Likely Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush said Tuesday that the "best part" of President Obama's tenure was his decision to continue the NSA's controversial spying program.
During a radio interview with Michael Medved, Bush was asked, "If you were to look back at the last seven years, almost, what has been the best part of the Obama administration?"
Bush responded, "I would say the best part of the Obama administration would be his continuance of the protections of the homeland using the big metadata programs, the NSA being enhanced," reported Breitbart.
"Advancing this - even though he never defends it, even though he never openly admits it, there has been a continuation of a very important service, which is the first obligation, I think of our national government is to keep us safe," he continued. "And the technologies that now can be applied to make that so, while protecting civil liberties are there. And he's not abandoned them, even though there was some indication that he might. That's the best I can do."
It's a position likely to bring some heat from some of his Republican presidential contenders, like Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, who have both announced a bid for the White House.
Paul has been an outspoken critic of the NSA's mass surveillance programs, promising a "historic" fight as he filed a class-action suit against the Obama administration last year to stop its bulk collection of phone data.
Cruz has also backed legislation to rein in the overreaching intelligence programs, co-sponsoring a bill that would have required the NSA to first obtain a court order before seeking phone company records, reported The Hill.
Another issue Bush strayed from his party on was immigration, saying in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference that immigrants should be given "a path to legal status where they work, where they don't receive government benefits ... where they learn English and where they make a contribution to our society," Fox News reported.
