Wednesday at Elmhurst College in Oak Brook, IL, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) called on voters to stop rewarding politicians who used derogatory characterizations “to make themselves look better.”
Bush said, “Here is the dirty secret, politics is embedded in our culture. We are our culture. The interaction of all of us together defines our culture and our culture is more vulgar then it once was. Our culture allows people to act in ways that thirty years ago would never be allowed in politics. Our culture is more reality TV based, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that our politics is that way.”
He added, “Voters should penalize rather than reward politicians, irrespective of their party, that use racist language or call people Nazis or disparage the disabled or make fun of people in order to push someone down to make themselves look better. That should be a penalty. You should be in a penalty box rather than getting rewards for that.”
After telling a story about Trump calling him a name during the 2016 campaign, Bush continued, “The first step is to change the language around political discourse and get it back to something at your own kitchen table you could tolerate. At least in my kitchen table, I could promise you if I talked like the people I hear on television today talk, my mother would have gotten her board out and whipped my butt, which she did occasionally.”
He added, “Now, we’re so hyper-partisan that if it’s a Democrat doing something outrageous, Republicans are just righteously there to attack, but if it’s a Republican, you hear nothing, and vice versa. To challenge this notion, sometimes bad behavior is just bad behavior. And we should have a higher ethical standard for people in public life than a lower one.”
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