Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush began a three-day campaign swing through Iowa with a speech last night in Davenport at a fundraiser for Scott County Republicans.
“We have to be a party that understands why people are angry, but gives them solutions,” Bush said.
Bush says in the “age of Obama” it is a “difficult time” to choose public service as a career.
“What we need to do is disrupt Washington, to challenge every aspect of what it does, to take it on,” Bush said, to applause.
Bush joked about that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders would get the “gold medal” for making the most campaign promises and he warned Hillary Clinton would impose a third term of the “bad foreign policy” agenda President Obama has pursued. Bush also aimed at Republican competitor Marco Rubio, a Florida senator who has missed 42 percent of the votes taken in the U.S. Senate since he launched his campaign.
“We should cut the pay of elected officials who don’t show up for work,” Bush said, and the crowd applauded. “I don’t know about you but this idea that somehow voting isn’t important, I mean, what are they supposed to do? They should go to the committee hearings. They should vote.”
Rubio has said the main job of a senator is constituent service, not “lifting a finger” to vote on non-controversial issues. Bush is holding campaign events in Muscatine and Oskaloosa today. Democrat Hillary Clinton and four other Republican candidates are campaigning here today as well.