Jeb Bush Will ‘Never Forget’ That Astronaut Who Died That One Time [View all]

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://www.mediaite.com/online/jeb-bush-will-never-forget-that-astronaut-who-died-that-one-time/

Jeb Bush Will ‘Never Forget’ That Astronaut Who Died That One Time

former Florida Governor and future Republican presidential primary concession speech-deliverer Jeb Bush‘s prosciutto-handed penchant for exploiting tragedy was on brilliant display this week in a pair of unrelated yet telling moments.

First, there was his odd decision to bring up a space program disaster without knowing even the most basic details surrounding it. At a Concord, N.H. town hall meeting, Jeb! had just finished praising the idea of Moonbase Gingrich, and probably felt it was time to remind the crowd that he used to be a “Gubner” and knows how to be “Very Serious,” so he completely went off on a tangent about that time he spoke a memorial service for some shuttle, whose name he couldn’t retrieve, that blew up in some year beginning with two-thousand.

The audience tried to help him out, but he couldn’t quite get there:

I was thinking, you were going to bring up the tragedy that took place, I will never forget that, when I went as governor of Florida, to the tarmac for a tribute to the astronauts, that died. I think it was 2005, maybe — um , yeah. [audience: Christa McAuliffe?] No, the other one, 2002. In the 2000s. It was horrible. It’s a reminder that this is a dangerous endeavor, but it is worth us, for all sorts of reasons, to be engaged in it.

The audience was also no help, suggesting that maybe Jeb was governor during the 1986 Challenger disaster, and I swear one of them said “You mean Porkins?'” But the date they were all looking for was 2003. Yes, I had to Google it, but I’m not the one bringing it up at a campaign event, then spinning my tires trying to remember the year it occurred instead of saying “the astronauts who died in that tragic accident.”