On radio this morning, Glenn ripped into former Florida Governor Jeb Bush for the remarks he made in an interview with ABC News over the weekend about Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) lacking “self-restraint” in his fight to defund Obamacare.
“All right. So, we have Jeb Bush advising us now on what should be done. And what should be done is – well, we never hear the alternative,” Glenn said. “Could we please play the Jeb Bush audio again because think this is really important to go over.”
Interview begins around the 4-minute mark:
JON KARL: Anything gained in all of this?
JEB BUSH: No, I think there was some ground lost from the political point of view.
JON KARL: And this started with Republicans, mostly in the House saying they wanted to gut Obamacare, and they were willing to not fund the government until that happened. I mean they changed a little bit as it went along. How badly are Republicans hurt by all of this? This started with their strategy.
JEB BUSH: Tactically, it was a mistake to focus on something that couldn't be achieved.
“Since when have we become the party of things that cannot be achieved? I've never been that person. I've never been that person. And I never understood that person,” Glenn said. “We cannot achieve repealing a horrible, quoting the people who built it, train wreck. We can't achieve that? Since when can't we achieve that? Since we've become the party, and since we've become the people that are trained now to think that. ‘Well, you can only do this. This is all you can get’… The repeal of Obamacare is not possible. But what is possible?”
JON KARL: But I just spoke to Ted Cruz. He was the guy who said, ‘Hey, let's not agree to a funding resolution unless Obamacare is defunded.’ That was the strategy that really kicked it off. And he told me that he will now do anything he can to stop Obamacare, and he does not rule out pushing to the brink once again. What would your message be to Ted Cruz?
JEB BUSH: Well, frankly, I think the best way to repeal Obamacare is to have an alternative. We never hear the alternative. We could do this at a much lower cost, with improved quality, based on our free market principles.
“Wouldn't free market principles be repeal it? Free market principles would be to repeal it because his suggestion is, we can do this better. We, meaning the government, can do this better. Those aren't free market principles, my man. Those are government principles. Those are socialist principles. Those are progressive principles. They are fascistic principles. They are communist principles and not free market principles,” Glenn said. “Hear that clearly. That's who Jeb Bush is. It is not possible to not have the government involved in healthcare… It hasn't even started, and you already are at a point where the government officials are all telling you, ‘You can't do this without government.’ We've been doing it without government the whole time and it was working out really well!”
JEB BUSH: And two, show how Obamacare, flawed to its core, doesn't work. So, have a little bit of self-restraint. It might actually be, politically, a better approach to see the massive dysfunction. But we don’t even hear about that because we’ve stepped on that message. And I think Republicans need to just take a step back, show a little self-restraint, and let this happen a little more organically.
“Show a little self restraint? Show how it doesn't work? If you guys would not have been shooting at Ted Cruz, you could have been showing the world how bad it was,” Glenn said exasperatedly. “Now, why didn't you do that? If you wanted to show how bad it is, why wouldn't you do it? Because you want the framework. You want the control. You've just announced that in the sentence before this where you said, ‘We can do it better. We just have to reform it.’ You want control.”
After laboring through this audio from Bush, Glenn had a message for the American people: Enough with the royal families.
“Why do you have royal families? You have royal families because everybody knows they can trust them. The system knows they can trust them. Oh, okay. Well, I know your dad. And because I know your dad, I know what you are going to do, and you are not going off the beaten path because everybody in the family is in on this,” Glenn explained. “Why don't we just start calling them Lord Jeb and Lady Bush, the Duchesses of Houston. Why don’t we call them that? The Kennedy's and the Bush’s. Enough with them. The Kennedy's and the Bush’s.”
Stu made sure that he got one more family, that is more than likely gunning for a return to power in 2016, added to that list
“And the Clintons,” Stu said.
