A few days ago, I posted on this website a commentary about how the Republican establishment and its financial backers were trying to repackage the usual GOP hacks as the true outsiders and political mavericks. This transmogrification seemed necessary for the party operators in order to head off the surging candidacy of Donald Trump. Although one can cite other indications of how this is happening, the most telling example of how Jeb Bush is being transformed, has come courtesy of the Koch Brothers. Billionaire supporters of the GOP establishment, Charles and David Koch have not only poured a king’s ransom into Jeb’s candidacy—perhaps for starters. They have also recently flipped the bill for a two-day “Tea Party summit” hosted by Americans for Prosperity, starting on August 21 in Columbus, Ohio. The purpose of this gathering was to showcase the maverickness (I’ve just invented the term) of their preferred presidential candidate.
Here Jeb was supposed to emerge as a quintessential “conservative” and someone who is about to shake up Washington with his decisive newness. My young friend Jack Kerwick managed to have posted on the very Republican townhall website a scalpel-like dissection of Jeb’s claims to be on the right. This claim is true in one sense, and in one sense only. Jeb is a friend of the corporate interests that pay for his candidacy, and he supports bank bailouts and cheap illegal labor. Besides being by his own admission “an unabashed immigration enthusiast,” Jeb as a Florida governor promoted “racial and ethnic diversity in justice, public administration, and college admissions.” He also arranged as director of Bloomberg Family Foundation to hand in gifts over 10 million dollars to Planned Parenthood.
Jeb’s denial that these donations took place unbeknownst to him is not only unlikely. It also ignores the fact that his family, going back to his liberal Republican grandfather Prescott, have been involved with Planned Parenthood. It is hard to believe that Jeb in the past opposed giving government as well as corporate funding to a prized family philanthropy. By the time one finishes reading Jack’s expose, which the author admits is far from comprehensive, one has to wonder how the Koch Brothers’ tainted candidate, who is perpetually “reaching out,” is a man of the Right. One might note that while Hillary Clinton has only recently come around to the view that Confederate Battle Flags should be removed from government buildings, Jeb began the stripping process back in 2001, when he purged the Florida Statehouse of any object that includes Confederate symbols.
A perceptive Florida journalist, Joseph Cotto, has noted that Jeb began his crusade against Confederate symbols quite early, even for a politician appealing to the Left. He went after the public display of these symbols in order to attract black votes, something his brother W had failed to do in the cliffhanger presidential election in 2000. In 2001, Jeb faced a re-election the following year, and he was afraid that fervently Democratic blacks remembered how his brother won the presidential race in Florida, by a few hundred disputed votes. And so Jeb threw at black voters, as a make-up gift, his display of contempt for the slave-holding Confederacy. And it helped: In 2002 he raised his percentage of the black vote from the 1% he received in 1998 to less than 2%. There is nothing worse than a panderer, except for a panderer who doesn’t get much from his groveling.
It is also clear that Jeb is entering the sweepstakes with considerable dirt on his head. He had well-known close relations with the corrupt, drug- profiteering Salinas government in Mexico, which was thrown out of power in 1994, and negotiated business deals for years with exceedingly shady characters. Jeb was especially close to the president’s brother, Raul, and used him to promote family’s investments in Mexico. This of course only complicates the problem of repackaging Jeb. According to a Fox-news report, Charles and David Koch are putting “ideological purity” aside in financing Jeb as a Tea Party leader. What seem more likely is that Jeb’s backers are pushing someone for president who is not only not on the right (in any way that would make sense to me). They may also have picked a candidate who is facing exploding scandals if he wins the presidential nomination.
The Koch brothers and the rest of the GOP establishment may be setting the stage for another quadrennial disaster. Part of their problem is the belief that by nominating namby-pamby “moderates” they can make a presidential victory more accessible. The last time this was tried, and several times before that, the result was a resounding defeat for their party. The leftist media will depict any GOP nominee as the second coming of Adolf Hitler. It makes no difference how “moderate” the Romneys and Jebs sound or how much they reach out to designated minorities or try to accommodate AIPAC. The media will go after them with the same rhetoric they would use against someone on the far right and together with Democratic operatives, mobilize the minority vote against them.
But Jeb may carry a special liability. The attempt to portray him as an outsider or conservative is so implausible that it may trigger a backlash. Those who can see that he’s not what George Will or the Koch brothers tell us he is, may get so annoyed that they’ll stay home on Election Day or vote for Donald Trump as a third party candidate. Further, the scandals that would surround Hillary as a presidential candidate would be at least partially offset by the activities associated with Jeb. Apparently his love for Mexico goes beyond his wife, his use of Mexican Spanish at home, and his flattering description of illegals as people who act “out of love” their children.” The Mexican connection may also involve in this case disreputable business associates.
