Opinion: Jeb Bush, still not running, denies any family split with surging Rick Perry
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Speaking of Florida, the former Republican governor there, Jeb Bush, says he is still not running for the 2012 GOP nomination and he will, of course, support the party’s choice.
However, Bush told Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto this evening, he may be endorsing a candidate before the contest is settled.
And the two-term governor denies any split between his family and the Rick Perry wing of the Texas GOP:
I’ve never heard anyone in my family say anything but good things about Rick Perry. Not with my brother, my dad, not with me at all. I admire him and I think Texas has got a great story and he can legitimately talk about that story as a candidate for president.
Now the longest-serving governor in Lone Star State history, the 61-year-old Perry as lieutenant governor inherited the top office when George W. Bush resigned in December 2001 to become president.
Cavuto asked Bush to evaluate President Obama’s job performance, which has been sagging in recent polls:
I think the president was dealt a tough hand. He didn’t have the experience on how to deal with it. He made a mistake of outsourcing big policy decisions to Congress to Speaker Pelosi and her leadership team and that was a disaster. He’s made a situation that was bad worse. He is deserving of criticism for that. He’s not deserving of criticism of everything, the common cold all the way up the chain.
And Bush suggested some Obama opponents err when they ascribe bad motives to the Democrat. People want solutions, not personal attacks, he said.
Bush then brought the conversation back to the nation’s top economic issue: jobs.
I am neutral in the presidential race, but I am an admirer of Gov. Romney’s and I’m excited that he’s laying out a jobs agenda to set the agenda a little bit because the conversation needs to get to how do we grow so we can create jobs over a long period of time, not just short term. Every one of these things in Washington that’s been tried, Cash for Clunkers, home incentives and stuff like that, the net result is it gets a little burst and then it creates a worse problem. My guess is Gov. Romney will have a proposal that will be longer term and create sustained growth and the election ought to be about that so I’m excited that in September he’s launching that.
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-- Andrew Malcolm
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