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Jeb Bush wants you to know that he’s not running for president in order to give “free stuff” to black folks. I don’t have a problem with that, as long as he says he won’t give any “free stuff” to white folks, either.
That’s right, Jeb. It’s only fair. Tell us, the American voters, that you won’t give any of us any free stuff. Your lavish campaign donations will dry up like spilled lemonade in a desert.
As you may have heard, the former Florida governor’s “free stuff” comment came during a campaign stop in South Carolina. A white man in the audience asked how Bush was going to improve the Grand Old Party’s dismal turnout by black voters, not to mention other racial minorities.
“Our message is one of hope and aspiration,” Bush told the crowd. “It isn’t one of division and get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff. Our message is one that is uplifting — that says you can achieve earned success.”
Great. Hearing a Bush talk about “earned success” reminds me of how former Texas agriculture official Jim Hightower famously described Jeb’s dad, former President George H. W. Bush: “He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.”
Bush didn’t sound much better as he tried to clarify his comments on Fox News Channel. “I think we need to make our case to African-American voters and all voters that an aspirational message — fixing a few big, complex things — will allow people to rise up,” he said. “That’s what people want. They don’t want free stuff. That was my whole point.”
If Bush was trying to make a useful point about school choice and other conservative ideas that have had some success in Florida under his governorship, he stepped all over his message with his cavalier use of the “free stuff” catchphrase.
You may recall how former GOP candidate Mitt Romney used the phase during a 2012 Montana fundraiser after his anti-Obamacare remarks were booed at the NAACP’s national convention.
“I hope people understand this,” Romney said in Montana. “Your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this: if they want more stuff from government, tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff.”
“More free stuff” sounds like a big goodie bag after a birthday party, not health care for millions of the nation’s uncovered workers.
I don’t hear Romney or Bush describing Social Security and Medicare as “free stuff,” even though most retirees collect more in benefits from those programs than they paid in during their working years, according to the Washington-based Urban Institute’s annual surveys.
That’s why I say that if Bush thinks getting rid of free stuff is such a cool idea, he should promise to get rid of everybody’s free stuff. That would include subsidies to the government’s most popular programs outside of the military, Social Security and Medicare.
Then stand back and watch Jeb get run out of town.
Rather than offend the masses of voters by attacking those two very popular programs, Bush talks about black voters — most of whose ancestors, let us not forget, were brought here to help build this country with free labor — as if they’re only looking for free handouts.
The “free stuff” scenario suits a long-running conservative narrative that Democrats cynically buy black votes with welfare that traps blacks in a cycle of dependency. It’s important to remember that black voters first migrated en masse from the party of Abraham Lincoln at the same time most white voters did, with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s offer of government relief from poverty in the Great Depression.
Today, a larger proportion of blacks than whites live in poverty, but numerically whites in poverty still outnumber poor blacks. Yet, by focusing on race, we largely ignore the past half-century’s growth in poverty, decline in marriage, slowdown in educational achievement and widening income gap in white America.
As a result, white poverty has a strange new invisibility. But I bet they would make themselves quite visible and vocal if Jeb Bush accused them of only wanting free stuff.
Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
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