Source: biography.com via University on Pinterest

Here comes Jebby.

Jebby and Dubya
The other son also rises….

Anyone who was still in doubt about John E. “Jeb” Bush’s presidential aspirations for the year 2016 had those doubts shattered last weekend during his media blitz on the Sunday morning talk programs.

There he was plugging his new book, coming out strongly against a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants—a position he has strongly supported in the past. The problem is the fact that “the path,” so to speak, is not supported by most of the knuckleheads who tend to vote in Republican primaries in the South and the Midwest.

Watch him during the next four years as he stomps around the country during what promises to be the most comprehensive pandering campaign in the history of American electoral politics. That oughta be loads of fun to watch.

Are we really going to go down this road again?

Part of me says, no, the Republicans have been seriously damaged, maybe even fatally, by the posse of criminals, halfwits and crazy people who long ago hijacked that party. It’ll never happen, or at least that’s what I’m trying to convince myself. Our luck couldn’t possibly get that bad.

And imagine how idiotic we’re going to look as a country when future history books print the POTUS list:

41. Bush
42. Clinton
43. Bush
44. Obama
45. Bush

Yikes! That would be too weird to even contemplate. Think of the semantic calisthenics that poor ol’ Jeb needs to perform in the next three-and-a-half years: He’ll have to transform himself from the essentially easy-going moderate, “compassionate conservative” (at least that’s how he is perceived by most) into the screaming right-winger lunatic that appeals to “the base.” And then, once he gets the nomination (if he gets the nomination) he then needs to move himself way back (and it’s a long way back indeed) to the slightly-right-of-center. Best of luck to the dude.

“My guess is that history is going to be kind to my brother.”

~ Jeb Bush

Seriously, if that little statement uttered by Jeb doesn’t raise serious alarm bells nothing will. The undeniable fact of the matter is that history will not be kind to his brother. If anything, as the years go by, it will be even more apparent what a dreadful mistake this country made when they came to the collective conclusion that sending the hideous little jackass to the Executive Mansion would be a really cool idea.

Jeb Bush is his brother’s brother.

Although it would be presumptuous to say that a Bush Administration III would be a mere mimeograph of the Bush Administration II, there are more similarities between the two than stark differences. If we are foolish enough to go back down this road in 2016, you can bet the farm that the neo-con crazies will be running our foreign policy again. Remember how nicely that worked out last time around? That was a trick question. It didn’t work out nicely at all.

We should give credit where credit is due. If it was absolutely preordained that America would be cursed with a second Bush administration, it should have been the Jeb Bush Administration. He’s certainly a lot smarter than brother George, that’s for damned sure. It’s a pretty safe bet that had he sent Dick Cheney on an errand to find a suitable running mate and Cheney had come back with a report that concluded “I am your man!” I can just imagine Jeb pissing his pants in laughter at the very idea. No, in all fairness to Jeb, he’s not one/tenth as dumb as George Dubya. That very fact is not, however, a qualification for the office of president of the United States of America. The job is just a tad more nuanced than that—or so I’ve been led to believe.

I can just see the reaction of the rest of the planet earth to another Bush presidency.

We’re already the laughingstock of Western civilization. Do we really need to make mattters worst? The day after King George the Second was reelected to a second (disastrous) term, a newspaper in England posed on it’s front page the musical question:

“How Can 59,000,000 People Be So Stupid?”

How indeed. It was a damned good question when you think about it for a minute or two. Any takers?

The most impressive person to seek the GOP nomination last year was Jon Huntsman. In fact I’ll go as far as to say that he was the most impressive Republican to run in a primary since Theodore Roosevelt one-hundred-and one years ago. He could have beaten Obama easily in a general election. Unfortunately, given the extremist bent of that party in recent years, he never had a chance.

If the Republicans are smart, they will nominate Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey in four years. He’s got a seventy-five percent approval rating in his state and he’s also one of the most popular politicians in the country. They would be fools not to make him their standard bearer in 2016. Of course that’s never gonna happen for obvious reasons. C’est la vie.

Hear me out: If the American people send another member of that family to the White House, we’ll deserve everything that happens to us—everything. Trust me, we don’t want to go down that road again. Call it a silly hunch on my part.

Suggested Reading:

Shrub: The Short and Happy Career of George W. Bush
by Molly Ivins

In 1999, a full year before the “selection” (by the US Supreme Court) of George W. Bush, the late, lamented Molly Ivins tried to warn us what was in store. We didn’t listen. On the eve of his second campaign, she wrote, Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s America. In the introduction she said, “If y’all had read the first book, we wouldn’t have had to write this one.” Sadly, we didn’t listen to her second warning.

Damn, I miss Molly Ivins. The gal was a hoot-and-a-half.

Tom Degan is a 54 year old video artist but now makes his name by writing about politics and current events on his blog, The Rant. “I was a Democrat, until they became GOP-lite. I am now nothing—a man without a party, as it were. That’s okay. I like the solitude. I am the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom…Okay, I’ll fess up. That’s a bald-faced lie. But I did get a ribbon of sorts when I was in the Cub Scouts.” Tom lives and resides in Goshen, NY, the most Republican little berg north of the Mason Dixon line. He’s “the most popular guy in town.” That’s also a lie. “I love children, little baby duckies and Glenn Miller’s recording of Moonlight Serenade. That’s the truth. So there.”

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Ed: Lynn Hasselberger