Jeb Bush in The Party's Over, by Charlie Crist

On Abortion: Terri Schiavo case: ordered feeding tube reinserted

For many Republican politicians, it was easy to sign on with the extremists in the Terri Schiavo case. It was impossible to me.

On Oct. 15, 2003, with the court's approval, Terri's feeding tube was finally removed.

Terri's parents were joined by a well-organized band of anti-abortion activists. As protesters marched in Tallahassee and talk radio hosts conjured up comparisons to Nazi death camps, Republican State Representative colleagues passed "Terri's Law," giving Jeb Bush authority to intervene in the case.

The legislature? The governor? Overruling the husband, the doctors, and the courts? I'd never seen blind zeal like this. Or was it blind politics?

Jeb immediately ordered the feeding tube reinserted.

It was the cruelest things I have e

Source: The Party's Over, by Charlie Crist, p. 60-61 Feb 4, 2014

On Budget & Economy: $787B economic plan: whole lot of spending & not stimulative

A month before the election, George W. Bush had gotten fairly solid bipartisan support from the Congress for his TARP plan, which directed the Treasury Department to purchase up to $700 billion in troubled assets from some of America's largest banks. But when the new president took office and proposed a $787 billion economic-stimulus plan to jump-start the broader economy, that bipartisanship seemed to evaporate overnight.

The Obama stimulus plan didn't fit their theory of what government should do at a time of economic crisis, which seemed to add up to nothing at all. The unfettered market was supposed to solve everything.

Source: The Party's Over, by Charlie Crist, p.154-157 Feb 4, 2014

On Budget & Economy: Stimulus more related to liberal agenda than stimulus

On Feb. 23, Jeb Bush called my support for the president's economic stimulus "unforgiveable." Jeb started sweetly. I was a "talented guy," he said, "about the nicest guy I've ever met in politics." Then he let loose.

"There's one thing that he has done that I just find unforgiveable. He is the only statewide political leader that I'm aware of, that embraced the stimulus package when Republicans were fighting to suggest an alternative."

Now, I do believe that some things in life are unforgiveable But accepting money from Washington to save jobs of teachers, police officers, and firefighters and help revive our economy? No, that's not one of them. Besides, almost every governor ended up taking some or all of the money. I was just the only Republican who was so up-front about it.

Jeb kept pounding on the stimulus, which he termed "a massive spending bill that is not related to stimulus. It is related to trying to carry out a liberal agenda."

Source: The Party's Over, by Charlie Crist, p.218-219 Feb 4, 2014

On Education: Ed reform: reading scores improved; parents got more choices

Jeb Bush had made education reform a top priority of his administration. So [as Education Commissioner of Florida], I got some solid support in the governor's office. We both wanted results. Jeb was pushing charter schools and standardized testing, concepts I generally supported. I was working on making teachers more accountable and getting the good ones paid well. Working together, we made some genuine progress. Reading scores improved. Parents got more choices about the schools their children attended. The legislature got a little less stingy about paying the bills. Source: The Party's Over, by Charlie Crist, p. 53 Feb 4, 2014

On Government Reform: No conspiracy of hackers manipulating electronic voting

After the 2000 election, Jeb Bush promised to replace much of the state's hated voting technology, including Palm Beach County's butterfly ballots along with their notoriously dimpled, perforated, and hanging chads.

The new system the counties chose was touch-screen voting machines. Soon enough, 15 Florida counties had signed on. But that didn't work out too well. The costs were high. The glitches were constant. And worst of all, no one seemed to trust the electronic counts. Without paper records, how did voters know their choices were being accurately recorded? How could anyone be sure some evil hacker wasn't manipulating the results? Jeb dismissed those fears as "conspiracy theories." But in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, the Republican Party of Florida sent out fliers urging their voters to use absentee ballots because of the disturbing absence of a paper trail from the Election Day machines.

Source: The Party's Over, by Charlie Crist, p. 92 Feb 4, 2014

On Government Reform: 2005: Disallowed early voting in schools or churches

Luckily for everyone, 2004 did not draw huge crowds. But the race wasn't close, and the voting process was a clear improvement over the dark days of Bush vs Gore. In fact, early voting was popular enough in 2004 that the state's election supervisors asked the legislature for more of it in future elections--more polling stations, longer hours, and additional publicity.

But Republican leaders in the House and Senate would have none of that. They moved to curtail early voting instead. The early-voting schedule was cut again--from 12 hours to 8 hours a day. Strict limits were placed on where the early voting could occur. No more schools or churches or community centers. Now the early ballots could be cast only in election offices, libraries, & city halls.

The rollbacks sailed through the House, 82-36, on a largely party line vote. Over the objection of Democrats and local election officials, Jeb signed the reductions into law on June 20, 2005, a year and a half before I came in.

Source: The Party's Over, by Charlie Crist, p.140-141 Feb 4, 2014

On Principles & Values: 1986: Appointed state secretary of commerce

Jeb grew up in Houston, attended the University of Texas at Austin, and moved to Florida after his father was elected vice president in 1980. He quickly began building a political career. In 1986, he was named Florida's secretary of commerce, a position he kept for 2 years until he left to help his father campaign for president. After losing the governor's race to Democrat Lawton Chiles in 1994 by less than 2 percentage points, he ran again 4 years later, portraying himself as a consensus-building pragmatist. He made a real effort to court the state's moderate Hispanic voters. This time, he sailed past Democrat Buddy MacKay with 55% of the vote. On the same day, Jeb's older brother, George W. Bush, won a 2nd term as the governor of Texas. Source: The Party's Over, by Charlie Crist, p. 49 Feb 4, 2014

The above quotations are from The Party's Over: How the Extreme Right Hijacked the GOP and I Became a Democrat by Charlie Crist. Click here for other excerpts from The Party's Over: How the Extreme Right Hijacked the GOP and I Became a Democrat by Charlie Crist. Click here for other excerpts by Jeb Bush. Click here for other excerpts by other Governors.
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