The New Batch
/By Bill Maher
As Republicans keep looking for a youngish face on which to hastily staple the horrifying shriveled death-head of their moldering policies, the wheel has spun, predictably enough, to Jeb Bush. Jeb, the more deserving one. Jeb, the man who finally put Florida back in red territory. Jeb, the never-handsome Bush, the "smarter" Bush, with several pounds of extra flesh and a little piggy nose and a presence so instantly forgettable that you feel like you've been visited by the perfect, platonic form of "white guy."
And Jeb's already stepped in shit. I don't know if it hurt him politically, but it's a perfect snapshot of who he is.
Recently we saw Jeb run from TV show to TV show explaining that, if he'd written his new book about immigration reform today, his plan would include a path to citizenship. But he didn't put it in his book because he wrote the book during the "severely conservative" primaries and not the "Holy fuck we need us some Mexican votes" aftermath. It's cool. Bush says he talked to the Republican leadership, and it's cool. "We're all on the same page now."
Bush in his book:
“It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences -- in this case, that those who violated the law can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship. To do otherwise would signal once again that people who circumvent the system can still obtain the full benefits of American citizenship.”
“The book was written to try to create a blueprint for conservatives that were reluctant to embrace comprehensive reform, to give them perhaps a set of views that they could embrace. I support a path to legalization or citizenship so long as the path for people that have been waiting patiently is easier and costs less -- the legal entrance to our country -- than illegal entrance.”
See? I was just misleading you because that's how we do right? Right?
But things have come undone. The election-year mating ritual of everyone pretending to be true believers has been complicated by the fact that there are now lots of Republicans in office who actually do believe that bullshit. And "RINO," a term once reserved for people like Arlen Specter and those two nice ladies in Maine, is now being thrown at previously unassailable right-wingers like Bush and Karl Rove and the vaudeville team of McCain and Graham.
