Jeb Bush takes a shot at today's GOP

By Richard K. Barry

They said they'd let us know
about our application.

If you think Mitt Romney's campaign will put Obama surrogate Cory Booker's critical comments about Obama's attacks on Bain Capital into numerous campaign ads, you're right. If you think they will do the same with Bill Clinton's statements praising Romney's stellar business career, you're right about that too. But, ultimately, the best self-inflicted wound from a campaign may come from recent comments by Jeb Bush that neither his father nor Ronald Reagan could get elected in todays radical right-wing Republican party:

Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad — they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party — and I don't — as having an orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement, doesn't allow for finding some common ground," Bush said, adding that he views the hyper-partisan moment as "temporary."

Back to my dad's time and Ronald Reagan's time – they got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan support. Reagan would be criticized for doing the things that he did.

Jeb also took his shots at Obama for his own partisanship, which is what you would expect. But saying the Republican party as currently constituted is blindly partisan, and having the words come from one of the most respected members of the GOP could be very useful to the Democrats.

It's not particularly new. Even Mike Huckabee once said the same thing about Ronald Reagan having a hard time getting nominated for the presidency in this iteration of the party, but it's still a very intriguing perspective.

You'll recall Indiana GOP Senate nominee Richard Mourdock saying that bi-partisanship means Democrats agreeing to do what Republicans want done. Yeah, well, that's Jeb's point.

The ad almost writes itself: one part Mourdock, two parts Jeb, with the message, "Today's Republican Party doesn't care about governing America. They just want to impose their radical agenda. Even Jeb Bush says Ronald Reagan wouldn't be welcome in today's GOP."

Compared to this, Booker and Clinton would be small potatoes.

Forget your enemies. It's your friends who will bury you.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)