Jeb Bush Says His Father and Reagan Would Lose Out in Today’s GOP - East Idaho News
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Jeb Bush Says His Father and Reagan Would Lose Out in Today’s GOP

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GETTY P 032112 JEBBUSH2?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1339430796854Paul Zimmerman/WireImage(NEW YORK) — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on Monday said that both Ronald Reagan and his father, George H.W. Bush, would have a hard time getting nominated by the more conservative voters in today’s Republican Party.

“Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad, they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party, and I don’t, as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement, doesn’t allow for finding some common ground,” Bush said, according to Buzzfeed, which reported him giving the comments at the headquarters of Bloomberg LP in New York City.

Bush, a much-discussed contender to be Mitt Romney’s running mate, said he sees the ultra-conservative and partisan standards of today’s GOP as “disturbing,” but called “this dysfunction … temporary.”

“It’s just a different environment left and right,” Bush said.

During his “dad’s time and Ronald Reagan’s time,” Bush said, they “got a lot of stuff done with a lot of bipartisan support,” according to the report, adding that Reagan “would be criticized for doing the things that he did.”

Bush railed against both sides, but blamed President Obama for much of the clashing.

“His first year could have been a year of enormous accomplishment had he focused on things where there was more common ground,” Bush said, arguing that he believed Obama made the “purely political calculation” to run a more partisan administration.

This is the latest in a series of comments Bush has made recently either criticizing his party or expressing policy points openly breaking with the presumptive GOP nominee.  Last week in an interview with CBS News, Bush separated himself from Romney on the issue of illegal immigrants already in the United States.

“It’s the one thing that separates us from the rest of the world, is to say embrace our values, learn our language and work hard and dream big and create what you want to create because it helps all of us,” Bush told Charlie Rose.  “You have to deal with this issue, you can’t ignore it and so either a path to citizenship, which I would support and that does put me probably out of the mainstream of most conservatives or … a path to residency of some kind.”

Bush said there needs to be a “realistic way of dealing with people that are here illegally,” and although he “may have a different point of view on that [from Romney], I think I probably do,” he “respect(s) his views.”

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