Jeb Bush: It’s Obama’s Fault The Republican Party Is So Anti-Gay

"The president has wielded his power... to punish his opponents, legislate from the White House and turn agency rulemaking into a weapon for liberal dogma,"

From: NewNowNext

 Like a lot of us, former presidential candidate Jeb Bush has surveyed the Republican landscape and is asking, “What the fuck?”

Bush, governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007, is incredulous that Donald Trump’s gotten the reins of his party and seems intent or riding everyone off a cliff.

 “Call it a tipping point, a time of choosing or testing,” he writes in a Washington Post op-ed.

“Whatever you call it, it is clear that this election will have far-reaching consequences for both the Republican Party and our exceptional country.”

He insists that while Trump has “tapped into the anxiety so prevalent in the United States today,” the real-estate reality star doesn’t reflect the “inclusive legacy” of the Republican Party.

Sorry, what?

But Bush doesn’t blame the Donald for stirring the GOP into a rabid, bigoted froth. That, he says, is Barack Obama’s fault.

 Eight years of the divisive tactics of President Obama and his allies have undermined Americans’ faith in politics and government to accomplish anything constructive.

The president has wielded his power—while often exceeding his authority—to punish his opponents, legislate from the White House and turn agency rule making into a weapon for liberal dogma.

In turn, a few in the Republican Party responded by trying to out-polarize the president, making us seem anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker and anti-common-sense.

So because Obama was so nice to the gays, GOP had no choice but to marginalize and abuse us. We really brought it on ourselves, didn’t we.

 Bush also levels some blame for the GOP’s leap off the rails on Hillary Clinton.

…On the left, Hillary Clinton promises to continue the disastrous foreign and economic policies of the Obama administration, as well as its hyper-partisanship. She has gone as far as to say Republicans are her “enemy” — a clear sign she doesn’t have any more interest in doing the hard work of forging consensus than her former boss does.

So it’s not the Republicans in Congress who are sabotaging any efforts at bipartisanship, it’s the President, who just won’t bend over far enough. And now we’re suffering the consequences.

“Trump’s abrasive, Know Nothing-like nativist rhetoric has blocked out sober discourse about how to tackle America’s big challenges.”

Funny how Bush ignores his own anti-immigrant, anti-women and anti-LGBT views: His administration’s attacks on women’s reproductive rights in Florida. His claim that “leaky” immigration policies led to 9/11. How he vowed to overturn marriage equality and enshrine anti-LGBT discrimination.

“Irrespective of what the courts say,” Bush said last year. “We need to make sure that we protect the right not just of having religious views, but the right of acting on those religious views. Conscience should also be respected for people of faith who want to take a stand for traditional marriage.”

Unlike fellow GOPers Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz, though, Jeb Bush never pushed for a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

So that actually makes him a moderate Republican.