Jeb Bush announced his 2016 candidacy for President of the United States of America. Below are his remarks from dimension X, as prepared for delivery.
Thank you all very much. I always feel welcome at Miami-Dade College. This is a place that welcomes everyone with their hearts set on the future – a place where hard work and achievement used to lead to success. The campaign that begins today is about leaving nostalgia for that yesterday and its false hopes behind and seizing the heart of the future.
We are 17 long months from the time for choosing. The heart of America’s future is at stake. Our prosperity and our security rest in the balance of this opportunity for this nation and I call on every Republican to rise to the occasion.
Already, the choice is taking shape. The party now in the White House is planning a no-suspense primary, for a no-change election. To hold onto power. To slog on with the same agenda under another name: That’s our opponents’ call to action this time around. That’s all they’ve got left. That's all they've ever had - the ever expanding, ever controlling "nanny state" focused on sapping our national strength and weakening our moral resolve.
And you and I know that America deserves better. We know America is better. And if you think our Republican party is going to offer the same no-suspense primary, for a no-change election. To grab onto power. To slog on with the same old agenda under the same name that's been running the GOP since 1988 then you're wrong and I'm going to tell you why.
The Democrats have offered a "progressive agenda" that is rooted in reactionary fear and loathing. They are responsible for the slowest economic recovery ever, the biggest debt increases ever, a massive tax increase on the workers, the relentless buildup of the regulatory state, and the swift, mindless drawdown of a military that was generations in the making. They fear reform of policy perscriptions enacted in the 1930's and 1960's and they hate the vitality and power of Americas mighty heart - the decent, striving, patriotic American worker or as they like to call them "the middle class".
Hilary Clinton's husband, when he was president in the last millennia, spoke of "building a bridge to the 21st Century" and it turns out that he built that bridge so that his wife could reach back across the decades and keep her iron grip on 80 year old policies that no longer meet the needs of We the People.
I, for one, am not willing to live another 80 years under that kind of leadership.
The presidency should not be passed on from one liberal to the next, but it is. Year after year, election after election, decade after decade the framework established by FDR in 1932 has reigned supreme. The current administration in Washington DC is just the latest iteration of what we've come to expect, and since there are very few Americans with living memory of the USA before 1932, it is all we know. No Democrat will every seek to change it because it's their model and the Republicans in Washington DC have learned to live and prosper within it as gadflies and obstructionists.
Our country is on a very bad course. Our country is floating down a river of blood in an oversized, leaking old craft and approaching rapids that will capsize us and waterfalls that will destroy us. What are we going to do about it? Not much probably. Your overlords in Washington DC and the State House count on that actually. They know a dispersed and ineffectual "We" can never thwart their secure power and they will use every tool at their disposal to crush anyone who tries.
The question for me is: What am I going to do about it?
And I have decided.
I am a candidate for president of the United States.
I will take command of our future and once again the People in this country will be free.
I will lift our sagging spirit, make America great again, and make sure the world gets with the program - OUR program.
I will take Washington – the satanic capital of this dysfunctional country – and rock it to its foundations. They will learn the true meaning of creative destruction and they will atone, at long last, with the spirit of our founding documents and constitution.
I will champion free enterprise, free markets and free people.
I know I can do this. Not because I’ve done it here, in this great and diverse state that looks so much like America, I didn't. These challenges can not be overcome if we just get this economy growing at full strength because it will take more than that. My goal as president – four percent growth, and the 19 million new jobs that come with it but that won't be enough. Economic growth does makes a difference for hard-working men and women – who don’t need reminding that the economy is more than the stock market. Growth makes a difference for everyone but there will be more.
It will be done. But it's not enough.
When I was governor of this state Florida ranked number one in job creation and number one in small business creation. 1.3 million new jobs, 4.4 percent growth, higher family income, eight balanced budgets, and tax cuts eight years in a row that saved our people and businesses 19 billion dollars. All this plus a bond upgrade to Triple-A compared to the sorry downgrade of America’s credit in these years. That was the commitment, and that is the record but that was yesterday. I also used my veto power to protect our taxpayers from needless spending but the demand for more and more spending did not end. Today the special interests and the legislature are still demanding more spending, more good money after bad and all of it taken from your pocket.
Was what I did good enough? Did it have a lasting and significant impact on your lives and how government works in Florida? And if I am elected president, could I show Congress how that’s done? Would you want me too?
Leaders have to think big, and we’ve got a tax code filled with small-time thinking and self-interested politics. What swarms of lobbyists have done, we can undo with a vastly simpler system – clearing out special favors for the few reducing rates for all. But meddling with the tax code is, at best, a temporary fix.
What the IRS, EPA, and entire bureaucracy have done with overregulation, we can undo by act of Congress and order of the president. But again these "changes" will only be temporary and can quickly be reinstated by my successor.
Federal regulation has gone far past the consent of the governed. In fact, "the governed" have absolutely no say in who regulates them or how these agents of the bureaucratic state impact they're personal and professional lives.
It is time to bring these unaccountable rule-makers to heel with massive lay-offs and strict oversight by the congressional and executive branches of government.
When we get serious about limited government, we can pursue the great and worthy goals that America has gone too long without.
We can build our future on solvency instead of borrowed money.
We can honor our commitments on the strength of fiscal integrity.
With North American resources and American ingenuity, we can finally achieve energy security for this nation – and with presidential leadership, we can make it happen within a single term in office.
We will make the United States of America an economic superpower like no other.
We live in a political culture that has made lobbying the premier growth industry in the nation’s capital. The rest of the country struggles under big government, while comfortable, complacent interest groups in Washington have been thriving on it. A self-serving attitude can take hold in any capital, be it Washington, DC or Tallahassee.
I refuse to accept that as the normal or right way of conducting the people’s business.
I will not accept it as the standard in Washington.
We need a president willing to challenge and disrupt the whole culture in our nation’s capital.
I will be that president because I was a "reforming" governor, just another member of the club.
Passing off responsibility as governor and blaming the legislative crowd for failing and calling that success. Just like our current president does today. I've seen it from the inside and it ain't pretty.
As our whole nation has learned since 2008, executive experience is another term for preparation, but preparation for what? Legislators and executives run this country but without leadership and mission they just run it into the ground and make it a miserable place for too many of our people.
We are not going to clean up the mess in Washington by electing the people who either helped create it or have proven incapable of fixing it. In fact, we're not going to clean it up at all. We're going to burn it down and throw it in the dumpster and rebuild based on the magnificent designs created by our nations founders - The architects of American civilization.
In government, we must focus on big things and getting them right, we can't spin our wheels trying to make life better for millions of people, especially for kids in public schools. Think of what we all watched not long ago in Baltimore where so many young adults are walking around with no vision of a life beyond the life they know. Think of the waisted money our federal Department of Education has poured into Baltimore public schools over the past forty years and this is testament to their shameful results.It’s a tragedy played out over and over and over again.
When I was Governor, after we reformed education in Florida, low-income student achievement improved here more than in any other state. We stopped processing kids along as if we didn’t care – because we do care, and you don’t show that by counting out anyone’s child. You give them all a chance. But that engagement and care can only come from the local community where the students live and connect with real teachers, coaches and parents. Washington DC has nothing to do with it.
Here’s what I believe.
When a school is just another dead end, every parent should have the right to send their child to a better school – public, private, or charter. Every school should have high standards, and the federal government should have nothing to do with setting them. Nationwide, if I am president, we will take the power of choice away from the unions and bureaucrats and give it back to parents.
We made sure of something else in Florida – that children with developmental challenges got schooling and caring attention, just like every other girl and boy. We didn’t leave them last in line. We put them first in line because they are not a problem. They are a priority.
That is always our first and best instinct in this nation filled with charitable hearts. Yet these have been rough years for religious charities and their right of conscience. And the leading Democratic candidate recently hinted of more trouble to come. Secretary Clinton insists that when the progressive agenda encounters religious beliefs to the contrary those beliefs, quote, “have to be changed.” That’s what she said, and some might say, "thanks for the warning." But this is no warning about the future, this is a statement about conditions in our nation today.
One of many galling examples is the criminal treatment of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Christian charity that voiced objections of conscience to Obamacare and its mandate to provide contraception and abortion services. To nuns? When it comes down to "choice" imposed on the Little Sisters by Big Brother then I’m going side with my Sisters and put my Brother is a head lock until he screams for mommy.
It’s no mystery to me why, in these violent times, the president a few months ago thought it relevant at a prayer breakfast to bring up the Crusades. Americans don’t need lectures on the Middle Ages when we are dealing abroad with modern horrors committed by Islamic terrorist. But our president and his foreign-policy team have failed to be the peacemakers. Their phone-it-in foreign policy consists of drone strikes and clandestine subterfuge glossed over with shiny, false narratives happily copied and distributed by a supplicant national press corp. The Obama-Clinton-Kerry team is leaving a legacy of crises uncontained, violence unopposed, enemies unnamed, friends undefended, and alliances unraveling. It's a national disgrace in which the guardians of our public discourse, the press, are wholly and unashamedly complicate. Sighting moral equivalency with the Crusades is par for the course from a man who, frankly, would rather be golfing than protecting American citizens.
This supposedly risk-averse administration, gag, is also running us straight in the direction of the greatest risk of all - military inferiority. Due to his inability to negotiate with congress these military cuts will go on automatically until a president steps in to rebuild our armed forces and take care of our troops and our veterans. I will do it. We keep dependable friends in this world by being dependable ourselves.
This supposedly risk-averse administration, gag, is also running us straight in the direction of the greatest risk of all - military inferiority. Due to his inability to negotiate with congress these military cuts will go on automatically until a president steps in to rebuild our armed forces and take care of our troops and our veterans. I will do it. We keep dependable friends in this world by being dependable ourselves.
I will rebuild our vital friendships. That starts by standing with the brave, democratic State of Israel.
American-led alliances need rebuilding too, and better judgment is called for in relations far and near.
Ninety miles to our south, there is talk of a state visit by our outgoing president. But we don't need a glorified tourist to go to Havana in support of a failed Cuba. We need an American president to go to Havana in solidarity with a free Cuban people, and I am ready to be that president.
Great things like that can really happen. And in this country of ours, the most improbable things can happen. Take that from a guy who met his first president on the day he was born, and his second on the day he was brought home from the hospital. The person who handled both introductions is here today. She’s watching what I say – and frankly, with all these reporters around, I’m watching what she says. Please say hello to my wonderful Mom, Barbara Bush. Long before the world knew my parents' names, I knew I was blessed to be their son. The fact is that were it not for my family and the Bush name with it's long established network of political supporters and operatives there is probably not a chance in hell that I'd be standing here today announcing my bid for the presidency of the United States of America. Unfortunately our democracy has devolved into a kind of pseudo monarchy with courtiers and pretorian guards ensuring a stable, but unresponsive regime charged with leading the country. I've seen it from the inside and, as I say, it's been that way since my birth. And it's no better on left side of the isle - just look at who's lined up to be the Democrats candidate.
I found my own path. It led from Texas to Miami by way of Mexico. In 1971, 8 years before then-candidate Ronald Reagan said that we should stop thinking of our neighbors as foreigners, I was ahead of my time in cross-border outreach. Across a plaza, I saw a girl. She spoke only a little English. My Spanish was okay but not that great. With some intensive study, we got that barrier out of the way in a hurry. In Texas it is said that the best way to learn a foreign language is on your back and I bear witness to this sound advise.
In the short version, it has been a gracious walk through the years with the former Columba Garnica de Gallo. Whatever else I might or might not have going for me, I’ve got the quiet joy of a man who can say that his own wife is a friend. Ask Bill Clinton if he can say the same.
And together, we had the not-so-quiet joy of raising three children who have brought us happiness, tears, frustration and pride: George, Noelle, and Jeb.
The boys have also brought us more Bushes – their wives, Mandi and Sandra, and our grandchildren Georgia, Prescott, Vivian, and Jack. My single ambition in this campaign is to change the country is such a way than none of them will have to run for president and can be active, committed and free citizens in our great country.
Campaigns aren’t easy, and they’re not supposed to be. And I know that there are good people running for president. Too many, in fact. And not a one of us deserves the job by right of resume, party, seniority, family, or family narrative. But that is the current state of our republic - that is the political crisis of our age.
It’s nobody’s turn. It’s everybody’s test, and it’s wide open, right? Wrong!
It’s nobody’s turn. It’s everybody’s test, and it’s wide open, right? Wrong!
The outcome should be entirely up to you - the voters. It is entirely up to me to earn the nomination of my party and then to take our case all across this great and diverse nation. As a candidate, I intend to let everyone hear my message, including the many who can express their love of country in a different language:
Ayúdenos en tener una campaña que les da la bienvenida. Trabajen con nosotros por los valores que compartimos y para un gran futuro que es nuestro para construir para nosotros y nuestros hijos.
Júntense a nuestra causa de oportunidad para todos, a la causa de todos que aman la libertad y a la causa noble de los Estados Unidos de América.
In any language, my message will be an optimistic one because I am certain that we can make the decades just ahead the greatest time ever to be alive in this world.
That chance, that hope requires the best that is in us, and I will give it my all.
I will campaign as I would serve, going everywhere, speaking to everyone, keeping my word, facing the issues without flinching, and staying true to what I believe.
I will take nothing and no one for granted. I will run with heart.
I will run to win.
It begins here and now
And I’m asking for your vote.
But that's just happy talk and half of it was in Spanish which you probably didn't understand. The usual sugar water to help you swallow the bitter red pill of New Deal/Great Society conformity. Drink up if it makes you feel good, but know this, things are going to be different if I get elected president of this country and it's not going to be the bumbling, WASPy Bush oligarchy that you've grown accustom too. I love my Dad and Brother but their go along to get along "leadership" has put our country in a perilous position. There's a exclamation poin at the end of JEB! for a reason and I promise you that come January 2017, if you elect me president, you and all the world will know what that exclamation point stands for.
But that's just happy talk and half of it was in Spanish which you probably didn't understand. The usual sugar water to help you swallow the bitter red pill of New Deal/Great Society conformity. Drink up if it makes you feel good, but know this, things are going to be different if I get elected president of this country and it's not going to be the bumbling, WASPy Bush oligarchy that you've grown accustom too. I love my Dad and Brother but their go along to get along "leadership" has put our country in a perilous position. There's a exclamation poin at the end of JEB! for a reason and I promise you that come January 2017, if you elect me president, you and all the world will know what that exclamation point stands for.
Thank you. God Bless You.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/jeb-bush-2016-announcement-full-text-119023#ixzz48wbqtS00
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