You can’t run for president in this day and age without being asked repeatedly about Donald Trump. And you can’t avoid Donald Trump’s wrath without repeatedly dodging the question.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, however, is taking the chance. In a video released by his campaign on Wednesday, Bush came down on the Republican presidential frontrunner for promoting policies that are progressive to the core. Even Trump’s aggressively nationalist immigration policy, Bush said, is progressive compared to what he would support.
“When people look at his record, it is not a conservative record,” Bush said. “Even on immigration.”
The comments from Bush are points that have been made before. Trump, Bush said, “was a Democrat longer in the last decade than he was a Republican.” This is true. Trump was a registered Democrat from 2001 until 2009. Trump’s also “given more money to Democrats that he’s given to Republicans,” Bush said. That’s kind of true — Trump’s historically gave much more of his money to Democrats than Republicans until just a few years ago.
Where Bush really came down on Trump, though, was on his actual policies. “It wasn’t that long ago that he was … for a tax on assets,” Bush said. “Not tax on income — a tax on assets for people that have more than $10 million of assets.”
Trump did indeed once support a tax on people’s accumulated wealth, something Bush called “un-American.” According to the Huffington Post, the first policy Trump ever proposed during his 2000 exploratory presidential campaign was a 14.25 percent tax on personal assets and trusts worth $10 million or more. The one-time tax, he said, would raise $15.7 trillion, thereby balancing the deficit in one year.
It’s not a stretch to say that that policy would represent a conservative’s worst nightmare. But it’s not, as Bush pointed out, the only progressive idea Trump has expressed support for.
As has been reported on many times before, Trump once backed a single-payer health care system — in other words, a system where the government would be the sole health insurance company. Though he’s since backed off the idea as one he’d support for America, he did recently note that the system “works incredibly well” in other countries where it is implemented.
And though his stance on immigration is decidedly in line with conservatives (he’s said all undocumented immigrants should be deported and that a large wall should be built at the Mexican border), the policies he’s proposed on the issue are hugely expensive — $166 billion, according to Politico. In Bush’s view, that’s not something a true conservative would get behind.
“Look, the language [in Trump’s immigration proposal] is pretty vitriolic, for sure,” he said. “But hundreds of billions of dollars to implement his plans is not a conservative plan.”
Aside from what Bush pointed out, Trump has taken a number of positions in recent weeks that could be characterized as left of the other Republican candidates. He’s the only Republican candidate who isn’t calling for Planned Parenthood to be totally defunded. “We have to take care of women,” he said. He’s “delighted” campaign finance reform activists with his declarations that politicians can be bought and sold by corporations. He’s said he would honor the Iran nuclear deal, because honoring deals is just what he does. Some have taken that to mean he might not be the worst Republican candidate on climate change, because it means he would be inclined to honor the terms of a global climate agreement, which is expected to come at the end of this year.
All that’s not to say Trump is truly a secret progressive. He still thinks climate change science is a hoax, he opposes same-sex marriage and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and thinks a low minimum wage is “not a bad thing.”
But when it really comes down it, will Republican voters actually choose a presidential nominee who has such a long record of supporting progressive policies? Bush, unsurprisingly, doesn’t think they should.
“I think what people are eventually going to vote for is a proven conservative leader that’s done it,” Bush said. Whether that means him, though, is another conversation entirely.