Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush
Jeb Bush has a problem. He governed Florida as a fierce social conservative, but he's not getting much credit for it with the far-right voters who dominate the Iowa caucus and South Carolina primary, polling only so-so with
so-called "values voters" and being the establishment candidate that
evangelical and social conservative groups are trying to unite against. Bush could aggressively remind voters of his role in the Terri Schiavo fiasco, or throw some red meat, but
his dilemma is that:
The man who famously said that a Republican must be willing to "lose the primary to win the general" in 2016 wants to court religious voters without taking the kinds of hard-line stands that could hurt him in the general election. He knows that wooing the evangelical base generally involves talking (and talking some more) about polarizing issues—abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage, to name a few—in ways that risk alienating the broader electorate come November. Bush wants to avoid that. But he also needs Christian conservatives' votes to get to November in the first place.
Bush may have some secret strength here. While what we're hearing about in the news and polls is mostly social conservative suspicion of him,
National Journal reports that:
In fact, powerful Christian conservatives are operating what amounts to a stealth campaign on Bush's behalf. Some are old allies from the Florida days; others are holdovers from George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns. Some are both, including Ralph Reed, president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a longtime friend of Jeb's who served as Southeast regional chairman of George W.'s 2004 reelection effort (and thus practically lived in Florida). Multiple GOP sources say that Reed has been urging Jeb Bush for several years to make a 2016 run and spoke with him recently to game out the campaign. Like many of the organizations that Bush's supporters lead, Reed's coalition demands impartiality from its leaders, so Reed can't openly back his man—unless, as some suspect will happen, Reed ultimately decides to join the campaign officially. (Reed declined to comment for this story.)
While the candidate isn't hitting the hustings to woo rank-and-file Christian voters, he's been busy surreptitiously building a formidable coalition of socially conservative luminaries.
Bush has met with a laundry list of such luminaries, and is reportedly making a good impression. Whether that will translate into endorsements—or at least neutrality—is another question, especially if Bush remains unwilling to throw the red meat publicly as well as privately. But if that happens, it would seriously shake up the establishment vs. far-right Republican primary dynamic that's been shaping up so far.