Saturday, September 5, 2015

NASTY BUSINESS JEB AND TRUMP

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) unveiled a series of broadsides against GOP presidential rival Donald Trump on Wednesday morning, including one labeled a "strikingly personal attack" by Time magazine.

It was only the latest in what has been an increasingly nasty back and forth between the two Republican heavyweights — an open feud that has bordered on the bizarre this week alone.

Bush's Wednesday salvo was released in the form of a quiz titled, "Which candidate are you?" His campaign said it was promoting the interactive ad on Facebook and "targeting people who like pages related to Donald Trump."

The quiz started with generic policy questions highlighting the real-estate magnate's past deviations from Republican Party orthodoxy.

Meanwhile, Trump has punched and counterpunched hard at Bush — including at least one arguably unusual attack of his own.

Trump published an Instagram video on Tuesday that grilled Bush for "honoring Hillary Clinton for her public service." The music choice for the video, an upbeat carnival tune, was atypical for an attack ad.

He also released a far more serious negative ad the day before. In another Instagram video, Trump spliced together images of alleged killers who crossed into the US illegally and comments made by Bush in 2014, when he suggested that many people cross the border illegally out of an "act of love" for their families.

That video reminded many political veterans of the infamous "Willie Horton" attack ad that former President George H. W. Bush used to tar Michael Dukakis as soft on crime during the 1988 presidential race. The ad has been widely criticized over the years for playing on racial stereotypes about criminals.

And in yet another social media clip last week, Trump touted the fact that Bush's mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush, once said her son shouldn't run for president. (She has since changed her mind.)

"Even Barbara Bush agrees with me," Trump quipped.

Trump further ripped Jeb Bush on social media and said in a Wednesday interview on ABC that the former governor was only attacking him out of desperation.

"I think he had really no choice. He's doing very poorly in the polls. He's a very low-energy kind of guy. He really had to do something. So they're spending a lot of money on ads," Trump mused while accusing Bush of being in the pocket of his big donors. "He really had no choice."

Trump has previously taken credit for his rivals sinking in the polls after criticizing him, saying he was "greatly honored by that." He suggested to ABC that Bush's campaign was already tanking for that very reason.

"So far everybody who has attacked me has gone down. Let's see what happens here," he said. "You look at Jeb, and you see what he's doing. And it's sort of an interesting thing — I think he had probably no choice. It's probably going to now stop because it seems to be backfiring on him, based on the polls."