Jeb Bush Speaks to College Republicans

“I am deeply disturbed by what’s going on in our country right now, because I think it’s altering who we are as a nation,” said Jeb Bush, former Florida Governor, at a GW College Republicans event entitled “Republican Solutions for a Stronger America” on Wednesday in Jack Morton Auditorium.

Bush offered a six point plan to Republican resurgence that alternatively criticized the current administration and Republicans currently in the minority. He focused his plan toward solutions for a stronger Republican Party, while completing avoiding any mention of Obama’s predecessor, Jeb Bush’s older brother, George W. Bush.

Bush challenged the current administration on their new take on international politics.

“Just think about change of policy, it is now more important to get along with countries rather than lead them,” he said.

He criticized the Obama administration’s position on the Honduran presidential crisis in particular. “This is the only time I can remember, where official American policy is to deny a free election as a sovereign country’s means of deciding its’ president,” Bush said.

Bush spoke extensively about the need for his party to become friendlier to minorities and young people which are typically Democrat-leaning demographics.

“The tone of our message needs to change,” Bush says, in regard to the Republican stance on immigration. “I’m sensitive to it,” he said, explaining that his wife is Mexican. “If you listen to the rhetoric, what I hear is ‘them and us.’ In politics you never win when people hear ‘them and us.’”

”Our message needs to be more youthful,” he said, criticizing the Republican party for not modernizing. “If young people are turned off because our message is old and stale then that does not work.”

Within his six point plan the governor spoke passionately of the need for education reform. Jen Goldstein ’11, a Florida resident, asked Bush to address criticism that the high stakes standardized tests create an environment that narrows the focus in the classroom to passing the test. In defense of Florida’s testing system, FCAT, Bush said, “it’s the only way you know you are improving.”

“I thought he was very candid,’ says Travis Holler, Political Affairs Director of GW College Republicans. “He was a different type of speaker in the sense that he doesn’t hold public office, he’s on the outside looking back.”

“I thought it was extremely moving because it was very unlike the radical Republicans that you see on TV,” said Ernesto Apreza, ’11.

“A vibrant party should be forward looking rather than nostalgic about the good old days,” Bush said as part of his six point plan. “That is not to say that we should abandon our conservative principles but those principles need to be applied to create twenty-first century solutions….Republicans need to be a national party that is for everybody.”