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Republicans last month trounced Democrats to win control of
the Senate and extend their majority in the House, as exit polls
showed Americans were fed up with partisan gridlock in
Washington.
"Republicans need to show they're not just against things, that
they're for a bunch of things," said Bush, 61, a former two-term
governor of Florida who is considering entering the Republican
presidential nomination race for 2016.
"We have to show that we can, in an adult-like way, lead," he
said at a Wall Street Journal conference, pointing to issues
such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline and a possible lifting of
the ban on crude oil exports.
Bush spoke as some Republicans are weighing shutting down the
government in an attempt to stop Obama from taking executive
action on immigration policy. Obama last month decided to
unilaterally ease the threat of deportation for some 4.7 million
undocumented immigrants.
Bush said Obama overstepped the bounds of his authority but that
Republicans should focus less on what the president does and
more on building consensus in Congress for their own proposals.
He urged an immigration system that accepts newcomers based on
the United States' economic needs, rather than on the familial
ties of those already in the United States - similar to the
approach used in Canada.
"It's also probably the easiest way to get to sustained economic
growth, which is what we desperately need," he said of his
immigration approach.
Bush said he would decide in "short order" whether he would run
for president in 2016, adding he was still weighing whether the
sacrifice his family would have to make would be worth it.
"It's the same decision-making process that I've always had,
which is ... do I have the skills to do it in a way that tries
to lift people’s spirits, and not get sucked into the vortex,"
he said.
(Reporting by Anna Yukhananov; Editing by Ken Wills)
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