Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has largely sat this election cycle out. From the sidelines, he chides his party for not reaching out more to Latinos — thereby earning him a reputation as savvy and independent and provoking whispers that he’s prepping for a 2016 presidential run.
But on Thursday morning, Bush was every bit the team player when he defended the fibs in Paul Ryan’s speech Wednesday night.
First, Bush defended Ryan’s assertion that President Obama is to blame for a GM plant that closed in 2008 under President George W. Bush. “Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years,'” Ryan said in his speech. “That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.” But Jeb Bush claimed that this was not “misleading.”
“No not at all,” Bush said. “That’s exactly — those were the words Barack Obama used. It was a campaign promise and it is yet another campaign promise unfulfilled.”
Bush also defended Ryan’s attack on Obama for not following the recommendations of the Bowles-Simpson debt commission even though Ryan himself voted against those recommendations. According to Bush, Ryan put forward his own budget and is therefore beyond reproach on budget issues.
“He voted against it because it did not have any aspect of it that included entitlement reform, which is the most pressing budget issue that our country faces,” Bush said. “And the Ryan budget does deal with that over the long haul.”
Bush said the charges that Paul was dishonest in his speech are misguided: “To suggest that Paul Ryan is not completely truthful when he’s the only guy in Washington, D.C. that’s actually put out a comprehensive plan with a budget attached to it, I think is wrong.”
Bush’s use of entitlement reform as a defense, however, ignores the fact that the debt commission did consider Medicare reform, but Ryan did not back it.
Bush will address the convention in Tampa Thursday evening.
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