Stupid And Crazy’ – Former Bush Economist Slams The Republican Party – VIDEO
August 14, 2015 by Richard Zombeck No Comments
Bruce-Bartlett
George H.W. Bush’s senior policy analyst, Bruce Bartlett, was a guest on “All-In with Chris Hayes” Thursday night giving the Republican Party a harsh “politically incorrect” critique and praising Donald Trump for exposing them for the loons they’ve become.
Chris Hayes began the segment, attempting to understand the Republican message and pointed out that “Washington Post” conservative columnist George Will wrote an op-ed in which he called for getting Donald Trump out of the Republican Party primary. He wrote:
A political party has a right to (in language Trump likes) secure its borders. Indeed, a party has a duty to exclude interlopers, including cynical opportunists deranged by egotism. This is why closed primaries, although not obligatory, are defensible: Let party members make the choices that define the party and dispense its most precious possession, a presidential nomination. So, the Republican National Committee should immediately stipulate that subsequent Republican debates will be open to any and all — but only — candidates who pledge to support the party’s nominee.
So, conservatives today should deal with Trump with the firmness Buckley dealt with the John Birch Society in 1962. The society was an extension of a loony businessman who said Dwight Eisenhower was “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy.” In a 5,000-word National Review “excoriation” (Buckley’s word), he excommunicated the society from the conservative movement.
Bruce Bartlett also wrote an op-ed, in “Politico” saying:
The Trump phenomenon perfectly represents the culmination of populism and anti-intellectualism that became dominant in the Republican Party with the rise of the Tea Party. I think many Republican leaders have had deep misgivings about the Tea Party since the beginning, but the short-term benefits were too great to resist. A Trump rout is Republican moderates’ best chance to take back the GOP.
Chris Hayes, being a bit snarky, asked Bartlett to elaborate on his ‘Trump infatuation’. The result was nothing less than illuminating.
“Oh, I love Donald Trump,” Bruce Bartlett said. “Because he exposes everything about the Republican Party that I have frankly come to hate. It is just filled with people who are crazy, and stupid and have absolutely no idea of what they are taking about. And the candidate no matter how intelligent they may be just constantly have to keep pandering to this lowest common denominator in American politics.”
The comments, disparaging the GOP voters caused Chris Hayes to be taken aback in what could only be feigned shock, saying it seemed like an elitist generalization. But Bartlett went on:
I think it is pretty obvious to anyone who follows politics that the problem is to use a term that I don’t like, it’s not politically correct to point out the obvious. And again I think Trump is pointing this out. Among other things, to follow up with your comment, one of the things that we are seeing very clearly this time more than any other year is that issues don’t matter. Policies don’t matter. The only thing that matters is attitude. And Trump has exactly the right ‘chip on your shoulder’ attitude that many many people find extraordinarily attractive that is completely divorced from whatever he is saying about the issues which is precious little.
Bartlett may have been, in his own words, “politically incorrect” but voiced an opinion held by many and not verbalized. He has been a frequent critic of what the Republican Party has become. For now though, the Republican Party remains, in the words of John McCain, the party of wacko birds and crazies.
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