{"id":1364,"date":"2015-08-19T09:58:09","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T13:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1364"},"modified":"2015-08-19T09:58:09","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T13:58:09","slug":"trump-is-no-conservative-but-neither-is-jeb-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2015\/08\/trump-is-no-conservative-but-neither-is-jeb-bush.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump is No Conservative, But Neither is…..Jeb Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Donald Trump\u2019s critics in the Republican-friendly media blast him for not being a genuine conservative, they are correct<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For roughly the last quarter of a century, Trump has spent most of his time\u2014until about five years ago\u2014helping to get Democrats elected and reelected. One-third of all of his political donations have gone to supporting Democrats and, by implication, their causes.<\/p>\n

Though he always claimed to revile abortion, he nevertheless explicitly self-identified as \u201cpro-choice.\u201d Trump favored imminent domain and a single-payer national health care system. In fact, he even once remarked to Wolf Blitzer that, \u201cin many cases,\u201d \u201cI probably identify more as a Democrat,\u201d for it \u201cseems\u201d that \u201cthe economy does better under the Democrats [than it does] under Republicans.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Trump spared no occasion to mock Republican voters themselves as \u201ctoo crazy right.\u201d Pat Buchanan he said represents the \u201creally staunch right wacko vote.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even today, Trump still supports saddling taxpayers with the burden of subsidizing Planned Parenthood.<\/p>\n

So his critics are correct when they claim that Trump is no conservative. But they are sorely incorrect <\/em>when they say that he is not a Republican.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the point:<\/p>\n

If a real conservative is supposed to be one who supports a limited, decentralized government and, hence, individual liberty, then Trump is no different than virtually every other Republican in failing to meet this definition.<\/p>\n

In some respects\u2014namely, the calamitous Iraq war, which he always opposed\u2014he is more \u201cconservative\u201d than his competitors and pundit critics.<\/p>\n

In other words, it is Trump\u2019s style, <\/em>and not the substance <\/em>of his record,<\/em> that distinguishes him from his rivals.<\/p>\n

Take, for instance, the one-time GOP frontrunner, Jeb Bush. Though his supporters on Fox News and in some quarters of talk radio tout Bush\u2019s \u201cconservative\u201d bona fides, no less a left-leaning columnist than Nate Silver thinks that Jeb may be \u201ctoo liberal\u201d<\/a> to win his party\u2019s nomination.<\/p>\n

Using several admittedly imperfect criteria, Silver drew \u201cideological scores\u201d of Jeb and found that he is more \u201cmoderate\u201d than Mitt Romney and John McCain, but not nearly as \u201cconservative\u201d as his big brother, George W.<\/p>\n

You read that correctly: Romney, McCain, and Bush II are more \u201cconservative\u201d than Jeb.<\/p>\n

Jeb, as everyone now knows, is an unabashed immigration enthusiast and proponent of amnesty (\u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d by its true name). Yet he also supported the bank bailouts<\/a> of 2008, and in 2003, he deployed $310 million in stimulus<\/a> money toward a single company, Scripps\u2014which was hardly in dire economic straights\u2014for bio-medical research.<\/p>\n

When it comes to abortion, Bush too claims to be \u201cpro-life,\u201d but he claims that women should be free to choose<\/em><\/a> abortions in circumstances of rape, incest, and when the mother\u2019s life is endangered. This is standard GOP boilerplate, for sure. But that <\/em>is the problem: <\/em>If abortion is immoral because it is nothing less than the killing of an innocent human being, than the circumstances in which that innocent life comes into being are morally irrelevant. The baby is still innocent.<\/p>\n

Moreover, to know whether someone is genuinely \u201cpro-life,\u201d the question that Republicans must answer is this: Should abortion be illegal<\/em>? Any person who doesn\u2019t answer this question in the affirmative is \u201cpro-choice,\u201d for while they, like Trump, may personally<\/em> detest abortion, they do<\/em> support the right <\/em>of others to choose<\/em> abortion.<\/p>\n

Jeb too has chastised his fellow Republicans for the \u201ctone\u201d and \u201cintensity\u201d of the manner in which they articulate their positions on such gender-related issues of abortion and those issues that concern minorities.<\/p>\n

In 2012, while on Meet the Press, <\/em>Bush said that he is \u201cconcerned about\u201d Republicans\u2019 rhetoric given that the \u201cdemographics are changing [.]<\/a>\u201d While Republicans don\u2019t \u201cnecessarily\u201d have to \u201cchange\u2026our core beliefs,\u201d they most certainly need to change \u201cthe tone of our message and the intensity of it [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

Just last week during the Fox News\/GOP debate, Bush conceded that while he sat as a director of the Bloomberg Family Foundation, the latter gave tens of millions of dollars <\/em>to fund Planned Parenthood. Yet, incredulously, he insisted that he was ignorant of this fact.<\/p>\n

Perhaps we shouldn\u2019t be surprised. Since Donald Trump was asked about his bankruptcies, maybe Bush should\u2019ve been questioned about his past business decisions.<\/p>\n

In 1988, Bush and a partner borrowed money from Broward Federal Savings and Loans in Sunrise, Florida. The crisis hit and federal regulators realized that Bush and his partner defaulted on $4.6 million loan. The two were made to pay back a meager $505,000: the remaining $4 million <\/em>were thrust upon taxpayers.<\/p>\n

When Bush was later asked if he knew that Broward repaid the rest of the loan with taxpayers\u2019 monies, he replied: \u201cHelllllll no. Absolutely not<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bush has been a huge supporter of \u201caffirmative action,\u201d and as governor of Florida, he used his power to aggressively promote more racial and gender diversity among justices, contractors, and in college admissions. His \u201cOne Florida\u201d<\/a> program was designed to insure that the racial and gender privileges for minorities and women demanded by \u201caffirmative action\u201d are secured.<\/p>\n

Jeb has always championed his brother\u2019s foreign policy, including and especially his brother\u2019s decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. These were gargantuan foreign adventures that have come at the cost of incalculable sums of blood and treasure. The war in Iraq specifically polarized the country like few other issues, and it costs the GOP its control of Congress and the Presidency.<\/p>\n

Jeb still applauds No Child Left Behind<\/a> for having forced lazy states to initiate reforms. And, of course, he staunchly defends<\/a> \u201cCommon Core.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeb Bush is just one example among legions of examples of Republican non<\/em>-conservatives. I chose to focus on Bush only because he is among the top tier GOP presidential candidates, and because Trump\u2019s critics on Fox and elsewhere cast Bush as a conservative.<\/p>\n

We would be well served to remember this.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Donald Trump\u2019s critics in the Republican-friendly media blast him for not being a genuine conservative, they are correct. For roughly the last quarter of a century, Trump has spent most of his time\u2014until about five years ago\u2014helping to get Democrats elected and reelected. One-third of all of his political donations have gone to supporting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump is No Conservative, But Neither is.....Jeb Bush<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2015\/08\/trump-is-no-conservative-but-neither-is-jeb-bush.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump is No Conservative, But Neither is.....Jeb Bush\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When Donald Trump\u2019s critics in the Republican-friendly media blast him for not being a genuine conservative, they are correct. 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