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Unless an American is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, or disaffected liberal, they likely believe the current crop of Republican presidential candidates have sunk to unfathomable depths of contemptible acts and statements. Of course the first names on that disgusting list are Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, but despite the truly hideous statement they have made over the course of the primary thus far, they have been outdone by one Jeb! Bush. It is true that Bush’s campaign for the Republican nomination is on life support, if it is not already dead, but that is no excuse for his latest campaign ad; except to remind Americans how nasty Republicans are when they are in power.

Apparently Bush’s campaign super PAC is awash with millions they have to divest and good old Jeb! spent a small fortune to remind Americans just how dysfunctional the GOP is, and just how much they really love big government overreach to interfere with Americans’ lives when they pander to the religious right. The Jeb! ad also should remind Americans that this current group of Republicans are not unique and simply perpetuating the party’s dirty pandering to their dirty base.

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In the campaign ad, after boasting he is a National Rifle Association hero, Jeb goes to a morbid place and touts his bona fides in protecting life. In particular, he boasts about his part in protecting the life of a poor woman who had been in a 15-year long “medically irreversible, persistent vegetative state” with feeding and breathing tubes keeping her heart beating and blood flowing. Some Americans may recall what was a dark time for America when “big-government” Republicans from sea-to-shining-sea, including then-president of the United States, George W. Bush, demonstrated outrageous big-government overreach and interference in attempting to keep Terry Schiavo alive; she was technically “alive,” but functionally “dead.”

Bush’s ad is sickening and will likely repulse any even half-decent American. In the ad Jeb! claims that while he was running Florida he “fought time and again for the right to life” with an accompanying image of someone leaning over Schiavo, lying in a helpless vegetative state in her hospital bed. This ploy is actually something that Bush believes will “shock and awe” the Republican base to shift their undying support from Cruz and Trump to his campaign. However, for most Americans it will likely remind them that to appease the “religious life” movement, Republicans will use federal government authority to “directly contravene” into the private lives of Americans.

As noted here, in order to bolster his credibility with the forced-birth crowd, Bush seriously felt he had to remind Americans how he and Republicans used the government to “force the irreversibly and profoundly brain-damaged Schiavo to cling to life;” in direct contravention of what her husband explained were her own desires. Remember, it was the pro-life evangelicals demanding that Schiavo be kept resuscitated at all costs, no matter how much pain it caused to others; particularly the woman’s grieving husband.

Terry Schiavo’s husband, Mike, reacted to Bush’s morbid campaign ad like any decent human being and was “understandably horrified” that Bush would “exploit his wife’s suffering.” Mike Schiavo should know better after what Republicans like the Bushes put him through. Mr. Schiavo said,

“It is simply disgusting that Jeb Bush and his super PAC would exploit my wife’s tragedy for his crude political gain. Shame on Jeb Bush.

Using his disgraceful intervention in our family’s private trauma to advance his political career shows that he has learned nothing. He’s proud of the fact that he used the machinery of government to keep a person alive through extraordinary artificial means — contrary to the orders of the court that were based on the court’s determination, made over six years of litigation, that doing so would be against her wishes.

What the campaign video shows is that if he ever got his hands on the power of government again, he would do the same thing again, maybe next time to your family.”

Despite the horrific hubris of Republicans running the federal government and Florida imposing its “twisted sense of religious values” on all Americans, Bush knows his appeal to morbidity and gross government intervention into Americans’ personal lives will resonate with many in the Republican base. At the time, while Florida’s Republican governor, Republican legislature and America’s Republican Congress and Republican president attempted to wield control over another person’s life, and death decision, polling revealed that the overwhelming majority of American people backed her husband and said that politicians should butt out of the family’s personal decisions and conflict.

It is worth noting that Republicans who still claim that their greatest asset is “keeping government” out of Americans’ lives are liars when it fits into their machinations to appease their religious base. Democrats would be wise to seize on Jeb Bush’s horrific ad to expose the GOP’s intent to overreach in controlling Americans’ lives when they have power. For dog’s sake they spent the past seven years have going to great lengths to interfere with plenty of Americans’ lives when they are not in complete power.

Most American women, and the LGBT community, already know that there are no lengths too far for Republicans to interfere, and control, Americans’ who do not comply with “social conservatives” worldview. Maybe with Jeb! sinking to a new low that Cruz and Trump can only sit back and admire, the rest of the people will be reminded exactly how extreme Republicans are, and can be, in using big government to control Americans’ lives; even those who are not really “alive.”

One really never thought Jeb Bush could out-extreme the likes of Cruz and Trump, but by resurrecting a morbid, and shameful, Republican abomination even when his campaign is in its death throes, it appears Jeb Bush is as extreme and pathetic as the rest of the Republican field.