “I’ve lived in New York City and Manhattan all my life, so you know my views are a little bit different than if I lived in Iowa.”
- “I am very pro-choice. I am pro-choice in every respect.”
From a 1999 Fox News clip:
- “As far as single-payer [heathcare system], it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland.”
Talking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN:
- Who would you like representing the United States in a deal with Iran? “I think Hillary would do a good job.”
- Do you identify more as a Democrat or a Republican? “Well, you’d be shocked if I said that in many cases I probably identify more as a Democrat.”
From a 2001 Fox News clip:
- “Hillary Clinton is a terrific woman. I’m a little biased because I’ve known her for years.”
Some of the clips are 15 years old or older and show Trump for what he was: a New Yorker with unremarkable New York liberal/centrist positions on a lot of issues.
Related: Fiorina PAC: CNN and GOP Are Conspiring Against Carly
The big question for Bush and other Republican politicians in the race is: Does it matter that much where Trump once stood or even where he now stands? If it doesn’t, that is going to make taking him down even more difficult.
What Trump is selling is unvarnished authenticity to an electorate tired of politicians who try to be all things to all people. You’re not going to catch Trump courting the gun crowd by saying he likes to hunt small varmints, like the patrician Mitt Romney did. Or donning a Rocky the Squirrel hat and riding around in a tank like Mike Dukakis did in 1988 to try to show he could be a credible commander-in-chief.
Mad-as-hell voters are sick of phoniness and goofy photo ops. When will the career politicians get that?
Chart of the Day: Boosting Corporate Tax Revenues
The leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have all proposed increasing taxes on corporations, including raising income tax rates to levels ranging from 25% to 35%, up from the current 21% imposed by the Republican tax cuts in 2017. With Bernie Sanders leading the way at $3.9 trillion, here’s how much revenue the higher proposed corporate taxes, along with additional proposed surtaxes and reduced tax breaks, would generate over a decade, according to calculations by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, highlighted Wednesday by Bloomberg News.
Chart of the Day: Discretionary Spending Droops
The federal government’s total non-defense discretionary spending – which covers everything from education and national parks to veterans’ medical care and low-income housing assistance – equals 3.2% of GDP in 2020, near historic lows going back to 1962, according to an analysis this week from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Chart of the Week: Trump Adds $4.7 Trillion in Debt
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated this week that President Trump has now signed legislation that will add a total of $4.7 trillion to the national debt between 2017 and 2029. Tax cuts and spending increases account for similar portions of the projected increase, though if the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Republican overhaul are extended beyond their current expiration date at the end of 2025, they would add another $1 trillion in debt through 2029.
Chart of the Day: The Long Decline in Interest Rates
Are interest rates destined to move higher, increasing the cost of private and public debt? While many experts believe that higher rates are all but inevitable, historian Paul Schmelzing argues that today’s low-interest environment is consistent with a long-term trend stretching back 600 years.
The chart “shows a clear historical downtrend, with rates falling about 1% every 60 years to near zero today,” says Bloomberg’s Aaron Brown. “Rates do tend to revert to a mean, but that mean seems to be declining.”
Chart of the Day: Drug Price Plans Compared
Lawmakers are considering three separate bills that are intended to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Here’s an overview of the proposals, from a series of charts produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week. An interesting detail highlighted in another chart: 88% of voters – including 92% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans – want to give the government the power to negotiate prices with drug companies.
