A Double Dose of Jeb Bush: Wouldn't Repeal Obama's Executive Amnesty "Right Away;" Says He Stands Behind Iraq Invasion, Sort of

If this is the hero Gotham needs, then Gotham should just declare itself Jokerville.

Michael C. Bender digests Bush's appearance on Megyn Kelly. Which actually airs tonight, but parts are already released.

He may be a staunch critic of President Obama's executive orders on immigration, but Jeb Bush wouldn't rush to repeal them if he's the next White House resident.

In an interview scheduled to air Monday night on Fox News, Bush suggested that he would wait until a new law was in place before overturning Obama's actions.

...

Bush, who hasn't yet formally entered the presidential race, also defended his support for giving undocumented immigrants driver's licenses and their children in-state tuition, saying, "If you’ve been here for an extended period of time, you have no nexus to the country of your parents."

"What what are we supposed to do? Marginalize these people forever?" Bush said.

Kelly also asked Jeb if he would authorize the Iraq War -- "knowing what we know now." Jeb kinda-sorta said yes.

"I would have, and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody," Bush said, "and so would have almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got."

"You don't think it was a mistake?" asked Kelly.

"In retrospect, the intelligence that everybody saw, that the world saw, not just the United States, was faulty," Bush answered.

Byron York goes on to compare Jeb's answer about George W. Bush's decision, with George W. Bush's own statements about his decision.

Bush's view of the war is considerably less clear-eyed than that of his brother, former President George W. Bush, the man who ordered the invasion. In his memoir, Decision Points, W. wrestled with the dilemma of his decision to start a war on the basis of bad intelligence. Only W. did not call the intelligence "faulty," as Jeb had. W. called the intelligence "false."

"The reality was that I had sent American troops into combat based in large part on intelligence that proved false," George W. Bush wrote.

But (as York notes) GW Bush does go on to defend that decision.

Mickey Kaus chides Jeb Bush for willfully "misunderstanding" Kelly's question. Kelly asked a hypothetical with the changed circumstance "knowing what we know now;" Jeb Bush ignored this, and answered the question assuming he was getting the same 2001-era intelligence his brother was. Of course, Kelly's hypothetical directed him to not base his answer on that, but instead "what we know now."

So did Jeb actually answer the question? It appears he did not.

posted by Ace at 06:41 PM

| Access Comments