Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) blames Obama for the Republican Party’s ant-LGBT vitriol. (Washington Blade file photo by Lee Whitman)

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush may have had an abysmal showing in the Republican presidential primary, but that isn’t stopping him from blaming President Obama for GOP vitriol against LGBT rights.

In an op-ed published Friday in the Washington Post, Bush explains his lack of support for Donald Trump, who’s set to accept the Republican presidential nomination this week in Cleveland, saying he isn’t the future the Republican Party.

But Bush blames Obama’s policy decisions and efforts to act as his own when Congress won’t as the reason why Trump rose to prominence.

“Eight years of the divisive tactics of President Obama and his allies have undermined Americans’ faith in politics and government to accomplish anything constructive,” Bush writes. “The president has wielded his power — while often exceeding his authority — to punish his opponents, legislate from the White House and turn agency rulemaking into a weapon for liberal dogma.”

Among Obama’s executive actions are signing an executive order barring federal contractors from engaging in anti-LGBT workplace discrimination. The Obama administration undertaken has numerous actions on behalf of LGBT rights that a President Trump could undo under his administration.

It’s these executive actions Bush says are to blame for the Republican Party attempting to “out-polarize the president” with vitriol against LGBT people as well as other minority groups.

“In turn, a few in the Republican Party responded by trying to out-polarize the president, making us seem anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker and anti-common-sense,” Bush writes.

The same week Bush published his op-ed, the Republican Party drafted a national platform that critics have called the most anti-LGBT ever. Among other things, it seeks to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in favor of same-sex marriage, supports barring transgender people from bathroom use consistent with their gender identity and endorses widely discredited “ex-gay” conversion therapy.

For his part, Bush said during his failed presidential campaign support for traditional marriage — code for opposition to gay nuptials — should be “a core American value” to protect children born in poverty.

“It’s talking about being formed by one’s faith, it’s at the core of the Catholic faith and to imagine how we are going to succeed in our country unless we have committed family life, committed child-centered family system is hard to imagine,” Bush continued. “So, irrespective of the Supreme Court ruling because they are going to decide whatever they decide, I don’t know what they are going to do, we need to be stalwart supporters of traditional marriage.”

h/t Instinct Magazine