I’ve known Jeb Bush since the day he first arrived in Florida. It was 1980 and I was invited to a suite at the swanky Omni Hotel on Biscayne Boulevard. There he was—George H.W. Bush’s son—tall, handsome and bilingual. He was coming to South Florida to play for keeps and would go on to become state chairman of the GOP and, eventually, governor.
About 20 of us were invited to meet him. We were community leaders, a few journalists and businessmen and women. We crammed into the room to hear and meet the prodigal son and he delivered, impressively and compassionately.
Of course, any politician can say what he thinks a crowd wants to hear in that moment. But Jeb Bush continued his commitment to much of what he promised back then in 1980. And last night, he remained true to it.
It would have been so easy for Bush to turn his back on my ideals as a Hispanic American, or even those of his wife and his children, but he didn’t. In Des Moines last night, he remained the same Jeb I first met at the Omni Hotel, a building that isn’t even there anymore, but Jeb still is. No one would have remembered whatever promises he’d made, but Bush remembered.
So last night, the two Hispanic surnamed senators were in a verbal fistfight over which of them will treat Hispanic immigrants worse. These two guys named Rubio and Cruz were solidifying their bona fides as anti-Mexican, and promising the white, non-Hispanic people of Iowa that they would deport 5 percent of the U.S. workforce, Jeb Bush never looked so tall in his defense of Hispanics.
“So weird to listen to two Hispanic senators fighting with each other over who will treat Hispanic immigrants worse? Gracias guys.” That is what I wrote on Mosh.us and Twitter last night. It was just a normal reaction to what I was watching that happened to hit a nerve with thousands like me.
Rick Sanchez is a contributor for Fox News Latino.
Photo: towleroad.com
To read the full story: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/opinion/2016/01/29/rick-sanchez-jeb-bush-proves-hes-what-rubio-and-cruz-are-not/
