Charles Pierce on the Bush family

[MBS]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Bushes_Bloom_Again

. .

.we find ourselves confronted with the possibility that Jeb Bush may well take out for a spin a family name that ought to be considered an obscenity in any respectable dictionary of American democracy.
. . .
Please to be giving me a fking break. If they want to redeem themselves for the catastrophes that C-Plus Augustus wrought upon the country, and for Poppy's inexcusable skating away from Iran-Contra, let the whole lot of them go clean bedpans at Walter Reed. The idea that we would let any member of the Bush family -- to say nothing of the family's "vast constellation of friends, advisers, strategists, pollsters, fund-raisers, donors and supporters assembled over several generations in public life" -- anywhere near our policies in the Middle East again is rather like hiring the late Jeffrey Dahmer as the White House chef.

And, right on cue, as she invariably is when bad ideas are at play, Ruth Marcus, Washington Post columnist and scourge of teenage potty-mouths everywhere, chimes in as well with her unique blend of intellectual incoherence and abiding faith in the restorative properties of pixie dust. First, Ruth tells us that she quite logically dreads what may happen if we elect the next president out of the current Republican party, which is losing the battle against the prion disease that infected the party's brain in the 1980's. She also has her doubts about the dynastic character of re-electing another one of the Kennebunkport Plantagenets. But then...
. . .
First of all, Jeb Bush should run so that the Republican party will be less insane? How about the party deciding on its own not to be insane? How about the party deciding that Jesus shouldn't teach biology, and that supply-side economics is a fairy tale, and that shoeless bugfk preachers should not have their phone calls returned for a few decades? How about it agrees that climate change is an actual crisis, and not an employment agency for money-grubbing scientists? Pro tip, Ruth: the party can't do that because the party doesn't have anything left but that element, plus some angry white men with guns. These are the people to whom Jeb Bush will have to cater in order to be nominated, and the people he will owe once he's elected. This is the same rap we heard about his dim older brother back in 1999. We got an incredible period of criminal negligence in the summer of 2001, two bogus wars, an American city lost to the waves, a financial meltdown, and Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. How'd the last Bush work out for bipartisan productive politics? Can you seriously make a case that Jeb would be any better?

[rurallib]

1. Charles Pierce is a national treasure

along with Borowitz and the Onion.

Pierce seems to hit a home run with every column.

[Scuba]

2. +1

[pscot]

3. The American Borgias

The Democrats should pay him to their messaging.

[greatlaurel]

4. That is a brilliant analysis of who the Bushes really are.

There is not a scintilla of empathy in that whole clan. The Barbara Bush comment about not another Bush was cleverly designed to try to rehabilitate their image, it is clearly a phony and staged statement by the matriarch.

These people cannot make a living unless they are taking American tax dollars for their personal benefit. Jeb Bush has been making money stealing education tax dollars to enrich himself and his pals since he left office.

I find this rehash of the ridiculous claim that the Bushes are "better" for the country beyond disgusting. Tell that to all the dead Iraqis and families of dead and disabled American military veterans. All victims of the Bush money making plan.

The Washington Post has proven it has nothing of value to say.

[markpkessinger]

5. I always enjoy Charles Pierce's essays . . .

. . . and this one would have been well worth the time spent reading it just for its two-word description of the Bush family as the "Kennebunkport Plantagenets." Priceless!