On Thursday night, Fox News’ “Special Report” panel took on Jeb Bush’s evolving answers on whether he would have invaded Iraq given what he knows now.
After initially telling Fox’s Megyn Kelly on Monday that he would have authorized the Iraq invasion, Jeb Bush walked his answer back and claimed he misheard the question.
Then, after refusing on Wednesday to answer the question or discuss “hypotheticals,” Bush on Thursday said that he would not have authorized the invasion of Iraq.
On Thursday night, NPR correspondent and Fox News contributor Mara Liasson said she was “stunned” by Jeb Bush’s inability to answer the question about the Iraq War.
“This is going to be a bigger problem than I expected it to be,” she said. “The only explanation that I have heard that makes any sense is, after 13 years since he has run for election, he is really rusty. And he’s just not as good a candidate as we thought he was going to be.”
Fox legal analyst Andrew Napolitano said that Jeb Bush’s confusing response about the Iraq war had seriously hurt him in the primary.
“If the Republican base gets the impression in these primaries that Jeb Bush is going to answer questions or make decisions in order to make his brother look good, rather than what he honestly thinks a president should do, he’s shot himself in both feet. I think this is almost irreparable damage to him,” Napolitano said.
Fox’s Chris Wallace reminded Napolitano that it’s still early in the presidential race.
Napolitano agreed but said that Jeb Bush is “viewed very differently today than he was seven days ago, and it’s entirely his own doing.”
Watch the clip below via Media Matters:
No, the problem is that conservatives never ever pay a price for being wrong on ANYTHING as Paul Krugman so aptly describes in his column, today. In fact, there are rewards for a conservative if you’re wrong.
I do not know Jeb Bush personally.
But he does not seem to sway from giving the impression I KNOW exists for Rafael Trujillo, erstwhile “Presidente” of the Dominican Republic until 1961:
It is said that Trujillo’s son, Rafael, Jr. (nicknamed “Ramfis”) was made a Full Colonel in the Dominican army at age four.
There is nothing about either man, G.W. or Jeb, which would indicate that either ever were confronted with situations in which their family, wealth, privilege, status or heritage did not give them a highly skewed view of the world in which we live.
Such is the power of approved, Frank Luntz/ALEC/FOX/Rovian/MSM/Talk Radio
M I N D B L O W I N G
brainwashing of the American public
In the U.K., lower middle class and middle class voters who vote for Tories, [conservatives] are referred to as: “Turkeys voting for Christmas”
You know, Fox Pundit Gang, we get that things can change. Jeb could have brought a dog on stage this week, killed, cooked, and eaten it, and he could probably live it down and “change the conversation” over the next year and a half. The question is whether his flailing over the most predictable question in political interviewing ever doesn’t tell us something about him that’s going to continue to be true no matter what questions come up during the next 500 days. Is he an entitled mediocrity who couldn’t be bothered to make even the most obvious preparations for campaigning to be president of the United States, or not? It has nothing to do with the voters’ short memories.