Neil Bush: Trump Can't Survive a One-on-One Race
As the 2016 presidential race appears to be creating a divide within the Republican Party, Neil Bush (Jeb’s brother) is looking to Ted Cruz to bring unity to the GOP.
“Well, it’s become very clear to me Neil that Ted is the only guy that can unify our party and we have huge challenges facing our nation. I was excited to see that Paul Ryan wants to lay out an aggressive reform-minded agenda and we need to send to Washington as our chief executive a president that is principled, who is focused on sticking to his principles of conservative leadership and Ted’s the only guy right now in the race that’s left, that has these strong, principled, conservative views,” Bush told the FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto.
Bush told Cavuto he hadn’t actually talked about his support of Ted Cruz with his brother yet.
“I did not discuss with my brother Jeb, he may be learning this for the first time watching your show. I’m an independent-minded guy, haven’t talked to any of my family about this, and I think they found out yesterday that I joined the Ted Cruz campaign but they didn’t know I was going to be heightening my advocacy by being on your show.”
Bush then weighed in on the lack of focus on the issues on the campaign trail.
“I think it is pretty clear that there’s only one candidate left in this race that’s actually talking about ideas. I just saw the press conference-slash-celebration in Florida that Mr. Trump did. You know some people say he’s kind of narcissistic and bombastic, I’m not going to get into that, but you can judge for yourself, he talked about his food, he talked about everything but issues.”
When asked if Jeb was ready to support or endorse anyone, Bush said: “I really don’t know what he is thinking right now. I’m sure he is enjoying his private life. My brother has never made a habit of calling me for political advice, so that probably doesn’t surprise anybody out there. I’m so proud of the campaign he ran though, he stuck to issues, he ran with a servant’s heart.”
On whether he would support Trump if he were the Republican nominee Bush said, “I wouldn’t support a guy who’s got Donald Trump’s behavior.” Bush continued, “I definitely would not be for Bernie Sanders, I definitely will not be for Hillary Clinton. I’m afraid I’d sit it out, maybe a third-party candidate runs, I hope not.”
Bush was also asked about the growing concerns of a potential brokered convention and its impact on the Republican Party.
“Well Neil, that’s my concern… a lot of people are advocating and I guess Romney advocated ‘let’s go to a brokered convention and work it out at the convention,’ it’s much more powerful as a unifying force for the Republican Party to have a nominee selected before the convention.”