Republican presidential candidate and former Florida governor Jeb Bush said Sunday that remarks he made in South Carolina Thursday were taken out of context by “the Left.”
On the campaign trail, Bush contrasted his message with that of Democrats and said: “Our message is one of hope and aspiration, it isn’t one of division, and get in line and we’ll take care of you with free stuff.”
The remark was immediately seized upon by critics, who compared it to Mitt Romney’s out-of-touch “47 percent” remark from the 2012 campaign.
The implication critics are “drawing is that you think all some people want it is government handout,” said “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace.
Bush replied that “the Left” takes “things out of context” all the time.
“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,” said the former Florida governor. “That’s what people want, they don’t want free stuff. That was my whole point.”
“What we’ve had is 6 million more people are in poverty today than the day Barack Obama got elected president,” he added.
“This idea that you can regulate and tax and spend your way to prosperity has failed. We spend a trillion dollars a year on poverty programs, and the net result is the percentage of people in poverty has remained the same,” Bush said.
“We should try something different, which is to give people the capacity to achieve earned success, fix our schools, fix our economy, lessen the crime rates in the big urban areas,” said Bush. “And I think people in poverty can be lifted up.”
