The Bush League

Jeb, Republicans have a strong bench,  just do the party and your family a favor and don’t run.

A number or conservatives have argued, at least in the past, that Jeb Bush is the best of the lot (the lot being HW, W and Jeb) as an overall conservative. That is a comparative to a mediocre standard, sort of like hailing Common Core, which Jeb espouses.

David Limbaugh issued a Tweet  that may be the most magnanimous of much of the short reactions from conservatives to Jeb Bush’s announcement that he is actively exploring a presidential run.  Of course the announcement means he has been working vigorously at running for many months; it is a 100% certainty he wants to run, and a 99% certainty he will run.  From David Limbaugh:

Unlike some I have great respect for the Bush family, especially W, but as for W’s policy ideas I didn’t like, Jeb embraces them on steroids

Rather than get into any of Jeb’s policy advocacies of late, we just implore Jeb to consider that the whole idea of another Bush running is just unbecoming.  This is America and he is putatively running in the Republican Party, no dynasties or anything that smacks of blood rights, for either, please.* Beyond that, were he to be successful in the general election, it would force conservatives to forget his attacks to date, eat a shit sandwich on his policies,  and defend the whole famn damnly, again. Having been through two of those with McCain and Romney, conservatives will be in no mood to suck it up again.

One wonders as well about Jeb’s support among Republican big donors who are encouraging his candidacy. Democrat recruiting using Bush hatred in 2008 was hugely successful. Why do such “sophisticated thinkers” in the big donor class push a Jeb candidacy?  Two things come to mind, — they are not as sophisticated as they think they are or they do not care if he wins as long as he edges out an economic and pro-sovereignty conservative from the nomination.  Someone who may actually threaten big government and a stream of immigrant labor subsidized by the public purse.

And remember that still with the bully pulpit (and responsibility) of office, brother W was nevertheless too above it all to help the ones that brought him, reelected him and defended him. He and Karl Rove failed to help rally against the key cudgel used against Republicans in 2006 – 2008 — the war and foreign policy.  Of course his final years economic performance was hard to defend but he failed to even try there as well. He could have defended Republicans by going on the attack and pointing out that the policies that led up to the 2007 – 2008 economic crises were Democrat in origin. And if W was too reluctant to help those that helped the family, where was Jeb? He left the Florida governor’s office two years before W left the White House.

I do not think conservatives will rally to Jeb should he pursue the nomination by denigrating conservatives, his apparent plan (memo to Jeb, compromise with Democrats, when one must, is not the same as starting out with their views).  Conservatives have been that route with McCain and found it wanting.   But maybe looking to the nomination process we should encourage Jeb, he will split the Christie vote further. Some are saying that is why he is in a rush to signal he his running now, to sew up that establishment support.

In  a related commentary Gary Bauer at Campaign for Working families had this say in a piece titled “The Establishment Primary” (bold our emphasis) :

. . . It seems the primary to decide who will be the establishment nominee is well underway.

We all remember how in 2008 a young man of color burst on the scene, captured the imagination of America’s youth and coasted to the White House amid tremendous symbolism and hope. And of course, the person in 2016 who can revitalize the passion of the Millennial generation after eight years of malaise is. . . Hillary Clinton.

Seriously? If there is anything more boring than Republicans nominating another Bush, it’s Democrats nominating another Clinton. Watch this video and see just how stunned some college students were to learn how old and out-of-touch Hillary really is.

A recent McClatchy-Marist poll found good and bad news for Bush and Clinton as they ponder their presidential ambitions. Jeb and Hillary were favorites in the poll for their respective party nominations. But I suspect that had more to do with name recognition than anything else.

The poll also found that 64% of Republicans felt it was “more important to have a nominee who will stand on conservative principles than it is to have a nominee who can win.”

Frankly, I think that is a false choice. The so-called “electable moderates” haven’t had much success at winning. But clearly Bush’s biggest selling point can’t be just a name and his supposed “electability.”

As for Clinton, the poll found that by a 20-point margin (58% to 38%) Democrats want a nominee to “move the nation in a new direction” rather than “continue President Obama’s policies.” If Democrats are seeking a clean break from Obama, his former Secretary of State might not be their ideal candidate after all.

R Mall

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