President George W. Bush's famous statement "you can't fool me again" should serve as a reminder to Americans for what's on the line this election season. Ed Schultz goes through Mitt Romney's lies from last week's debate and sets the record straight.
Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, skewered Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team on Monday, saying their policies make his stomach turn.
Wilkerson took particular aim at John Bolton, former President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations—and now an adviser to Romney.
“The man scares me to death,” Wilkerson, a retired U.S. Army colonel told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz. “He would defeat all the enemies in America and the world—and believe me they’re plentiful—and he’d do it with everyone else’s blood. John is like Dick Cheney, never served a day in his life and wouldn't serve a day in his life … These people make me sick.”
Wilkerson’s harsh rhetoric comes on the heels of Romney’s foreign policy speech earlier in the day, in which the former Massachusetts governor laid out a hawkish approach.
Without offering much in the way of specifics, Romney vowed to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, go after terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate in Libya, and work to ensure Syrian rebels obtain arms to defeat Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
"Utterly unbelievable, Wilkerson said, blasting Romney as “operating on a Cold War music sheet.”
Asked about former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s endorsement of Romney’s speech, Wilkerson declared that Rumsfeld, one of the key architects of the Iraq War “has zero credibility with me and he’ll never regain it again.”
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George W. Bush is actually going to speak at an "investment" summit in the Cayman Islands only 5 days until the Presidential Election. This could mean bad news for Mitt Romney Come November 6th. MSNBC's Jonathan Alter weighs in on if Bush actually knows what he's doing to Romney.
What's the worst thing George "
Bush, ranked as the fifth-worst president in U.S. history by the Siena Research Institute of Siena College in 2010, is heading to the Cayman Islands. He's scheduled to deliver the keynote address at the Cayman Alternative Investment Summit on Grand Cayman on November 1, just five days before Election Day!
Bush's appearance, of course, will put the spotlight (again) on:
As you'll recall, Bush presided over the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, was the first former president since Richard Nixon to skip his party's first political convention after leaving office. And unlike Democrat Bill Clinton, he won't be actively campaigning for his party's presidential nominee during this year's campaign.
Why did Bush accept an invitation that obviously stabs Romney in the back? Maybe he's read the latest polls.
Mitt Romney has already been roundly criticized—and not just by liberals—for his politicized response to the Libyan crisis, in which he falsely accused the Obama administration of "sympathizing" with the Libyan attackers.
But as Ezra Klein pointed out while guest hosting The Ed Show Wednesday, it wasn't just that Romney got the facts wrong. The notion that the U.S. embassy in Egypt betrayed American values by putting out a statement condemning religious bigotry would have come as news to the Bush administration. Here's what President Bush's State Department spokesman said in response to the 2006 Danish cartoons that lampooned the Prophet Muhammed and sparked violent protests by Muslims around the world:
Anti-Muslim images are as unacceptable as anti-semitic images ... as anti-Christian images, or any other religious belief.
As The New York Times reported at the time, "a core mission of [the Bush administration's] foreign policy is to emphasize respect for Islam in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Indeed, as Klein went on to note, in May 2008, President Bush apologized to Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki after an American solider went on a shooting spree in Iraq. "He apologized for that, in the sense that he said that we take it very seriously, we were concerned about the reaction, we wanted them to know that the president knew that this was wrong..." White House press secretary Dana Perino said at the time.
In addition to his rash statement on the Libyan crisis, of course, Romney has falsely accused Obama of going on an "apology tour," seeking forgiveness from world leaders. Funny, there's no record of Romney raising a peep.
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Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan compares President Obama to Jimmy Carter in a speech in Greenville, N.C. Watch is entire speech.
GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan is calling former President Jimmy Carter's leadership "the good old days" compared to the last three-plus years under President Barack Obama.
"The president can say a lot of things and he will," Ryan told more than 2,000 supporters today in Greenville, North Carolina. "But he can't tell you that you're better off. Simply put, the Jimmy Carter years look like the good old days compared to where we are right now."
So the Romney-Ryan ticket is going to defeat Obama by comparing him to an 87-year-old former president who hasn't been in office for more than three decades?
Mr. Ryan, how 'bout we go back three years instead of three decades (to 2001-2009, definitely NOT known as "the good old days") and look at the last president before Obama, who also happens to be the last Republican president.
There, you find many reasons the Siena Research Institute of Siena College ranked George W. Bush as the fifth-worst president in U.S. history in 2010.
Here's a just a few samples:
Click here for a list of 400 (yes, 400!!) of Bush scandals.
What's on your list?
As the RNC celebrates the past terms of both President Bushes, the MSNBC panel debates the legacy that George W. Bush has left on the country.
"It's rough history for the country what the Bushes put us through, especially Bush 43," said Ed Schultz.
He continued: "Honesty is not a word that I put to George W. Bush. Just look at his budgeting process: wars off budget, Medicare, the tax cuts, all of those things."
Jeb Bush has some regrets about primary season. George W. Bush is still tanking in the polls, and you won't believe the fight caught on live TV in Greece.
A Meet the Press roundtable talks about former President George W. Bush's recent visit to the White House for a portrait-hanging ceremony
With the unveiling of the former president's official portrait last week, the GOP has apparently come up with another strategy to win the 2012 election: rehabilitate George W. Bush.
Just today, Jeb Bush went on CBS This Morning and said his older brother will be "admired for his determination and fortitude.”
“There’s a fine line between stubbornness and the positive side of that, which is dogged determination," said Bush, the former governor of Florida. "And I think what people will begin to see is that he wasn't stubborn. He was totally determined and principled about it. And the country was safer because of it. That will be the positive legacy of George W. Bush."
Bush even said he thought President Obama should give his big brother a "little tip of the hat" for his leadership on national security and foreign affairs.
"I would argue in some ways, by reality seeping into his life as commander in chief, that a lot of [Obama’s foreign policy] is modeled after [Bush] 43," Bush said. "It would be nice — a little tip of the hat would be a nice thing."
But wait, it was President Obama who tracked down Osama bin Laden and 18 other al Qaeda top commanders and got us out of that mess in Iraq!
OK, nobody can blame Jeb for sticking up for a family member. But back in April, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) declared Bush did a "fantastic" job as president. Really!?!?
Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Sunday refused to explain how a potential Romney administration would be different from George W. Bush's administration, but insisted that the last Republican president "did a fantastic job" and his brother, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL), would be a "fantastic vice president."
"I haven't gone through the comparison," Rubio told CNN's Candy Crowley. "I think that presidents serve in different times with different challenges. And so I think that George W. Bush, in my opinion, did a fantastic job as president over eight years, facing a set of circumstances during those eight years that are different from the circumstances that a President Romney would face."
Last week, Jeb Bush told Newsmax that he would "consider" a vice presidential nomination, but suggested Rubio was "probably the best" choice.
"Well, that's very nice of Jeb," Rubio said on Sunday. "I hope he'll say yes if future President Romney asks him," adding that the former Florida governor would be a "fantastic vice president."
Either way, the effort to rehabilitate Bush isn't going to work.
A brand new (CNN/ORC International) poll shows that even with three-plus years out of office, Bush is the most unpopular living former president, with only 43% of people surveyed with a favorable opinion (54% viewed him unfavorably).
The low positive rating puts Bush far behind his fellow living ex-presidents, including Jimmy Carter (54%), Dubya’s father, George H.W. Bush (59%) and Bill Clinton (66%).
And don't forget what the experts say about Bush's presidency. Three major surveys of presidential scholars, historians and political scientists rank Bush as the second worst president in the past 135 years (eclipsed only by Republican Warren G. Harding who served in the early 1920s).
Indeed, the Siena Research Institute of Siena College surveyed 238 presidential scholars, historians and political scientists in 2010 and ranked Bush as the fifth worst U.S. president of all-time, behind Andrew Johnson, James Buchanan, Harding and Franklin Pierce.
We do wish former President Bush all the best personally. But Republicans should not try to waste time trying to convince the country that it benefited from the Bush presidency.
Ed will have a lot more to say about the legacy of George W. Bush tonight on The Ed Show at 8pET on MSNBC with Joy Reid, Susan Del Percio and Thom Hartman.
AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
President Bush, right, shakes hands Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at a Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign fundraising event in Boston Thursday, March 25, 2004.
Finally, Mitt Romney got the endorsement he's been waiting for most all these months!
"I'm for Mitt Romney," former President George W. Bush told ABC News this morning as the doors of an elevator closed on him following a speech he delivered at a human rights forum a block from the White House.
There you have it: with four words, you have the most-prized endorsement possible if you're running for the GOP presidential nomination.
But where's the press release? Where's the big photo op? Where's the handshake? Romney did all those things with the likes of Donald Trump. Watch it:
As Dana Carvey use to say while imitating Bush's father, "not gonna do it." Watch it:
Why? Because Bush still has a long, long way to go to improve his legacy.
In three major surveys since he left office in 2009, Bush is ranked anywhere from the fifth-worst (by the Siena Research Institute) to the tenth-worst (United States Presidency Centre in London) U.S. president ever. Siena gave Bush poor ratings for his handling of the economy, communication, ability to compromise, foreign policy accomplishments and intelligence.
In these rankings, Bush is compared to past presidents like Millard Fillmore, John Tyler, Franklin Pierce, Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester A. Arthur. Of that group, only two were actually elected to the office (Pierce and Hayes). The other three rose to the presidency as vice presidents upon the death of the previous president. And none - none of them were elected to a second term.
In the aggregate, Bush is the second lowest rated president since 1877 (only Warren G. Harding, who served from 1921 to 1923, is rated lower).
Good company Mr. Bush!
OK, ok, so Romney says he's going to be different from Bush, right?
No, again "not gonna do it."
Here's what RNC spokesperson Alexandra Franceschi said in a mid-April interview on The Fernando Espuelas Show about Romney’s approach to the economy:
REPORTER: Now, how different is that concept from what were the policies of the Bush administration? ... Is this a different program or is this that program just updated?
FRANCESCHI: I think it’s that program, just updated.
Listen to the interview:
Also, Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein recently compared Bush’s platform in 2000 with Romney’s 2012 proposals and concluded that "Republicans have mostly coalesced around the same set of ideas."
And a recent New York Times column by Nobel Prize winning economist and Princeton University Economics Professor Paul Krugman described Romney as "the amnesia candidate."
"Romney is essentially advocating a return to those very same Bush policies," Krugman wrote. "And he’s hoping that you don’t remember how badly those policies worked."
In fact, Romney's "updated" Bush positions fall substantially to the right of Bush in many key areas, including tax policy, campaign finance, education, Medicare, minimum wage and the environment.
Still not convinced? Romney also has almost the exact same advisors as Bush did, including Ed Gillespie, R. Glenn Hubbard and Greg Mankiw.
With these Bush "updated" policies in place and all those Bush people on Romney's team, what could possibly go wrong?
