Bush tells GOP it can’t win anything with appeal to ‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestantism’

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

George W Bush has warned the GOP that it will fail to win future elections if it continues appealing only to "White Anglo-Saxon Protestantism’.

The former US president added that failure to turn towards Latino and Black voters could end the party within five years, in an interview for Dispatch on Friday.

"If the Republican Party stands for exclusivity – you know, it used to be country clubs, now evidently it's White Anglo-Saxon Protestantism – then it's not going to win anything,” Mr Bush told the podcast.

Mr Bush, an increasing critic of Donald Trump’s influence over the GOP, was referring to a recent attempt by Marjorie Taylor Green and other supporters of the former president to form an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ caucus in Congress.

While he believed the GOP would eventually return to office, the former president warned that the current “exclusivity” of the GOP, and an attempt to form an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ caucus, were a route towards election failure – and at the very worst, the end of the party.

“To me that basically says that we want to be extinct,” the Republican said of Trump supporting members of the GOP in Congress.

“I mean I read about that and I’m saying to myself, ‘Wow, these people need to read my book.’,” Mr Bush told Dispatch, “and I mean, it’s like saying when I was running for governor of Texas, you’ll never get any Latino votes because you’re Republican.”

“And I said you watch. And I worked hard,” Mr Bush added.

It comes amid concerns that the party is failing to appeal to Latino and Black voters ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, and instead introducing tougher voting restrictions to win in future.