Coffin-rider Jeb Bush is in today's Wall St. Journal (see below) pompously announcing that if he pursues the presidency it will be at the price of allowing illegal aliens to remain in America as, presumably, citizens, "out of compassion" (no mention of the cheap labor requirements of U.S. capitalists, or the cost to the already strained social welfare net that the legalization of these immigrants will entail).We have not heard Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan speak of the need for "compassion" for the struggling Black and White poor and working class whose Social Security and medical coverage they are so keen to cut. Hence, we have an unchallenged, double-minded proposition for illegal alien amnesty from "Conservative" Jeb Bush which the ersatz "Conservative" media do not contradict since he, like Mr. Romney before him, is the anointed candidate of the Money Power.The Wall St. Journal observed that Jeb's Tea Party opponents have nothing more on their side than “nostalgia" for a "demographic in retreat" (a white America that the Journal is pleased to see diminished), and for a "Constitution that never was." This treason is uttered by Right-wing Super Patriots! The concept of a yeomanry whose ancestors built America and who continue to sustain it at its core, is dismissed as an obsolescence that is retarding the future of the Republican Party.Now more than ever we need a vibrant, populist Third Party, but it is nowhere on the horizon.________________The Jeb Bush and Tea Party DivideWall Street Journal • April 9, 2014 p. A13With just nine months to go until prospective presidential candidates must declare their intentions, the debate among Republicans is heating up.In a remarkably frank talk on Sunday, Jeb Bush made it clear that his campaign—if there is one—would challenge the tea party's hold on his party. About illegal immigrants, he said, "Yes, they broke the law; but it's not a felony, it's an act of love." Because it is an illegal act, "There should be a price paid." But "it shouldn't rile people up that people are actually coming to provide for their families." Message to anti-immigrant zealots: Abandon your "harsh political rhetoric" and demonstrate some compassion for fellow human beings who enter our country in search of a better life.Jeb Bush at a business gathering in Woodbury, N.Y., in February. The former governor of Florida was equally blunt about education policy. The latest tea-party rallying cry is hostility to the Common Core K-12 standards, which these critics see as the latest evidence of federal encroachment. Mr. Bush refuses to go along: "I just don't feel compelled to run for cover when I think this is the right thing to do for our country." In remarks at public hearings on the Common Core, he said: "I understand there are those opposed to the standards. But what I want to hear from them is more than just opposition. I want to hear their solutions for the hodgepodge of dumbed-down state standards that have created group mediocrity in our schools." Right now, he said, he is hearing only "criticisms and conspiracy theories," which are "easy attention grabbers" but do nothing to solve our problems.Jeb Bush's comments reflect larger currents of discontent within his party. Mainstream conservatives fear that a presidential candidate who espouses the tea party's agenda and style of politics will go down to catastrophic defeat. The antigovernment conspiracy theories Mr. Bush denounces—the latest iteration of the paranoid style in American politics—threaten to marginalize the GOP.Emerging debates among Republicans go to the heart of the fusion of small-government advocates, social conservatives and defense hawks that Ronald Reagan created in the late 1970s. Led by Rand Paul, libertarian insurgents are challenging both an interventionist foreign policy and intelligence practices they regard as threats to civil liberties.A report commissioned by the Republican National Committee after Mitt Romney's failed presidential bid stated that, "We must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our Party's appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only." The report also acknowledged the impact of generational change on cultural issues: "There is a generational difference within the conservative movement about issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays—and for many younger voters, these issues are a gateway into whether the Party is a place they want to be."At the other end of the generational spectrum, elderly Americans are trending Republican but do not favor the cuts in Social Security and Medicare that many conservatives advocate. Younger party intellectuals such as Ross Douthat, Reihan Salam and Henry Olsen have advanced a populist agenda—focused more on working people than on "job creators"—that would use government to address the neglected needs of downscale Americans. Nor have conservative reformers gathered under the banner of the journal National Affairs shied away from government as an instrument of public purpose.In his latest remarks, Jeb Bush could not have been clearer: If he runs for president, his campaign will avoid the "mud fight" of recent nominating cycles. Instead, it will feature a "hopeful, optimistic message" organized around a vision of America's future. It remains to be seen whether the base of the Republican Party is willing to accept anything of the sort.The tea party certainly won't. In just a few sentences, Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran's tea-party-backed primary opponent, Chris McDaniel, crystallized what his movement represents: "Millions in this country feel like strangers in this land. You recognize that, don't you? An older America is passing away. A newer America is rising to take its place. We recoil from that culture. It's foreign to us. It's offensive to us."The tea party offers nothing except nostalgia for a demography that is in retreat and a Constitution that never was. By contrast, Jeb Bush wants to run as a conservative unafraid of the future. Will other candidates join him, or will they appeal to the mob as they did in 2012 after Rick Perry haplessly advocated a modicum of compassion for illegal immigrants? If Mr. Bush sets the tone within his party, the American people may well get the kind of presidential campaign the country needs. If the tea party prevails, get ready for an avalanche of anger, followed by a repetition of 1964.Read more at wsj.com
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