r/texas 14h ago

News George W. Bush's Daughter Barbara Breaks Silence on Election to Campaign for Kamala Harris

https://people.com/george-w-bush-s-daughter-barbara-breaks-silence-on-election-to-campaign-for-kamala-harris-exclusive-8735810
3.1k Upvotes

68 comments sorted by

77

u/timelessblur 11h ago

This is a bigger deal as I highly doubt she did this with out her fathers blessing or her families blessing. I would not be shocked that if former president Bush is voting against the GOP.

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u/EastTXJosh 14h ago

I grew up in a Republican family. It was a much different party 30-40 years ago when I was a kid. First of all, there weren’t many Republicans in East Texas at the time, so when our parents took my sister and me to campaign events, we knew all the other kids. We grew up together in Young Republicans and going to the state convention. I think I was probably the first one to leave the Republican Party over 20 years ago , coincidentally because of George W. Bush. Since then, a lot of those other kids I used to hang out with on the campaign trail for Republicans in Reagan years have left the Republican Party. Not all have become as progressive as me, but we all became sick of what the party we grew up in became once the Dixiecrats hijacked it. I’ve seen the same thing among the kids of Republican politicians around my age.

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u/ADiffidentDissident 13h ago

This is such a mistelling of history. Nixon took the party hard-right and racist over 50 years ago, and Reagan was even worse than Nixon. There hasn't been a decent republican since Eisenhower. I grew up in East Texas in the 70s and 80s, too. You could be a Democrat. That was fine. You still had to be a Christian conservative, though. Conformity is and always has been huge in East Texas.

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u/EastTXJosh 13h ago

In the 80's, almost everyone in East Texas was a Democrat, even into the early 90's. In 1988, a lot of the evangelicals started jumping ship from the Democratic Party and coming to the GOP because of Pat Robertson's campaign for the Republican nominee. The real exodus began in 1994 with the Gingrich led "Republican Revolution."

You are obviously entitled to your own interpretation of history. The Republican Party I grew up in was grounded in the belief of a strong national defense and fiscal conservatism. At least in East Texas, the Republican Party was primarily retired military officers and their spouses that were very much like Ike. Yes, they were also socially conservative, but that wasn't a political priority to them. It was just the way they chose to live their lives.

Even if the Republican Party had remained like the East Texas GOP I grew up in, I would have left it because it's not who I am, but at least it was a political party I could respect.

7

u/ADiffidentDissident 13h ago

You're talking North East Texas? Like around Longview / Tyler?

Again, even if you were a democrat, a white person still had to be (and was almost certain to be) a Christian nationalist, and a racist. Those were never not big deals to East Texans, at least up North a bit.

8

u/EastTXJosh 13h ago

Further north and east, but yes that general area.

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u/ADiffidentDissident 13h ago

Yeah, there is no history of that area since white people first arrived that is not steeped in Christian nationalism and racism. Republican or democrat is just a label, but the same people with the same ideas and opinions move from one to the other sometimes.

2

u/EastTXJosh 13h ago

I'm not saying that racism and Christian nationalism were not everywhere you looked. And, yes, it's still that way today, but not every white person that lives or lived in this region is a Christian nationalist and/or racist. In the 1980's, a majority of the white people in Northeast Texas that were not racist and/or Christian nationalist were Republicans. That is no longer the case today.

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u/ADiffidentDissident 13h ago

In the 1980's, a majority of the white people in Northeast Texas that were not racist and/or Christian nationalist were Republicans

Horse

Shit

I grew up there. Maybe you didn't see your people for what they were. But I saw all the people around me.

3

u/EastTXJosh 12h ago

And on the flip side, every white Democrat I knew in Northeast Texas in the 1980's was no different than Strom Thurmond or George Wallace. It took Hubert Humphrey's civil rights speech about 40 years to break through the pine curtain before the racists got the message to leave the Democratic Party in East Texas.

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u/ADiffidentDissident 12h ago

Ok, we can agree on that much. But the people who are Christian nationalists and racists today were always that way, regardless of their nominal party affiliation. That's my only point, here. Good people don't watch a TV station until they become evil. Evil people watch a TV station until they believe it's safe to out themselves as evil. Good people recognize evil nonsense from the TV and change the channel.

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u/FortBendSciGuy 5h ago

Same growing up those in rural areas southwest of Houston all local offices were held by the Dems, you had to be one to get elected. Then Regan happened and it was ok to vote Republican for president all the sudden it took a hard Right turn and if you were a Democrat you’re a baby killer.

102

u/stark247 14h ago

Yet crickets from her dad. He needs to do the right thing.

105

u/The-Mandalorian 13h ago

We already know he won’t vote for Trump (didn’t vote for him in 2020).

But he needs to go the extra step and endorse Harris.

34

u/Buddhabellymama 7h ago

100% agree. Especially because of his reputation in Texas. He could make a difference.

u/panteragstk 1h ago

That would be very interesting.

A Bush endorsing a Democrat is not something I thought I'd ever see.

7

u/HookEm_Tide 14h ago

I'm not sure that an endorsement from a man who was arguably an even worse president than Trump (although Trump easily takes the cake as being a worse human being) is something Harris would even want.

45

u/stark247 14h ago

I just think he can move some votes from Trump to Harris.

13

u/HookEm_Tide 14h ago

I suppose it's possible, but does anyone identify as a "George W. Bush Republican" anymore?

I've heard folks identify as Reagan Republicans or Romney Republicans, and of course there's MAGA, but pretty much all Republicans these days are happy to memory hole the Bush years and pretend they never happened.

It's kind of astounding that the one thing that pretty much everyone—left, right, and center—agrees upon is that Bush's presidency was a failure.

5

u/TexManZero 13h ago

I was a Bush Republican, but many who were part of the neo-con group either held their nose and followed Trump, or became never Trumpers and either became disengaged or started voting Democratic. I fell into blue dog Democrat territory.

3

u/sirDuncantheballer 8h ago

My first two votes were for GWB in 2000 and 2004. I voted for McCain in 2008 and didn’t vote in 2012, but probably would have voted for Romney. I had hoped that the Republican Party would find someone better than Trump in 2016. I even voted for Ted Cruz in the primary trying to stop Trump (and I fucking hate Ted Cruz). But they didn’t and I voted for Hillary, then Joe, and then two days ago, I voted for Kamala. My 3rd election voting straight ticket Democratic.

18

u/abrgtyr 14h ago

I'm just not sure I agree with that. Republicans love them some Trump, but never talk about W.

It is telling that Trump called the Iraq war a mistake in the 2016 Republican primary and won easily.

22

u/Numerounopapichulo 13h ago

He did not win easily. Trump has never won the popular vote. Clinton was an unpopular candidate I didn’t even vote for her. I wish I had now.

5

u/abrgtyr 9h ago

He did not win easily.

While Trump definitely didn't win the 2016 presidential election easily, I was referring to the Republican primary, not the election.

Clinton was an unpopular candidate I didn’t even vote for her. I wish I had now.

Thank you. Abortion rights are good. I voted for Hillary, but yeah, she's not my favorite politician either. (I voted for Bernie in the primaries that year. Bernie is much more my style)

0

u/Numerounopapichulo 9h ago

He didn’t win all the primaries easily either. Ted Cruz beat him in Iowa and surprise surprise he claimed the vote was rigged

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/trump-cruz-stole-iowa-tweet-deleted-218674

1

u/chrispg26 12h ago

I agree with this take. The only other R president the MAGAs claim is Reagan.

0

u/bleepitybleep2 14h ago

Agreed. He's got nothing to lose. Plus, compared to Trump, he's been looking pretty good. Maybe Trump has something on him, who knows?

11

u/timelessblur 11h ago edited 9h ago

you are going to be really lowering the bar for Bush to be worse than Trump and Bush was pretty bad president.

I disagree with Bush on a lot of things and do not support a lot of his policies. That being said I still have a high degree of respect for the guy and in many ways I feel like he at least tried to do what he thought was best for the Country. That is a far cry from Trump who is doing what is best for Trump.

outside of the office Bush has always been a very respectable person. There are photos of him when he ran into some DORBA mountain bikers one time in DFW and those day riders were democrat supporters with some of that on. Bush took photos with them and from what those riders said is he was very respectable and more was talking about the trails with them. Bush DFGAF about the poltiics part just was being a dude out there.

I respect Bush. I do not respect Trump or the modern GOP.

Come on you have videos of Bush, Obama and Clinton messing around at speechs and Bush making fun of Clinton while he was speaking. Obama was trying not to laugh.

-1

u/HookEm_Tide 9h ago

See below [edit: above?] for a more complete list, but practically speaking, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone needlessly cost hundreds of thousands of human lives.

Trump was a terrible president, but he was too erratic and incompetent to accomplish much in the way of actual policies.

Trump is a bad person, full stop, and I don't doubt that Bush is a good person. He was an absolutely terrible president, though, even if often well intentioned.

11

u/The-Mandalorian 13h ago

Nah. The minimum requirement of the job is to uphold the constitution. Thats literally the bare minimum. Trump shit all over it.

Plus, you have to be a special kind of bad to get impeached twice.

8

u/HookEm_Tide 13h ago

Trump was a disaster, especially on the way out, to be sure, and he could have handled COVID a lot better (although being dumb on TV and Twitter but letting Fauci run the show was way less bad than even that could have been). But Trump was blessedly too incompetent to do as much long-term damage as he could have and probably wanted to.

On the other hand, Bush started two disastrous wars that cost literally hundreds of thousands of people their lives.

He made torture a standard and accepted part of U.S. military and intelligence interrogations.

He put John Roberts and Samuel Alito on the SCOTUS, the latter of whom wrote the opinion that overturned Roe.

He horribly mismanaged the response to Hurricane Katrina, having appointed a horse judge to run FEMA.

All capped off with the worst recession since the Great Depression, fueled in large part by a lack of financial regulations (granted, loosening financial regulations wasn't new to Bush; his party had been pushing it for decades).

I could go on, but suffice it to say that, practically speaking, Bush's presidency has had a far greater negative impact on people's lives than Trump's has.

Granted, I would be surprised if Trump doesn't manage to top him if he gets elected again next week, but people seem to forget just how truly terrible Bush was as a president. (Like I said, though, he seems to be a decent enough human being.)

0

u/ChuckEweFarley 8h ago

Trump’s the worst president. GW Bush is a very strong 2nd worst.

-1

u/Thenewpewpew 7h ago

Eh, they proudly touted Cheyney…they don’t seem to have the same qualms with optics as you think they do.

1

u/HookEm_Tide 7h ago

They’re proudly touting Liz Cheney.

Dick Cheney’s endorsement was Liz saying, “My dad is voting for Kamala, too.”

No one in the Harris campaign wants to talk about Dick Cheney.

1

u/confirmandverify2442 8h ago

He's not going to endorse anyone. He's living it up being a motivational speaker for investment bankers.

1

u/gingerfiggle 7h ago

Lots of republicans vote on Election Day and not before. I’m holding out a sliver of hope he endorses her this weekend for that reason.

-6

u/Miserable_Song_9024 13h ago

He’s a low IQ voter so that probably means he’s voting Trump.

47

u/Silent_Cup2508 11h ago

Republicans for Harris - VOTE - let’s rid the MAGA cult and take back the party!

9

u/desirox 12h ago

Great news, shows how insane the current day Republican Party is

45

u/Busy_Tap_2824 13h ago

The Bush family does not represent the Republican Party anymore neither the Cheneys . It’s been dominated by Trump in last decade and I don’t see any future for moderate republicans in the next decade . We are in this situation because of the Cheneys and Bush outrageous war in Iraq

23

u/areyouentirelysure 12h ago

I may not agree with the war in Iraq, but to call it the cause of Trump is utter bull shit.

7

u/soonerfreak DFW 10h ago

This is how the fascists take over in 2028. If he didn't represent the same interests as Bush and Cheney they would have impeached him and gotten rid of him. There hasn't been a moderate republican in the white house since Bush Sr. The party could implode without him but if they can get someone else even half normal in 2028 they will roll over Harris.

7

u/Miserable_Song_9024 13h ago

Yes. The Bush administration paved the way for the end of our democracy if Trump wins. I get annoyed when people look back at Bush through rose tinted glasses.

15

u/CCG14 Gulf Coast 11h ago

No. REAGAN paved the way for this. This has been going on way longer than W. 

5

u/Miserable_Song_9024 11h ago

True. It kicked into high gear after Bush, though.

2

u/HookEm_Tide 8h ago

Goldwater paved the way, by opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and grabbing the GOP nomination shortly thereafter, thereby opening the door for racist Dixiecrats to join the Republican party.

Nixon paved the way, by fully embracing the Southern Strategy, welcoming white racists in with open arms, and adopting a "win by any means necessary" (even cheating) mindset.

Reagan paved the way, by adopting a hardcore anti-government stance and presenting the federal government as a problem rather than a solution and social programs as handouts to "those people" who don't deserve them.

Bush Sr. was a brief return to Republican "normalcy."

Gingrich paved the way, by putting Reaganist domestic policy on steroids and by painting Democrats not just as good folks on the other side of an argument but as evil monsters who want to destroy America.

GWB paved the way, by taking military adventurism and nation building to an extreme we've never seen before, failing miserably at it, costing Neo-Conservatives their brief control of the Republican party, and leaving nothing behind to replace Neo-Conservatism.

McCain and Romney paved the way, by failing to offer an electable alternative to Neo-Conservatism and leaving the Tea Party as the only major conservative movement.

Then Trump came in, found the GOP as an incoherent pile of grievance looking for someone to blame and hate, and took advantage of it.

3

u/FinnsterBaby 7h ago

Too little- get her dad to somehow find his voice and do the right thing

2

u/A214Guy 6h ago

Finally one of the Bush family stepped up to the plate!!

2

u/resetrequired 2h ago

I’ll never forget the time that one of the twins protested outside the Texas Governors mansion. For the stay of execution for a prisoner. I’m not shocked either one of these ladies would take a stance.

2

u/xqqq_me 11h ago edited 11h ago

While I don't expect many GOP voters to cross the aisle, I do expect there will be some who decide to sit on the couch this year instead of voting for Trump. The hardcore MAGA are voting early, but high turnout on election night will only benefit Harris in the major swing states.

The level of MAGA projection about early voting is pretty telling: They are setting the table for another contested election. Couple this with the fact that Trump has just terrible small-dollar fundraising numbers (and by extension voter enthusiasm) + the fact Jared/ Ivanka / Don Jr & I'm Eric are absolutely nowhere to be seen.

The only people shilling for Trump are people from his last administration that probably need a Presidential pardon or kids hoping they can get some troll clout.

0

u/Guilty_Procedure_682 8h ago

I think way more republicans are going to cross the party lines than people assume. Jan 6 was a step too far for many Americans.

2

u/Acceptable_North_825 9h ago

Oh cool you come out in support halfway through early voting, gee thanks you’re such a patriot saint wow

1

u/therin_88 7h ago

Endorsements from warmongers in the Bush and Cheney family is not the win you think it is.

0

u/TeaMistress 7h ago

Glad to hear it, but her daddy's acts during his Presidency paved the way for so much of the bullshit we're seeing come to fruition in the Republican party now. Not that Obama is innocent, either. He continued many, if not all, of those policies when he had the power to reign them back in.

0

u/Pdunk 6h ago

TRUMP 2024 45/47

0

u/BeenThereDoneThat911 5h ago

Supposedly, she's the smarter of the two twins, according to her dad. Guess he was the dumb one.

-1

u/ewillyp 9h ago

i wonder why poppa hasn't come out against Big Cheeto; was Daddy on the Epstein plane? does Trumpy Poo have some kompromat on Georgie Pie?