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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJeb! campaign pulls the plug on itself.
It seems that Jeb Bush, now reduced to an asterisk in the 2016 Republican Presidential contest, has concluded that the best way to quickly burn through those millions upon millions of dollars in campaign donations he received is to perform a supreme act of self-immolation, by resurrecting the infamous Terry Schiavo fiasco in a new campaign ad, paid for, morbidly enough, by a Bush PAC that calls itself Right To Rise."
In addition to touting his high score with the NRA, the voice-over in Bushs new ad celebrates how then-Florida governor Bush fought time and again for the right to life," with an image of someone leaning over Schiavo, lying in a helpless vegetative state in her hospital bed.
And while the general electorate will likely recoil in horror at this kind of crass opportunism, Bush apparently hopes the Republican base will be shocked and awed as they are reminded of his role in forcing the irreversibly and profoundly brain-damaged Schiavo to cling to life in direct contravention of what her husband explained would have been her own desires, simply to bolster his credentials among the ghouls who demanded that the poor woman be kept resuscitated at all costs, no matter how much pain it caused to others. Because abortion or something.
The Schiavo episode served as a teachable moment for the rest of the country to see just how extreme the Republican Party could be in attempting to impose and enforce its twisted sense of values upon the rest of us. Schiavo, a Florida woman who lived in a medically irreversible, persistent vegetative state for 15 years, became a huge cause célèbre for social conservatives in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Although her husband insisted that his wife would not have wanted to live that way and would instead opt for euthanasia, her parents fought this course of action.
For anyone who may have forgotten, Bush, enabled by a GOP-dominated Florida State Legislature which had passed something called Terri's Law," spearheaded the effort to maintain Schiavos feeding tubes against multiple Court rulings. That law, and Jeb Bush's actions, were ultimately repudiated by a unanimous Florida Supreme Court.
This was a textbook example of right-wing overreach. One would have thought that Jeb Bush would have learned his lesson and avoided this episode like the plague.
At: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/01/28/1475883/-Jeb-Campaign-Pulls-The-Plug-On-Itself?detail=email
saltpoint
(50,986 posts)supporters in Cedar Rapids that he felt a moral injustice had been committed in the discontinuation of life support in the Schiavo case, and that a national re-evaluation was required, and that he would lead it.
"I will lead a team of the faithful to her grave and dig her up," Bush said. "She's still alive. I will put hands to shovel and burrow into God's dirt and bring Terri back to the community."
"Bush's remarks prompted a mixed response from the audience. Many clapped, some raising one hand to the heavens, while others turned to look at each other with what appeared to be bewildered expressions.
"And before I go," Bush continued, "anybody who wants one of my ceramic turtles, just stay on and my staff will make sure you get one. Turtles and Terri -- that's what my campaign is all about."
Turbineguy
(37,365 posts)for those able to learn.
xocet
(3,872 posts)forest444
(5,902 posts)I'd demand a refund!
saltpoint
(50,986 posts)surge for Jeb!'s campaign across the state?
This is a state whose Republican caucus-goers gave Rev. Pat Robertson a second-place finish in 1988 (placing behind Dole but beating Poppy Bush), gave Mike Huckabee a win in 2008, and gave Rick Santorum a narrow win in 2012.
How do things look for Jeb! in Iowa, a couple days out from the GOP caucus?
forest444
(5,902 posts)They'd able to field Jeb's junkie daughter, Noelle, and still win.
Miguel Recarey would presumably be appointed Medicare director.
saltpoint
(50,986 posts)a lot of secret opportunities for cheating, something the GOP is notably good at and famous for.
forest444
(5,902 posts)And fascists in other parts of the world already got their memo: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10026942187
saltpoint
(50,986 posts)forest444, but let me do a tangential tango for just a moment and praise your selection of Faulkner quotations.
Excellent.
forest444
(5,902 posts)Humanity, he warned, will be asked to not merely endure; but prevail.
He was a braver soul than I.
saltpoint
(50,986 posts)attempts as well.
Also the guy wrote pretty well. When they handed him the Nobel, they made a damn good decision.
forest444
(5,902 posts)While he always took care to disguise the characters, some of his works hit a little too close to home for some of them.
Then again, great men and local high society rarely get on well.
saltpoint
(50,986 posts)selling someone out, Joan Didion says, but on the other hand, those they write about leave themselves vulnerable to others' assessments.
If Hunter S. Thompson calls Chicago "a vicious, stinking zoo, a mean-grinning, mace-smelling boneyard of a city; an elegant rockpile monument to everything cruel and stupid and corrupt in the human spirit," I'm going to be taking a more careful look at the place.
I'm guessing the Chicago Chamber of Commerce wasn't a big fan of Thompson's work.
Good for Faulkner that he ruffled the right feathers.
forest444
(5,902 posts)His very talent turned all the local resentment against him into well-earned admiration.
If you're ever in Oxford, MS, in July, check out the annual Yoknapatawpha Conference in which academics sit down to discuss his work in a different context every year. I've only attended a couple; big sense of humor.
And definitely visit Square Books (facing the Reconstruction-era Courthouse). Although it was founded 17 years after Faulkner's death, I'd like to think it's exactly the kind of book shop he might have dreamed of in his day.