Tag: Columba Bush

Outside Florida, Jeb Bush may be viewed as being more liberal — more reasonable and smarter — than his infamously witless, reflexively conservative brother, George W. But Floridians know better. As governor, Jeb was a right-wing hardliner — a doctrinaire supply-sider who slashed at least $14 billion in revenue to the state government by cutting taxes, mostly on the wealthy, and killing programs for the middle class and services for the poor. It was Jeb who signed Florida’s infamous “Stand Your Ground Law” and Jeb who tortured a stroke victim, Terri Schiavo, by ordering her to be kept alive artificially years after she’d suffered irreversible loss of brain function.

One area where Jeb’s positions are famously out of synch with the extreme right, however, is immigration. Last year he outraged tea party types when he expressed compassion for those who cross the border illegally. The undocumented, Jeb said, come to the United States seeking employment as an “act of love … an act of commitment to your family.”

Now a report in the Washington Post may explain why Jeb’s position on immigration is an outlier from conservative orthodoxy. It’s personal. His wife Columba’s late father, Jose Maria Garnica Rodriguez, was a undocumented worker from Mexico:

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