Trump vs. Bush: Will real conservative please stand up?

Jeb Bush charges that Donald Trump 'doesn't have a proven conservative record.' But in terms of current hot-button issues, it’s Mr. Bush, not Mr. Trump, who needs to convince the right of his bona fides.

|
Dominick Reuter/Reuters
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks at a VFW town-hall event in Merrimack, N.H., on Wednesday. The Republican candidate for president told the audience that rival Donald Trump 'doesn’t have a proven conservative record.'

Jeb Bush versus Donald Trump: Who’s the real conservative?

That’s the question former Florida Governor Bush wants Republican voters to ask themselves when weighing candidate options. Or New Hampshire voters, at least: At a town-hall meeting in the Granite State on Wednesday, Bush had combative words for The Donald in regard to the latter’s past political positions, which have included support for tax increases and kind words about single-payer health care.

“Mr. Trump doesn’t have a proven conservative record. He was a Democrat longer in the last decade than he was a Republican. He’s given more money to Democrats than he’s given to Republicans,” Bush said at his Merrimack appearance.

That’s Bush’s hardest slap at Trump to date. Perhaps Bush has decided it’s time to take the golf gloves off and mix it up a bit with the man who’s now leading GOP polls.

After all, a Bush loss in New Hampshire would batter his presidential chances. And right now, he’s trailing Trump there by 13.5 points, according to the RealClearPolitics rolling average of polls. Meanwhile, Ohio Gov. John Kasich is only one point behind Bush, and coming up fast.

Hence the Bush team’s new “we’re the rightmost” strategy.

“Jeb Bush PAC launches campaign defining him as a real conservative, as he brands Donald Trump a closet D. Play is clear. Will it work?” tweeted out ex-Obama adviser David Axelrod on Thursday.

We’re unsure. On the one hand, it’s true that Trump has espoused Democratic policies in the past. The Clintons attended his most recent wedding. Some Republicans might think that’s as bad as Chris Christie’s Obama hug.

But when this comes up, Trump’s insouciant reply is that sure, he was a Democrat once. So was Ronald Reagan.

And in terms of current hot-button issues, it’s Bush, not Trump, who needs to convince the right of his bona fides.

Bush’s support of a path to legal status for undocumented workers is anathema to many conservatives. Trump, meanwhile, wants to end birthright citizenship, force Mexico to wall itself off from the United States, and deport everyone who shouldn’t be in the country.

Bush has also backed Common Core educational standards, a position at odds with many GOP voters. Trump has called Common Core a “disaster."

Plus, Trump’s got his own countertactics against Bush’s ideology attack. It’s more personal: Bush is boring. He isn’t.

“You know what’s happening to Jeb Bush’s crowd just down the street?” Trump said at his own New Hampshire town hall Wednesday. “They’re sleeping!”

Trump went on to describe Bush as “low energy” – a kind of personal attack, reminiscent of the 1988 GOP campaign when some rivals charged that George H.W. Bush was too wimpy to be president.

Mr. Bush won that election, of course. But in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Trump drew a bigger and more enthusiastic crowd than Jeb.

“While most candidates pretend – at least this early in the game – to adhere to a certain level of decorum and shy away from putting fellow candidates down, Trump knows no boundaries,” writes National Journal’s Lauren Fox.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Trump vs. Bush: Will real conservative please stand up?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/Decoder/2015/0820/Trump-vs.-Bush-Will-real-conservative-please-stand-up
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe