How bad was this week for likely presidential contender and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R)? Bad enough that MSNBC host Joe Scarborough on Thursday said he might have gotten him all wrong.
“I’ve been talking about how smart Jeb is and how competent Jeb is — the last three days have just been really bad for Jeb Bush,” Scarborough said on “Morning Joe.”
Scarborough was in disbelief over Bush’s repeated blunders this week in trying to answer whether he would have invaded Iraq like his brother George W. Bush, knowing what he knows now about the results of the war.
The MSNBC host, who supported the war in 2003, asked contributor and Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin to pose the Iraq question to him.
“No, it was a horrible idea, as bad an idea as sticking your face in a blender, what’s your next question?” Scarborough said, to laughter from the panel.
Scarborough then turned to Nicole Wallace, former communications director to President George W. Bush.
“What’s wrong with Jeb Bush?” he asked. “This a mental thing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t work for Jeb, I don’t talk to Jeb,” she answered.
Still, Wallace ended up echoing one of Bush’s many responses this week, that he stumbled over the Iraq questions due to his respect for the troops.
“I mean, he got on the phone with people whose husbands and fathers had died and so I think it’s very difficult to say, you know, it wasn’t worth it,” she said.
Watch the clip:
Do you know what’s more offensive to me as a veteran than telling me the war effort wasn’t worth it (something I’ve already deduced on my own)? Invading a country for no reason with no plan on what to do after we get there. Rushing us into war poorly equipped. Lying to me and pretending to care about our feelings you are assuming are so delicate, and hiding behind this to avoid telling the truth. Generally being a coward.
Jeb’s choices:
a) My brother squandered thousands of American and allied lives, tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Iraqi lives and a trillion and a half dollars on a stupid, senseless war. That’s why the architects of that war are on my campaign team. So vote for me.
b) My brother squandered thousands of American and allied lives, tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of Iraqi lives and a trillion and a half dollars on a war that, in retrospect, turned out to be a mistake but seemed like a good idea at the time, one I was vociferously supporting even before he was elected. That’s why I’ve brought all my old PNAC pals onboard with my campaign! So vote for me.
c) It was a great idea and a glorious victory for America. That’s why I’ve got the architects of that war advising me. Vote for me and America will march from glorious consqust to glorious conquest!
And that’s it. Those are his options. You’d think he, his donors and his media cheerleaders would have thought through the fact that none of those answers is anything less than the end of his presidential hopes before they begin before he started this thing.
But then, the media cheerleaders are the same people who supported the Iraq War on the assumption that surely their was a well-thought out occupation plan already in place.
Nobody asked Jeb Bush if it was worth it, but asked him knowing what we know now should we have going to war in Iraq. The answer is hell no. No soldier that has ever put his or her life on the line for their country is ever diminished for going to war for that country. Telling the truth is better than lying to soldiers, and their family. Those who died because we did believe at the time of the Iraq war there were WMDs, their lives and the sacrifices soldiers and their families made are not diminished at all.
It’s not easy wrapping yourself in the flag while tap-dancing and you’re just making it harder for him. He’ll be doing photo op with disabled combat veterans in 5-4-3-2-1.
a significant number of the GOP base unironically believes C is the best choice.