Jeb Bush goes full Donald Trump on Obamacare: He’s just as nonsensical as the GOP’s carnival barker
If you’re the type of person who digs it when candidates for president engage in substantive discussions about their policy positions, last night’s Republican primary debate was a disappointing spectacle. Well, truthfully, if you’re that type of person then pretty much all of modern politics is a barren wasteland. But the wildly hyped first GOP debate of the 2016 cycle was especially disappointing, and not just because so much of the back-and-forth was dominated by questions about Donald Trump’s tweets and bankruptcies.
There are plenty of offenders to choose from, but I want to focus on Jeb Bush because, absent Trump, he’s the leading candidate for the nomination and the person who should be under the most pressure to actually spell out what he’d do as president. The core of Jeb’s economic message is that he will create 19 million jobs, and jack up economic growth to four percent annually and keep it there. That’s an aspiration that economists regard as wildly overoptimistic, and no president in the past 35 years has achieved it (the one who came closest was Bill Clinton).
