r/politics • u/Newsweek_ShaneC ✔ Verified - Newsweek • 15h ago
No Paywall George W. Bush's brother trashes Paxton, says he voted for Talarico
https://www.newsweek.com/george-w-bush-brother-neil-votes-for-james-talarico-trashes-ken-paxton-125973831.6k
u/Ecstatic-Plantain234 15h ago
Makes sense, the entire Bush family seems to despise Trump. To quote George Bush Jr. after the first inauguration: "That was some weird shit".
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u/LurksAroundHere 14h ago
Even Victor Frankenstein was like maybe this was a bad idea...
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u/akhenatron 10h ago
Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a five foot eleven inch long, fifty-four inch wide MANGO?
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u/Nothos927 13h ago
Perhaps but half of Trump's gang of sycophants got their start under Bush and frankly he deserves a decent chunk of the blame for creating the political conditions that ultimately lead the US down the path to Trump.
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u/Aliensinnoh Massachusetts 12h ago edited 11h ago
Somehow, the two worst members of the Supreme Court are not Trump appointees, but rather one each from both of the Bushes.
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u/V_T_H 11h ago
Roberts, Boof, and ACB all assisted Bush’s legal team in Bush vs. Gore to decide the Florida vote issue.
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u/bejammin075 Pennsylvania 3h ago
Gore was too conservative to inspire the liberal base, which in the end was why he couldn't lick Dick and Bush.
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u/SwiftlyChill 7h ago
Biden deserves some of the blame for Thomas as well as he chaired his confirmation hearings.
Obviously he wasn’t the most to blame for Thomas’ appointment, but the Anita Hill stuff was managed horribly and Biden shoulders his share of responsibility for that.
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u/KiraHarmonie 15h ago
that’s a major shift! Even the Bushes are tired of Trump’s antics.
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u/Ecstatic-Plantain234 15h ago edited 14h ago
They were already tired of Trump before he got elected the first time. No living president has ever endorsed Trump or voted for him.
I believe the Bushes sat out the election of 2016 and I'm pretty sure they voted blue in 2020 and 2024.
Edit: I just heard on the news that Barbara Bush has donated to Talarico's campaign. We know who she'll be voting for, although I don't know if she still lives in Texas?
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u/wrosecrans 6h ago
To quote George Bush Jr. after the first inauguration: "That was some weird shit".
And his first inauguration was literally his youngest/healthiest, least dementia addled moment in his entire political career, when he was most capable of forming coherent sentences and following a train of thought.
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u/LoudWhenSilent239 15h ago
A Bush voted for a democrat, hell must have frozen over.
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u/patterninstatic 15h ago
The Bush dynasty has no love for Trump.
Bush sr. voted for Hillary in 2016.
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u/Top-Cheesecake8232 12h ago
It came out somewhere that Bush Sr. used to throw his house slippers at the tv whenever Trump was on.
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u/RandyChavage 8h ago
Is that how Bush Jr got good at dodging slippers?
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u/Top-Cheesecake8232 7h ago
Nobody will ever convince me he didn't find that amusing.
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u/LifeOfFrey Oregon 7h ago
I just rewatched the clip for old times' sake. Bush absolutely has a bigass grin after dodging the second shoe.
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u/alabasterskim 14h ago
Damn really? I didn't know that!
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u/victorinseattle Washington 14h ago
One of W's daughters (Barbara) has donated to Talarico's campaign too.
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u/pimparo0 Florida 14h ago
I thought it was his wife?
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u/buffysmanycoats Connecticut 14h ago
George HW Bush and his wife Barbara are both dead, and have been for years. The living Barbara Bush is GWB’s daughter, and she’s been liberal since forever. So is her sister Jenna. GWB’s wife is Laura Bush.
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u/pimparo0 Florida 13h ago
huh for some reason I thought Barbara was Dubyas wife name, mixing up my Bushes.
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u/jazzieberry Mississippi 9h ago
Chelsea Handler is good friends with his daughters, and has a hilarious story about going to their ranch and is high off edibles when GWB shows up unexpectedly and starts showing her all of his paintings. It's a great bit.
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u/Batetrick_Patman 10h ago
He refused to attend the inauguration too and just 2 weeks later was at the Super Bowl.
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u/risingsuncoc 14h ago edited 10h ago
Curious are there still any members of the Bush dynasty left in office? Last I heard was George P Bush as Texas Land Commissioner
Edit: rather coincidentally, George P Bush lost the 2022 GOP primary for Texas Attorney General to Ken Paxton
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u/MrAshleyMadison Florida 13h ago
Jonathan Bush ran in the Republican primary for Governor in Maine this year. Lost.
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u/gloryday23 12h ago
Careful there, GWB was on the phone pushing for Trumps justices. Yes some of them have shown some degree of opposition, but not all. I only say this to make sure we are clear about the family as a whole.
Also, Bush Sr may have voted for Hillary in 16, but he's still a massive piece of shit and hugely responsible for where we are as a nation today.
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u/Empty_Lemon_3939 Michigan 10h ago
No one is arguing the Bush's aren't shit heels that are a reason this all happened, but it does highlight there is a line for a lot of republicans
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u/gloryday23 10h ago
My friend, I don't think you are, but a SHIT LOAD of people do in fact argue that very thing, lol!
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u/EnrichVonEnrich 9h ago
I’m not sure about that. I’d put Reagan, Atwater, Gingrich, Rove, Jerry Falwell, Kevin Phillips and a whole slew of others ahead of George HW Bush in that respect.
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u/GrumpyCloud93 7h ago
Supposedly the whole family, especially HW, were annoyed that George got the nomination over Jeb. They recognized who was the intellectually challenged one in the family.
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u/DjangusRoundstne 14h ago
I mean Dick Cheney endorsed Harris, which I think is more surprising.
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u/HydroLoon 14h ago
Yeah I remember the Reddit hate train torching her for being nice to Liz lol
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u/mister_mediocrates 14h ago
Liz "abortion is pure evil" Cheney? You're damned right people torched Harris for that.
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u/loondawg 13h ago
And example of lack of any nuance causing problems.
Harris did not adopt Cheney's policies. She worked with her because Cheney was pushing the message that it was okay for republicans to not vote for Trump. There was nothing wrong with that at all.
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u/Cute-Ad2879 14h ago
If the last two years have taught anything, building a coalition against Trump was more important than getting mad over that.
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u/HydroLoon 14h ago
Ding ding ding. Also; two years? It's been 10 years since Democrats first didn't learn that lesson
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u/LostMyInvite 14h ago
Democrats are the new Republicans. Republicans are the new Fascists. Dem-Socialists are the new Democrats.
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u/FilthyCasual2k17 14h ago
I kinda feel like this was very much the case for many decades, it's just that people stopped pretending, so those in cheaper seats caught on.
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u/Friendly_Molasses532 12h ago
I mean I grew up traditional conservative with the values of if no one is bothering me or hurting me let them do there thing and let there be less government in my life. The democrats are forsure that party for me. Specifically (I’m in Texas) James talarico represents everything I stand for.
Also I’m upper middle class and don’t expect much from the government but I’m pretty annoyed that I’m paying more than my fair share on taxes and my public schools are getting funding cut but hey I saved a cool 300$ on my tax returns.
It’s be nice if we didn’t have the war with Iran and used that money to give a public option for childcare or had more federal money going to our public schools towards are biggest investment our kids.
Anyway point being I was republican till trump and I’m independent now but I have only voted Democrat since 2020
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u/diefreetimedie 9h ago
Public option was always a scam to appease people who would still get screwed by the insurance mafia. Get on that single payer bus, if we can all negotiate together and the in-network bs ends, the madness will cease.
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u/AriaTheTransgressor 14h ago
While the right has been working on this moment since at least Reagan, they were never as far-right as they are right now.
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u/Pegasus7915 13h ago
Try Nixon
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u/AriaTheTransgressor 13h ago
The words "at least since" were chosen because they allow for this expansion, but I don't know if Nixon was intentional on behalf of the party at large, just might have been the catalyst to set them on the path.
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u/gel_ink 8h ago
Watergate is the catalyst for why Fox News started. Roger Ailes was one of Nixon's advisors, went on to start Fox News with Rupert Murdoch, because they wanted a conservative network that would prevent a president from being taken down due to bad press coverage (like Nixon got over Watergate). It's a pretty well documented catalyst. There are also people like Roger Stone who served Nixon during Watergate that went on to work with Reagan and then Trump. Absolutely a continuous throughline there.
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u/Big_Department4209 Europe 13h ago
Not really, the Overton window really shifted. Not only in the USA, since the 90s and neoliberalism taking hold all major political winds shifted right-wing even in countries traditionally very social-democratic (like us here in the Nordics, the Third Way of Social Democracy completely shifted them to embrace bits and pieces of neoliberal agenda).
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u/DaenakinSkygaryen 13h ago
Which policies have the Democrats actually shifted right on since 1990? Because from where I'm sitting, thr party has massively shifted to the left on both economic and social issues since then. (And to be clear, that's a great thing!)
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u/Ruleoflawz 13h ago
I’m no political historian or economist, but didn’t NAFTA and many of Clinton’s economic regulation policies part ways the goals of labor/unions? I feel like ‘white collar’ unions are still democrat, but look at what happened to blue collar unions.
Don’t really have the full context and vocab for this, but this is my vibe about it.
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u/PantsB 11h ago
Put most simply, no. NAFTA was at its core the reduction of tariffs between the US, Canada and Mexico. Union labor in the US was already well in decline and populist appeals to create a protectionist state that would prop up manufacturing in the US were both doomed and not liberal/left as Trump's policies show.
But generations of people shitting on Democrats and social media encouraging that create that vibe.
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u/specialvillain 11h ago edited 11h ago
I feel like mainstream Dems have been the only real consistent political bloc for most of my life. Those to the right of them have always called them leftist lunatics/communists and those to the left of them have always called them fascists/nazi enablers when really they are just kind of a milquetoast faction that has always tried (and mostly failed) to reconcile basic decency with corporate interests. Chuck Schumer for instance, doesn't seem dramatically more right or left than Jimmy Carter was.
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u/Over-Nothing5007 12h ago
I think this is an obnoxious and self defeating sentiment from people on the left. Any democrat president wouldn’t have put the likes of Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett on the SC and you’d still have Roe.
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u/Successful-Box6148 10h ago
The reference point for this statement is pre-Trump, likely pre-Obama even, maybe even pre-Bush Jr. The republicans who put Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett on the SC are the ones being referred to as fascists here. The democrats of today are being compared to pre-Trump republicans. The point is that everything has shifted further to the right: republicans went from conservative to fascist and the democrats went from liberal to conservative, giving the DSA the room to fill the space of a more left-wing party.
Now I don't agree with this statement entirely, but they're onto something. The democrats are still splintered I would say. The establishment dems are definitely more conservative, where the younger democrats are still more liberal/leftist. It's more complicated, but as a generalization I don't think this is exactly incorrect
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u/jbaker1225 7h ago
The republicans who put Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett on the SC are the ones being referred to as fascists here
Those 3, particularly Coney-Barrett and Gorsuch, are much more moderate than Alito or Thomas, who have been on the court for decades longer.
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u/Successful-Box6148 7h ago
Certainly one of the more nuanced disagreements I have with the original take, yeah. I would say that really the GOP transition from conservatism to fascism began around Nixon and Reagan, became pretty much irreversible around Bush Jr. and has reached its final stages with Trump. Until around the past decade, you could say that only some portion of the GOP were fascists, but the trend from Nixon to now is that they keep sliding to the extreme, starting with more behind the scenes players and getting more and more mainstream. By the time you get to Alito and Thomas, the work of the Heritage Foundation had pretty well cemented the trajectory of the party, considering just how much influence those two have exercised over the years. Once you get to Trump, his Supreme Court appointments might not be exactly as ideologically radical as Alito and Thomas, but they don't need to be, they still helped overturn Roe v Wade, and they are aiming at other important precedent and enabling Trump's corruption.
I think it's hard to really map it out so simply as "the democrats of today are yesterday's republicans" but it is a decently close shorthand for the more complicated "democrats have played a very long and dangerous game of constantly sliding into what they think is the middle, while the republicans have constantly marched further towards the right, thus shifting what the 'middle' is, resulting in the entire political landscape moving ever rightward"
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u/gibbersganfa South Dakota 11h ago
This sub is full of bots and bad faith actors pushing divisive rhetoric in an attempt to discourage voting on the left.
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u/juanzy Colorado 10h ago
Seriously. Not a single viable Democrat is worthy of a party nomination according to this sub, yet ones polling at hundreds of votes are “our best hope”
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u/james_d_rustles 5h ago
I can’t stand most reddit political subs these days, it’s just constant rewriting of history and “both sides” nonsense and meaningless populist slop rhetoric.
Every time, a post will have some title like ”Trump signs executive order banning all books, appoints Grok to lead education department”, and the top comments will all be like
complain about Kamala Harris and Liz Cheney for some reason despite neither of them being involved in any way to the post in question
extrapolate mamdani’s win in a +50 blue city to every congressional district in the nation, democrats are corrupt/stupid for not understanding that
2016 Bernie grievances
vague conspiracy about Israel being at the center of every single domestic policy issue
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u/CronWrath 12h ago
And how long did Republicans say that Roe was settled law and they weren't trying to overturn it? Normal Republicans from 20 years ago also probably would have put a more centrist SC judge and not The Boofer or Handmaid's Tale Barrett. I think you're actually demonstrating that the current Republicans are worse, which supports the original commentor's point. Democrats are far better than Republicans, but they've shifted the Overton Window quite a ways to the right and Socialist-Dems are the new left which align more with the global left.
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u/Any_Will_86 11h ago
Souter was the last Centrist judge nominated by an R and they viewed that as a mistake. O'Connor shifted more centrist over time and with different issues emerging but was still a conservative pick in her day. Alito was entirely right-wing and conservatives always knew Roberts was more conservative than the image he cultivated.
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u/Imaginary-cosmonaut 11h ago
Yep. Im sure the old repubs would have allowed LGBT rights, Roe to stand uncontested and never engaged in voter manipulation like Gerrymandering.
The Left here on reddit is young, and have this perception that everything was better in the land before their political consciousness. Bush killed a million Iraqis, Reagan sped up the drain of the middle class, not to mention everything with the Aids epidemic.
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u/Bag_of_Meat13 9h ago
The overton window shifted right just based on the fact that I saw trolling go from "teehee racism" to "Hitler wasn't the bad guy, I'm serious" in less than a decade.
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u/Tricky-Engineering59 14h ago
I’ve often thought about what a better place this country would be if our two party system only swung as far to the right as 3rd way type Dems.
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u/Specialist_Set_1666 13h ago
It's like that meme: "The Democrats of today are the Republicans of my youth. The Republicans of today are the villains from Captain Planet"
It just keeps getting truer
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u/Crying-Manchild 14h ago
Politicians have been shifting to the right for as long as I can remember, to the point the Democratic party is now more in line with what the Republican party was when I was a kid. At the same time the populace has remained mostly stable or perhaps a slight shift to the left.
So here we are with a wildly out of touch government that is able to continue because of the billionaire class. While we struggle against the machine for scraps
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u/frontfrontdowndown 12h ago
The GOP when I was a kid fired the air traffic controllers, sent weapons to Iran, illegally appropriated money for right wing paramilitaries in Central America, invaded Panama and Grenada, cut taxes on corporations while cutting funding for mental health care, ignored HIV, passed multiple racist policies on drugs and crime, and massively deregulated multiple industries.
What part of that have the Democrats become?
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u/ElectronicTap1109 14h ago
What exact policies have the democrats changed on then
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u/ITAVTRCC 13h ago
Embrace of national security/Patriot Act/surveillance state, tax cuts, privatization, and deregulation, abandonment of labor unions and climate change all come to mind.
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u/travoltaswinkinbhole Texas 13h ago
They’re full of shit. Democrats have basically either stayed put or move slightly left in the 30 years or so I’ve be politically aware while the right has hit the gas and speed to the far right.
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u/Basic_Reflection4008 13h ago
America as a whole had moved right ward on any kind of regulation of businesses and taxation. The democrats moved to the center after Reagan's sweeping electoral success instead of doubling down on new deal policies that actually helped both the American working class and the economy in general
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u/Winterwasp_67 15h ago
I don't think he is the first or only one.
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u/Platonic_Eye_Deal 15h ago
Yeah, George W Bush was not a good man but he wasn't an outright trairoe piece of shit so I expect he had not been voting for trump or his disciples.
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u/FEMA_Camp_Survivor America 15h ago
It has indeed. As terrible as W. was, I’d bet Democrats would probably prefer him over what we have now.
To those who must ask can things get worse, the answer is yes. It’s always yes.
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u/ringobob Georgia 14h ago
There's no question. Bush deserves plenty of blame for paving the path to this point, more by the people he empowered than himself, seemingly, but he at least took the responsibility to the country seriously, and he didn't completely gut the federal government in order to install loyalists.
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u/zulruhkin 13h ago
Despite policy differences Bush actually did what he thought was in the best interest of American people.
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u/Master_Megalomaniac 14h ago
Dubya ultimately laid the ground work for Trump's rise, Trump wasn't some demon who came out of nowhere, without the Iraq War and the 2008 economic crash, there wouldn't be a Trump Presidency.
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u/Platonic_Eye_Deal 14h ago
Oh yeah, I would absolutely prefer him over this. Any day of the goddamn week.
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u/movezig123 13h ago
Having W in today's world yes, going back to W in W's world. Fuck no.
That was a far more evil time. At least today people are awake to what's happening.
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u/FoolishConsistency17 13h ago
Paxton has personally screwed over far more Republicans than Democrats. Democrats don't have enough power in this state to be worth it. The objection to Ken Paxton is to the person, not the ideology, and it seems that the closer you are to the man, the more horrified you get.
Its like how people in a profession will often be the first to jump in to defend others in the same profession if they are accused of wrong doing, because they know what looks simple from the outside is actually more complicated. But then those same fellow professionals will sometimes be the most enraged about something because they know there are some absolute lines that everyone knows not to cross.
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u/Tandy2000 12h ago edited 12h ago
Bush Sr. openly stated that he hated Trump and that he voted for Clinton in 2016. Barbara Bush said she didn't consider herself a Republican anymore. Just to be clear, I'm not defending them because both of them sucked shit and were terrible people. For them and a lot of older Republicans/former Republicans who hate Trump, them despising him comes more from his total lack of manners and decency than from his policies, which they often align with (this is also why many Republicans still voted for him in 2024 even though they openly disliked him).
Bush Jr. never voted for Trump either but didn't vote Democrat either (in 2016 he said he left his ballot blank for a presidential candidate and in 2020 he wrote in Condoleeza Rice (who isn't a Democrat obviously but she is a centrist and has repeatedly criticized Trump). In 2024 he didn't endorse any candidates and made it clear he wasn't voting for Trump but didn't say who he would vote for if anybody.
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u/TurboSalsa Texas 10h ago
Now that Texas Republicans have owned all the libs and the issues the state was facing didn't magically resolve themselves, they have turned on each other in the search for new scapegoats.
The Bush family features prominently in their conspiracy theories as the shadowy puppet masters who secretly control any Republican who opposes Tim Dunn's wing of the party (of whom Paxton is the most prominent politician) for whatever reason. It's pretty thin gruel, as no member of the family has been in elected office in Texas since George P. Bush's term as land commissioner ended 4 years ago, and W has been mostly fucking off in Dallas and hosting the occasional fundraiser.
So it wouldn't surprise me for members of the family who've been blamed for undermining all the TX GOP's crazy plans to take this vote personally.
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u/OK6502 11h ago
Trump has pulled the Republicans so far right that some amount of the more centre right (by american standards anyway) Republicans have migrated to Democrats, who have pulled right themselves.
There's no left in the US. The DSA is trying to bring that back but IDK how likely that will be to work. In all likely hood we're probably looking at the death of the Republicans, the Democrats taking the conservative flank and some new party taking up the left sometime in the future.
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u/HelloPeopleOfEarth 15h ago
If Texas votes for Paxton, they are essentially voting for the Epstein-Class. Elon Musk has pumped hundreds of millions into just this single senate seat. The worlds richest man is trying to buy and own a Senator. Texas, you better do the right thing.
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u/Free-Way-9220 14h ago
I am not American, but I hope Vladimir Putin's party loses the House and the Senate. The decisions that Trump makes affect all of us around the world. Unfortunately there are some good poll numbers coming in the last few days for Paxton
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u/IamBrian2 14h ago
Musk and the other fuck ass tech dorks already own many senators
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u/tehbantho 13h ago
We know that. Thanks for pointing it out again for the idiots that keep electing it. Anyone capable of reading your comment already knows supporting another bought and paid for Senate candidate is a stupid decision. Sadly those that cannot read and are suffering from lead poisoning mental deficiency will continue to vote for bad people just because they are Republican and not Democrat.
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u/Naive-Elephant-9305 12h ago
I’ve never had any faith in Texas to actually do the right thing but I’m hoping this is finally the time they actually do.
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u/Unusual_Sherbert_809 8h ago
We lived in Texas for a decade. Having faith that things would change is why we stayed that long. And they did change… for the worse.
The sad reality is that you’ll rarely lose money by betting against the Democrats in Texas.
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u/dodrugzwitthugz 11h ago
If Paxton wins I'm calling BS on the results. I'm in the middle of deep red rural Texas and the amount of hate and disgust towards him I'm seeing from lifelong, die hard republicans is frankly unheard of.
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u/Gdigger13 Ohio 8h ago
Don't count on it.
As much as it would be nice, remember, Reddit is an echo chamber.
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u/Newsweek_ShaneC ✔ Verified - Newsweek 15h ago
Former President George W. Bush’s brother, Neil Bush, has revealed he voted for Democratic candidate James Talarico for U.S. Senate in Texas, calling President Donald Trump's bid to overturn the 2020 election "an affront to our democratic institutions."
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u/specialkk77 14h ago
Pretty rich considering all this shit is a direct readily of the actions of the Republicans of the last 50 years. Including Bush V Gore in 2000. Talk about the affront to democratic institutions….
Good for him at least. Texas I don’t have high hopes but I want to be optimistic.
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u/Motor_Somewhere7565 14h ago
I read that and was like, “couldn’t be Jeb.” If it had been, I’d clap for him just this once
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u/SolarBoyDjango 13h ago
LOL! I had the same thought as well. Jeb is a moron, so it couldn't have been him.
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u/FLtoVT_For-A-Reason 14h ago
I’m not sure how any reasonable person could have stayed in the Republican Party after the last 11 years. That being said, it’s good to see that some that remained are seeing the light.
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u/Top-Cheesecake8232 12h ago
Almost my entire extended family has stayed in the Republican party and some have even doubled down. My brother is now on Facebook carrying on about how we need an electoral college to decide statewide elections.
They think I'm the unreasonable one.
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u/AlliedR2 11h ago
Knowing Barbara Bush donated to Talarico's campaign I think we are seeing what long time republicans think of Paxton and how this is playing out with those who are not as much in the public eye. Paxton's fucked (as he should be).
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u/taylorbagel14 10h ago
Barbara Bush has always been a lowkey liberal, one of her best friends is queer and apparently her mom had to ban LGBTQ rights as a dinner table talking point because she and her dad would get into such heated arguments that one or both would leave. Barbara has BEEN a real one
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u/AverageJoeJohnSmith 14h ago
As fucked up as the Bush/Cheney types were, at least they did bad shit within the framework of the governmental norms. as bad as that sounds lol. We've never seen anything like whats going on in the US right now
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u/zeroman987 14h ago
Believe it or not those people were actually pretty popular until about 2005ish.
People don’t want to admit it, but the awful stuff they did had popular support. I remember arguing with a classroom of people that a pre emptive attack on Iraq was a terrible idea, and we shouldn’t do it. It was like 20 against 1. Even the teacher argued with me in support of Bush. 4ish years later I got a Facebook message from a classmate who let me know his time as a young Republican was over and that I was right. Keep in mind that Bush spent like 12-18 months trying to build support for this. People were all-in on Iraq - I saw it with my own two eyes.
It doesn’t excuse their behavior, but when something is popular it’s hardly surprising when politicians do the popular thing.
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u/Zoraji 11h ago
I was the only one at work that opposed the Iraq war. I said that anytime you invade another country you will be the enemy, no matter how good your intentions. My coworkers said it would be over in a matter of weeks.
I was pretty much ostracized at work after that. No longer invited out to lunch and such. None ever admitted they were wrong when the war stretched on for years.
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u/zubbs99 Nevada 10h ago
I never demonstrate or do anything like that, but the one time I did was marching against the war several times. I remember being with all these other people who just knew it was a terrible idea and it seemed like maybe someone would listen.
Then I'd go home and turn on the news and see all the pro-war enthusiasm. My heart would sink since I knew it would be a disaster. All these years later I don't recall any of the principal actors ever admitting they were wrong about anything.
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u/AverageJoeJohnSmith 14h ago
I agree. The vibe post 9/11 was "attack anyone who looks at us wrong" lol. but my point was simply that they did all their dirt and still followed the typical norms within government. The leve of corruption we are seeing now makes Haliburton look like childs play. And so many Americans have the "it can't happen here" mentality so this is going to WAY worse before it gets better.
I don't think people truly understand how big of a mess these midterms will be
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u/Tandy2000 12h ago
I remember arguing with a classroom of people that a pre emptive attack on Iraq was a terrible idea, and we shouldn’t do it. It was like 20 against 1. Even the teacher argued with me in support of Bush.
In the US, sure. It was because US jingoism was at an all-time high, people were still raging from 9/11 and wanted to take it out on any Middle Eastern country they could and were willing to believe anything the government said. You mentioned your classmate messaging you 4 years later, which was quite a bit of time but in the years following the beginning of the Iraq War a lot of people in the US were still in full-throated support of it despite the international opposition and the overwhelming evidence that it was based upon lies because more well-known.
It was one of those situations where at first people were in a situation where they were willing to believe anything, and then even after the war started they refused to admit they were wrong because it would mean many of those "war heroes" dying in Iraq that they had been worshipping for Defending American Values were actually just pieces of shit committing war crimes and being killed and maimed for no good reason.
As someone outside the US the takes on the Iraq War were very, very different. There was pretty much total opposition to it at least around here. Keep in mind that other countries also have a different perspective on 9/11 as well. For the US, it was an attack on their country that changed everything and shifted how Americans viewed Muslims/brown-skinned people significantly, and also changed the amount of security and govt overreach w/ information gathering they were willing to accept in their lives ostensibly to "get the bad guys". It was like whiplash seeing the 90s anti-govt libertarian movement mostly disappear and become pro-war ra-ra-America types. For people outside the US, 9/11 was an attack that seemed to be overdue and while it was a tragedy for the people and their families who endured it, the general perspective was that America had it coming for the shit they'd been doing internationally for decades.
Part of me wonders if in 20 years if there is a major attack on the US like this again if anybody in the US will link it to what is happening right now or if they will just not remember at all.
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u/TheFalconKid Wisconsin 13h ago
They stole the 2000 election how is that normal?
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u/AverageJoeJohnSmith 13h ago
True, but I blame the SC more for that than Bush(or really Cheney) himself bc they handed it to him
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u/ripleyclone8 13h ago
Well, wait until you see who appointed some of those justices…they handed it over for a reason.
Spoiler: 1 Nixon, 1 Ford, 3 Reagan, 2 H.W., and 2 Clinton.
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u/MultiGeometry Vermont 12h ago
Judges appointed by Bush Sr. presiding over a case deciding the fate of Bush Jr.’s presidential election is in a state where Bush Sr.’s OTHER son was governor is a huge issue and conflict of interest.
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u/Nothos927 13h ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvYAqC0_HXI You should watch this and its sequel and you'll see he in fact did not do that, he was just able to get away with a lot of it more because of the war on terror.
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u/Riv3rJordan 14h ago
Paxton campaigning has been awful. People are suffering and they’re still using the boogeyman tactics to win. Sadly it’ll work on a lot of people.
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u/Dancing_Cthulhu 13h ago edited 13h ago
Republicans: Everything is bad because of Democrats! You need to elect Greg and Ken to fix Texas! Please forget that Greg has been governor since 2015, Ken attorney general since 2015, and Republicans in general have been in complete control since 2003.
Republican voters: Well you convinced us the change we need is the exact same men that have been running the show for decades.
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u/Dentonthomas 11h ago edited 11h ago
This is not surprising at all, if you've been paying attention.
During Paxton's impeachment his orange lawyer claimed the whole thing was conspiracy by the Bush family.
(ETA: for a large chunk of the Republicans in Texas, the Bushes are seen as "too liberal." That means that they are somehow in secretly league with the Democrats. This endorsement will be seen as proof of that, even though Paxton's personal mouth piece said some really nasty things about Bushes.)
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u/gmb92 8h ago
Here's an article on that. W Bush net favorability among Texas primary Republicans was pretty close to zero (50/50 favorable vs unfavorable) which is pretty crazy considering this was a state he was once immensely popular in. Overton Window has shifted so far towards the extreme right. It's comical when people try to bothsides this.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3260385-the-imminent-end-of-the-bush-political-dynasty/
This doesn't mean it has no effect. Clears Talarico is getting significant crossover voters.
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u/thisisjustascreename Illinois 4h ago
W Bush is also well past his sell by date, politically speaking. His Presiderpcy was the original “how much worse can it get” of Republicans.
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u/lylelanley- 12h ago
Talarico has made this gay liberal feel like maybe I shouldn’t resent all religious people.
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u/ucankickrocks 11h ago
The bush family notoriously hates Ted Cruz too. He worked on W’s campaign and they talked about what a slimy miserable human he is.
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u/Defiant_Storage_7435 10h ago
It's not Jeb! so I won't clap.
But it's a great example of yet another Republican who finds Paxton too extreme even for a conservative.
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u/Li_liminal_spaces 14h ago
If it's not fucking Jeb fucking say so in the title. Neil Bush, no idea who this person is.
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u/1984isAMidlifeCrisis 14h ago
Neil's the one who's S&L needed a billion dollar taxpayer bailout. I find it helpful to label Republicans by which clusterfuck they caused.
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u/VaguelyArtistic California 14h ago
Tl;dr: Neil is a piece of shit so it’s not like he’s the “good one” so that’s saying something.
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u/Nothos927 13h ago
I mean, they did? If it was Jeb it would've just said Jeb, since people know who he is. The fact that it says "George Bush's brother" makes it pretty clear it's some no name member of the Bush clan.
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u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 11h ago
Jeb stands for John Ellis Bush, so when people call him Jeb Bush, they’re calling him John Ellis Bush Bush.
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u/Billy_Birdy 9h ago
“George W. Bush’s brother”
Ouch.
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u/Torden5410 12h ago
You do not have to hand it to the Bush family.
Sometimes extremely shitty people hate other extremely shitty people, this does not make them less shitty or absolve them of anything.
The enemy of your enemy is not automatically your friend, you have to have a bit of discretion or you end up campaigning with Liz fucking Cheney.
Fuck the Bush family. I hope it all tastes like ash in their mouths, they should be forced to eat it.
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u/navyblusheet 11h ago
I won't hate a man because of bad things his brother did. Unless this guy is also bad on his own merits. I know nothing about him.
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u/jarvisesdios 10h ago
He seems like less of a bastard than I expected, though I just skimmed his Wikipedia page. He seems like a nepo baby that got things handed to him but also decided to lean into philanthropy.
Though, he did support Ted Cruz for president, and I will now quote John Oliver:
"I do not like that Ted Cruz man. I do not like him shouting Klan. I do not like him in a room. I do not like him in Cancun. I do not like him playing ball. I do not like his face at all. I wish he'd lose his cushy job. That man Ted Cruz is a fucking knob"
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u/Hispandinavian 9h ago
Neil Bush is likely the worst of the Bush children, which is why hes kept the lowest profile on the last 30 years..ran Silverado Savings & Loan into the ground in the 80s costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
https://time.com/archive/6716030/running-with-a-bad-crowd-neil-bush-the-1-billion-silverado-debacle/
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u/LevelPerception4 12h ago
Neil Bush, (not prosecuted) veteran of the S&L scandal, thinks Paxton is too corrupt.
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u/onepareil New York 14h ago edited 14h ago
Can we please not do George W. Bush apologia in the comments? He set the stage for much of what Trump is doing now, and yes, he was a traitor. He also belongs at The Hague.
His administration fumbled (or enabled, depending how far down that rabbit hole you want to go) 9/11 and then launched a “War on Terror” built on total lies. It killed over a million people. It gave us the Department of Homeland Security (including ICE) and the Patriot Act. Does it upset you to hear stories of the cruelty and abuse from Trump’s ICE detention facilities? How do you feel about a global network of black sites where the CIA kidnapped, imprisoned, and tortured people without any due process? Dubya did that.
GWB was not as much of a tacky, shit-stained grifter as Trump is, but he was a horrible president and is a horrible person. Don’t look back on his presidency with rose-tinted glasses.
Edit: Insane that it’s been less than 20 years since GWB left office, and a comment like this is getting downvoted. I hope it’s because most of you are too young to remember the early 2000s, otherwise, that’s fucking embarrassing.
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u/Tricky-Engineering59 14h ago
And his was the first actually stolen election.
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u/onepareil New York 14h ago
That too. How quickly we forgot the damn hanging chads.
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u/Nothos927 13h ago
Ehhhh some of the 1800s elections, such as John Quincy Adams in 1824 were definitely, if not stolen, manipulated to a degree that broke even the dodgy electoral norms of the era.
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u/Tricky-Engineering59 13h ago
Point taken. The first legitimately stolen election in the modern era. I was too young at the time to have much political cognizance but from what I can recall I’m a little surprised there wasn’t more public outcry to demand a full recount.
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u/Nothos927 13h ago
Yeah but he was quirky and does paintings now and didn't call Obama racial slurs. Clearly that's more important than his war crimes and undermining of US political norms.
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u/Bigsshot 13h ago
George W. Bush Fundraises for Senate Republicans
That article is from 22 September 2026. He's still an asshole.
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u/specialkk77 13h ago
Unfortunately the collective human memory is on par with a goldfish. Bush is a war criminal I don’t care if he paints pretty pictures now, if He’ll is real I can only hope that he’ll be burning there. 2000 is the first election I remember. Shit I even caught myself thinking positively on an interview he did as part of a 9/11 documentary from a few years ago. People used to make fun of his speech but damn he can finish a thought and doesn’t go on 37 tangents and didn’t blame trans people. But, still a massive piece of shit. Trump being worse doesn’t change that.
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u/onepareil New York 13h ago
The shoe dodge was funny and pretty impressive for his age (although he more than deserved to take a loafer to the face). Trump definitely could never. That’s about the only positive I’ll give him.
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u/propergreased 13h ago
Yeah the washing of bush since trump is crazy. Trump is like you said a products of what bush laid down.
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u/DiscoLemonade1995 12h ago
Nobody clap. It wasn't Jeb, the other one that is too inconsequential to clap for
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u/_commenter 11h ago
trump/maga have fucked up the political scales so bad that the republicans of yore are now centrist (maybe even left leaning centrist)
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u/SpaceGrape 10h ago
The things he is quoted as saying are the things I used to think Republicans believed in before maga happened. It would be nice to disagree with the other side again instead of thinking they are genuine traitors to our country. (Specifically referencing January 6th coup attempt here.)
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u/PeacefulDays 8h ago
The Bush family are really going to act like they were not part of the slope that got us here. really?
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u/NeonElch 13h ago
I honestly didn’t know he had a brother other than Jeb, but my Bush knowledge mostly comes from the cartoon Lil Bush
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u/Choomba_Lord Chippewa 13h ago
Aw I thought we were going to get a Jeb! mention. It's just some other random bush.
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u/Tricky-Score9748 11h ago
I drive him frequently in the summer time in Maine and he’s a good dude. He’s always been so nice to me
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u/have-u-met-teds-mom 11h ago
There is another brother?
I assumed Lil Bush was historically accurate.
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u/Slymook 10h ago
I forgot what it was if it was trumps first inauguration or confirmation as the Republican nominee, but Romney, McCain, and Bush all passed on it and it was the first time the prior presidents/nominees didn’t show up.
Anyone that isn’t under trumps control doesn’t like the guy to a degree where political norms aren’t followed.
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u/MaybeFiction 5h ago
Neil, by the way. Age 71, younger brother of one President and son of another. It feels odd to me that I know nothing about this guy.
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u/thisisjustascreename Illinois 4h ago
Any normal human being would vote for Talarico over Ken Paxton.
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