Even if he says he isn’t running for president, the very successful former governor of Florida offers some great advise to his fellow Republicans on how to campaign against the increasingly unpopular incumbent President of the United States:

Asked by Fox News host Neil Cavuto if some Republicans go too far in their criticism of Obama, Bush said flatly, “I do. I think when you start ascribing bad motives to the guy, that’s wrong. It turns off people who want solutions.

“It’s fine to criticize him, that’s politics,” said Bush, the younger brother of former President George W. Bush, who again reiterated that he won’t run for president himself. “But just to stop there isn’t enough. You have to win with ideas, you have to win with policies. … He’s made a situation that was bad worse. He’s deserving of criticism for that. He’s not deserving of criticism for the common cold on up.”

“If you’re a conservative, you have to persuade. You can’t just be against the president,” he added.

Emphasis added.  Note that Jeb how Jeb criticizes Obama’s policies, reminding us that the Democrat has “made a situation that was bad worse.”  Interesting that in saying that Obama started with a “bad situation,” he is implicitly implicating the incumbent’s predecessor (i.e., my Bush’s brother) in leaving Mr. Obama with that bad situation.

Jeb is right.  We have to win with ideas and policies.  The problem with Obama is not his motives, but his policies.  And let’s keep the focus on that.

As Republicans fault the incumbent for wanting to spend ever more of our tax dollars to address out nation’s economic problems, they must also explain how conservative policies, cutting spending and reducing regulation, is conducive to economic growth and job creation.

(H/t Gateway Pundit.)

According to Gallup, the current Texas governor leads the immediate past Massachusetts governor by a statistically significant margin:

Shortly after announcing his official candidacy, Texas Gov. Rick Perry has emerged as rank-and-file Republicans’ current favorite for their party’s 2012 presidential nomination. Twenty-nine percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents nationwide say they are most likely to support Perry, with Mitt Romney next, at 17%.

Methinks this man, who has barely been in the limelight has emerged as the frontrunner, largely because he is the new guy — and rank-and-file Republicans aren’t all that satisfied with the current pack.

Much hubbub over Vice President Biden’s latest foot-in-mouth buffoonery, this time delivered on the soil of our landlord. (When, btw, can we all agree he makes a bigger fool of himself and more often than Dan Quayle ever could have even tried to?)

If you haven’t seen his despicable (and, no I can’t think of a more appropriate way to describe his words) comments, hold your nose and press play:

Of course the most disgusting and blatantly offensive thing he says is that he “fully understand[s]” and is “not second-guessing” the brutal and vile and perverted One Child Policy and its ancillary of forced abortions and sterilizations in that Communist (and, by government dictate, godless) nation.

But as with his boss, look beyond his characteristically poorly chosen extemporaneous words and you’ll see a philosophy that drives him and the rest of the Left:

It isn’t that, as a practicing Roman Catholic, the Vice President finds abortion to be an abomination. It isn’t that he sees forced sterilizations and abortions to be an egregious trampling of civil rights. It isn’t that such policies and disrespect for innocent human life leads to a coarsening of society and therefore an overall degradation of its moral quality. Nah, in the face of those factors, Mr. Biden is not “second-guessing”.

The criticism of the policy Biden musters—and hopes, from which “maybe we can learn together”—is that they’re “in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people: Not sustainable.”

When faced with the evil of China’s One Child Policy, to people like Biden, the greatest flaw is that it won’t sustain a welfare state as he’d like to see it.

So much for rendering unto Caesar.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)