Suddenly the party of the Moral Majority, culture wars, and freedom of religious expression uber alles isn’t too keen on religion and politics mixing anymore. The leader of Jebya’s Catholic faith is no longer welcome in his 2016 campaign.
“I hope I’m not going to get castigated for saying this by my priest back home, but I don’t get economic policy from my bishops or my cardinals or my pope,” said Bush, a devout Catholic. He added that he wanted to see exactly what the pope recommended “before I pass judgment, but I think religion ought to be about making us better as people, less about things [that] end up getting into the political realm.”
I wonder how that’s going to play with the Huckster/Santorum/Rubio “strong faith guides my policies”crowd. The guy has bigger issues though.
In an hourlong town hall, held in a narrow, three-story opera house, Bush, in his shirtsleeves, spent considerable time talking about entitlement reform and the need to fix programs like Social Security, something he noted his brother tried, and “got totally wiped out.” But on those big-ticket issues, he said, both parties need to find common ground.
“We have to reweave the web of civility,” he said, a message that plays well in a state where firebrand conservatives have not done as well. “I have deep disagreements with liberal Democrats, but I don’t assume they have bad motives.”
And on national security issues, he said, “I would like to get back to the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy,” where everyone understands “if we engage, it’s not to create war, it’s to create peace.”
“I’m like my brother, only I’ll make the absolute failure policies he implemented work!” is a hell of a campaign slogan, yes?