Jeb Bush's Extreme Rhetoric Leads to Dangerous Policies

For Jeb Bush it's not just a foot in mouth problem. He has a long record of following through on his extreme rhetoric. A Bush presidency would mean four -- maybe eight -- years of a president with little to no regard for people who don't agree with him or don't act as he thinks they should.
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From Jeb Bush's use of the slur "anchor baby" to Chris Christie's comparison of undocumented immigrants to Fedex packages to Scott Walker toying with the idea of building a wall between the U.S. and Canada, it's clear that this Republican primary has become a race to the bottom for candidates to out-Trump Trump by saying offensive statements, too often at the expense of Latinos. While this in and of itself is deplorable, many may dismiss some of the extreme rhetoric as just the attempts of candidates to win the primary, with the belief that most candidates don't really believe the racist, sexist rhetoric they're spouting.

Unfortunately, that is simply not the case.

Take Jeb Bush as an example. This past month, we heard Jeb Bush use the offensive term "anchor babies" to refer to children born in the United States to non-citizen parents. Bush then doubled and tripled down, defending himself for using the slur. Bush is well aware of how insulting the term is. In 2013, the Hispanic Leadership Network published a memo that said "don't use the term 'anchor baby.'" While Bush claims he didn't know this, he was the chair of the group at the time! Earlier in the summer, Bush saw no problem with insulting the Black Lives Matter movement by writing it off as a "slogan" and saying there's no issue with using the phrase "all lives matter."

Comments like these allow Bush to pander to extreme Republican primary voters at a time when Trump has fired up the base. But don't forget that Bush has a long history of using derogatory language that's indicative of his highly disturbing policy priorities. In his first run for Florida governor in 1994, Bush admitted that he'd "probably [do] nothing" for the African American community. He did not just put his foot in his mouth. When he was subsequently elected as governor of Florida, he did worse than nothing -- he ended affirmative action in Florida in 1999 and purged eligible black people from voter rolls leading up to the 2000 election.

The same is true for women in Florida. In a 1995 book he wrote, Bush referenced Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 "The Scarlet Letter," to discuss how public shaming of women could be used to prevent "out of wedlock" pregnancies. And Bush had the chance to act on his belief that unwed mothers should be shamed in 2001. During his tenure as governor, the Florida legislature passed the "Scarlet Letter" law which required single mothers who did not know the identity of the father of their child to pay for and publish an ad in the newspaper that included the mother's sexual history before she was allowed to put her child up for adoption. The ad had to include physical details of the mother and the dates and locations of when she may have conceived her child. In the August Republican debate, Bush bragged that he was nicknamed "veto Corleone" -- but Bush sure didn't veto the "Scarlet Letter" law.

For Jeb Bush it's not just a foot in mouth problem. He has a long record of following through on his extreme rhetoric. A Bush presidency would mean four -- maybe eight -- years of a president with little to no regard for people who don't agree with him or don't act as he thinks they should. The rhetoric from Bush that we've seen so far in the Republican primary should serve as just a taste of how dangerous another Bush presidency would be.

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