It’s clear former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is going to have a lot of fence-mending and faction-wooing work to do it he wants to get the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination. None other than the GOP’s rhetorical bomb-thrower Donald Trump mentioned Bush’s name in front of conservatives — and it brought boos from the crowd:
Speaking at the New Hampshire Freedom Summit, a gathering of conservative activists and figures organized by Americans for Prosperity and Citizens United, billionaire Donald Trump said Bush’s recent comments on immigrants coming to the U.S. as an “act of love” were “out there.”
“You know, I heard Jeb Bush the other day,” he said, with quiet boos and angry murmurs erupting from the crowd at the mention of Bush’s name.
“And he was talking about people that come into this country illegally, they do it for love,” he continued, with the boos growing louder.
Trump added, to laughter from the crowd: “And I said, say it again I didn’t get — that’s one I’ve never heard before…I understand what he’s saying, but, you know, it’s out there.”
Bush drew considerable conservative backlash when he made the comments in a recent interview, but defended them at a Connecticut Republican Party dinner on Thursday, where he further urged “sensitivity to the immigrant experience.”
Immigration reform has been the elephant’s graveyard of GOP ideas: the concept goes nowhere except to die. Bush’s position on immigration reform is supported by most Americans in poll after poll. But in the Republican Party its heresy to seriously press for it and to portray illegal immigrants in flesh and blood, human, terms, rather than to demonize them and suggest all of them (including kids) are lawbreakers or criminals.
Alan Colmes makes this interesting observation: “The difference between Tump and Bush is, Trump knows he’s not running and is campaigning, and Bush may very well run and is not campaigning.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.