Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks to reporters as he leaves an event in New York on Thursday. (AP/Seth Wenig) (Seth Wenig/AP)
Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush supports President Obama’s trade deal, praises his management of the National Security Agency and agrees that Congress should have moved faster to hold a vote on new attorney general Loretta Lynch.
And that’s all since last week.
It’s an unusual approach for Bush to take in seeking the nomination of a conservative party that mostly loathes the current president. The former Florida governor has gone out of his way at times to chime in on issues where he agrees with Obama — bolstering his attempt to be a softer-toned kind of Republican focused on winning a majority of the vote in a general election.
But the strategy also carries grave risks for a likely candidate who is already viewed with deep suspicion by conservatives, many of whom have little desire to find common ground with Democrats. Tea party leaders are already warning that Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, is alienating conservatives.
“It’s stunning, frankly, that a candidate on the Republican side would be doing his best to line himself up with some of the president’s policies,” said Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots who now leads a group called Citizens of Self-Governance.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush leaves after speaking at a Republican Leadership Summit last Friday in Nashua, N.H. (AP/Jim Cole) (Jim Cole/AP)Bush’s tone, he added, puts him “out of step with the American people.”
The former Florida governor is hardly an Obama booster, of course. He regularly attacks Obama’s foreign policy and his handling of domestic issues such as the economy and the Keystone XL pipeline. He calls the Affordable Care Act a “monstrosity” that should be overhauled.
[In drive to be 45th president, Jeb Bush faces legacies of the 41st and 43rd]
But Bush is sticking to his support for education and immigration reforms — positions unpopular with many GOP voters. And his tendency to refrain from being too aggressive in his attacks on Obama reflects his absence from what he often calls the years-long “food fight” between the current White House and congressional Republicans.
David Bozell, the president of For America, a conservative group strongly opposed to a Bush presidential bid, said the candidate is clouding his criticisms of Obama by “dropping these little nuggets of support.”
“He’s kept his gloves on, I suppose,” Bozell said.
“A lot of people are noticing. Not a day goes by where I don’t get an e-mail about his latest statements,” said Erick Erickson, a radio show host and founder of the conservative Red State blog. “He has said in the past he is concerned about the tone and rhetoric of the primary season, but I think he has over corrected to the point of sounding more closely aligned to the president than Hillary Clinton.”
Last week, Bush urged Republican senators to move ahead with the confirmation of Lynch, saying that he had concerns with her nomination but that “presidents have the right to pick their team.”
Then on Tuesday, Bush was asked in a radio interview what he thought was an accomplishment of the Obama administration and he credited the president for sticking with the NSA’s bulk collection of phone data “even though he never defends it.”
A day later he reiterated his support for an Obama trade agreement that is gaining bipartisan support in Congress, while faulting Clinton for hedging on the deal.
Farther back, Bush offered Obama modest praise for continuing efforts started by his brother, George W. Bush, to tighten sanctions on Iran as it developed its nuclear program.
“The president, to his credit, was successful in bringing other people along and making it tougher,” Bush said during a recent appearance in Denver when asked how he would have handled Iran. “I’m not a big Obama fan, but when he does something right we need to give him credit.”
At the same time, Bush says he strongly opposes the recent interim deal brokered between the Obama administration and Iran. On Thursday, he reportedly called the agreement “very naive.”
As he prepares to officially launch his campaign, Bush is traveling the country to meet with voters in early primary campaign states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, along with places not usually visited until a general election campaign: Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and, next week, Puerto Rico.
In New Hampshire last week, he was questioned about his support for education standards commonly known as Common Core, as well as his support for an overhaul of immigration policy.
He reiterated that he supports Common Core, but opposes the Obama administration’s decision to tie federal funding incentives to the standards, saying: “That is not the job of the federal government.”
“For states that don’t want to be part of Common Core because it’s poisonous politically and people are tired of explaining it — fine — create your own higher standards,” he told the crowd.
He was also lectured by a conservative, who warned that “you’re going to have a tough sell” on immigration reform.
“That’s my job. My job is to not back down on my beliefs,” he told the man.
Bush served as Florida governor from 1999 to 2007 and left office just weeks before Obama formally launched his presidential campaign. In recent years while a new crop of Republicans were elected with tea-party support — including presidential contenders Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — Bush was running a foundation promoting education reforms and building his personal wealth as an investment manager in Miami.
[Rather than run from his brother’s foreign policy, Jeb Bush embraces it]
Bush sat out the 2012 presidential campaign even though many Republicans urged him to run. In a June 2012 interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose, he lamented the “armed camps” that had gripped political Washington — and struck a tone similar to the one he’s adopted on the campaign trail this year.
“I don’t have to play the game of being 100,000 percent against President Obama,” he said at the time. “I’ve got a long list of things that I think he’s done wrong and with civility and respect I will point those out if I’m asked. But on the things I think he’s done a good job on, I’m not just going to say no.”
In the same interview, Bush alleged Obama was repeatedly blaming his brother for his own missteps and suggested it would be nice to hear Obama give “just a small acknowledgment that the guy you replaced isn’t the source of any problem and the excuse of why you’re not being successful.”
While some conservatives dismiss Bush's pleas for comity, others embrace them. Fergus Cullen hosted a house party for Bush in New Hampshire in March and said he did so because “he’s going to up the level of dialogue for himself and other candidates.”
“I appreciate the tone that he has offered in the last couple of months,” he said. “I think the party needs a lot more of that this cycle.”
Even Erickson hasn’t given up on Bush — at least not yet.
“I’d gladly support him if he were the nominee. His record as governor of Florida was impressively conservative,” he said. “His tone of late, however, has noticeably drifted left.”
Ed O’Keefe is covering the 2016 presidential campaign, with a focus on Jeb Bush and other Republican candidates. He's covered presidential and congressional politics since 2008. Off the trail, he's covered Capitol Hill, federal agencies and the federal workforce, and spent a brief time covering the war in Iraq.
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