Free Republic

Whatever it portends for Jeb Bush's struggling 2016 White House bid, George W. Bush's return to the campaign trail is bad news for the Republican Party. The former president and former Florida governor headlined a joint rally Monday in South Carolina. The state helped George H.W. Bush finish off Bob Dole in 1988 and set Bush 43 on his path to the nomination after a disappointing loss in New Hampshire in 2000. Jeb is hoping the third time's a charm...

Donald Trump doesn't like being interrupted. At the Republican debate on Saturday, when Jeb Bush broke into one of Trump's answers, Trump turned around and shushed Bush. This was a continuation of how Trump has long handled Bush, often verbally bullying the Florida governor and characterizing him as weak. But this was also during a particularly tense conversation over eminent domain, in which the government takes over private property for other purposes. Trump defended the practice - specifically, calling it necessary to build roads and other infrastructure.

Less than three months before the kick-off Iowa caucuses, there is growing anxiety bordering on panic among Republican elites about the dominance and durability of Donald Trump and Ben Carson and widespread bewilderment over how to defeat them. Party leaders and donors fear nominating either man would have negative ramifications for the GOP ticket up and down the ballot, virtually ensuring a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency and increasing the odds that the Senate falls into Democratic hands.

Psyche. It looks like the Oval Office! But of course, it’s the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas. This is where a group of veterans were getting a tour on Veterans Day this morning when, much to their surprise, President Bush 43 himself popped and personally greeted the surprised and very pleased group. I really don’t need to say a lot about this, but I just want to remind you: For all the prattling from the left and their media mouthpieces about how Bush cavalierly put our fighting men and women in harm’s way, the truth is that the...

Former President George H.W. Bush has moderated his views on same-sex marriage since seeking the White House, according to a new biography. Bush said in his audio diary before his 1988 presidential campaign that Americans "didn't want same-sex marriage codified," according to The New York Times. But after he served as an official witness at a 2013 same-sex wedding, he sent his biographer, Jon Meacham, a note to clarify that his views had changed....

One of the benefits of being 91 is you don’t have to hold back anymore—you can say what you want. And in a new biography, former President George H.W. Bush tells Jon Meacham just what he thinks about Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s work in his son’s administration, as reported by Fox News and The New York Times. “He just became very hard-line and very different from the Dick Cheney I knew and worked with,” the elder Bush said of the man who served as his secretary of defense. “Just iron-ass. His seeming knuckling under to the real hard-charging guys...

At long last, George W. Bush, the man who left the Republican Party in tatters as he left the White House, has some coattails. His loose lips at a recent fundraiser last week about fellow Texan Ted Cruz have given the GOP presidential hopeful an invaluable shot of gravitas. And that’s saying something considering how Bush’s own brother, Jeb, has been running away from his family legacy by changing his surname to ‘exclamation point.’ But who wouldn’t rather declare punctuation as kin rather than a former claimant to the White House in this populist uprising disguised as an election? Nothing...

This Trump brag line goes like this: He had the vision and foresight to oppose the Iraq War ahead of the invasion in 2003. His opposition was so vocal, and his reach so great, that the White House approached him and asked him to tone it down. Really? We examined the slim evidence. The Facts At The Fact Checker, we place the burden of proof on the speaker. Trump has not responded to repeated requests by us or other media outlets for proof of his early opposition to the invasion. Military action began on March 20, 2003. An extensive review...

Election '16: Donald Trump charges that President George W. Bush "knew in advance" of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Promoting the Obama birther conspiracy was bad enough, but this is beyond the pale. There may not be a historical precedent to a major presidential candidate accusing his own party's last president of knowingly allowing an enemy to attack America, killing thousands. Negligence bordering on treason: This is the charge Donald Trump is making against George W. Bush. Trump told CNN on Tuesday, "George Tenet, the CIA Director, knew in advance that there would be an attack, and he said so...

Last week, Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush responded to criticism from his predecessor that he had replaced nonpartisan bureaucrats at the General Land Office with loyalists by explaining that many of the employees that he inherited in January were making too much money. "We're going to try our best to make it more objective, more fair, based about not your relationships, but based upon what you bring to the table," he said of his office, which oversees 13 million acres of Texas public lands, including leasing mineral rights to oil and gas companies. On Monday, the Houston Chronicle reported...

A bombshell White House memo has revealed for the first time details of the ‘deal in blood’ forged by Tony Blair and George Bush over the Iraq War. The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started. It flies in the face of the Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis. He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ – in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals.

Jeremy Corbyn: 9/11 Was 'Manipulated' In comments that will raise questions about his suitability to lead the Labour Party, Mr Corbyn appeared to blame George Bush and Tony Blair for using the September 11 attacks in New York to allow them to go to war By Peter Dominiczak 25 Sep 2015 Jeremy Corbyn has claimed that 9/11 was "manipulated" to make it look like Osama Bin Laden was responsible to allow the West to go to war in Afghanistan.

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush thinks that a new television ad is "disgraceful" for suggesting that his brother George W. Bush didn't keep the country safe during his presidency. Bush singled out Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton in a tweet Sunday, suggesting that her "political machine" was behind a new 30-second ad that will be airing on cable news channels this week.

On a re­cent sum­mer even­ing fol­low­ing a speech to loc­al Re­pub­lic­ans in Tus­ca­loosa, Alabama, Sen. Ted Cruz spoke with Na­tion­al Journ­al for more than an hour about the 2016 pres­id­en­tial race. Cruz, known to rarely veer off-mes­sage, care­fully evaded a series of ques­tions about his friend and polit­ic­al ally Don­ald Trump. But the Texas sen­at­or offered his can­did thoughts on the Bush fam­ily, the me­dia cov­er­age of his cam­paign, and the toll a pres­id­en­tial cam­paign takes on a young fam­ily. What fol­lows are ex­cerpts of that con­ver­sa­tion, ed­ited for length and clar­ity. NJ: You have sup­por­ted Don­ald Trump while oth­er...

My distaste for Trump is well documented at this point, but when I read this evening about Hugh Hewitt’s interview of Donald Trump, I was struck by how terrible Hewitt’s whole line of questioning is. Hewitt – who gave Harriet Miers a “solid B+” and thought that was good enough – has essentially declared that Al Gore would have been a better President than George Bush. That’s how incompetent the establishment’s favorite radio host is at criticizing Donald Trump. Remember the gotcha games they played with George W. Bush? And how Al Gore was supposedly to be a better President...

Here is a more detailed version of the George W. Bush's fundraising pitch for his 'little brother' Jeb that arrived at my email address yesterday morning. I posted an excerpt yesterday. Now the entire letter. "Dear (My name)- Thanks for taking the time to read my note. I rarely send emails like this, but wanted to make sure I asked for your support on behalf of my brother, Jeb. This is a consequential time in our nation's history, and we need a strong leader. Jeb took on tough on tough challenges as Florida's Governor and delivered results. I know he...

Can you name any historical figures who helped Planned Parenthood kick off its first fundraising campaign back in 1947? If you first guessed some progressive liberal icon, you’d be wrong. The die-hard public pro-life bona fides of George W. Bush and his brother and current GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush are undeniable. Jeb has repeatedly said that he would defund Planned Parenthood if he’s elected, and it’s been a promise he’s been making long before the Center for Medical Progress launched their viral undercover video campaign attacking the non-profit, claiming the organization was “selling baby parts.” But a little known...

On the heels of Transportation Security Administration workers flunking a security test at airport checkpoints, the results of a new audit show that -- while the agency keeps a robust system for screening commercial airport workers -- it still failed to flag 73 airport workers "linked to terrorism." Apparently, TSA does not have access to all the terror watchlist information it needs to make those judgments. “The TSA did not identify these individuals through its vetting operations because it is not authorized to receive all terrorism-related categories under current interagency watch-listing policy,” the June 4 Inspector General report stated. According...

June 3, 2015CNN POLL: GEORGE W. BUSH MORE POPULAR THAN SINKING BARACK OBAMA John Nolte EXCERPT......Bush’s favorability increase — his first in positive territory since leaving office — is likely due to two things. First, Bush has been nothing but a class act as a former president. He has stayed out of the public eye, except to further the causes like those of America’s wounded warriors. He’s removed himself completely from politics. People appreciate a class act, and Bush has been nothing but.Secondly, Bush’s approval numbers were primarily dragged down by the Iraq War. In hindsight, though, the American people...

In May 1990, then-U.S. President George H.W. Bush was convinced that Pakistan was poised to use a covert nuclear weapon capability against India. The impending apocalypse—which would have dwarfed Hiroshima and Nagasaki—had to be prevented at all costs. Consequently, the White House dispatched a trusted emissary, Robert Gates (a man who would later become U.S. Defense Secretary in the George W. Bush and Obama administrations) on a top secret mission to South Asia—first to Pakistan and then to India. Eventually on May 21, 1990, it was concluded that the Gates mission had indeed succeeded and, paradoxically, the sense that the...