Now that Mitt Romney has taken himself out of the picture, the rest of the slowly congealing presidential field has turned their public attention to
savaging Jeb Bush.
Rand Paul is attacking him as a hypocrite on marijuana who’s indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton. Ted Cruz is questioning whether Bush’s stands on education and immigration will fly with primary voters. Conservative outside groups are going after him, with one airing a TV ad declaring, “We do not want dynasties in our White House.” [...]
Bush’s team says it was only a matter of time before fire was trained on him. He wants to project an above-the-fray aura and avoid daily squabbles with opponents that make him look small, but now has to decide how or even whether to respond.
This is in fact the Mitt Romney plan, and conundrum. The plan is to simply coast through the primaries looking like the serious fellow who cannot be bothered to debate the lesser life forms surrounding him; the conundrum is how long to keep that up when the lesser life forms are, alas, landing solid blows.
And solid blows they might be, because Jeb!'s major problem in the primaries will be that he and his immediate family are not what passes for true conservatives these days, now that true conservatism consists of declaring that ISIS will be using refugee children to spread ebola or warning that something called "Agenda 21" is rapidly turning America into a hellscape of bicycle paths and unpolluted air. To be specific, below the fold:
Jeb himself seeks to use his record as Florida governor as his main qualification for the presidency, but the education and immigration parts of that indeed pose a serious problem in the primaries. The base, the people who will be deciding whether he lives or dies in places like Iowa, don't like any of those things. His hard-right conservative policies in Florida are now themselves mistrusted by the base as too liberal and too government-involved.
[Bush] fought for annual standardized testing, with schools graded based on their students' results. And Bush also frequently talks about his work to end social promotion — holding students back in third grade if they didn't get high enough scores on a standardized reading test.
Among Republican voters, "there’s this notion that these seem like perfectly fine ideas, but we’re a little nervous about you going to Washington to do them," Hess said. "Because it sounds like you want to have bureaucrats in the US Education Department grade schools and promote students."
Specifically, Bush has been a strong advocate of Common Core, which along with George W. Bush's education "reforms" and other attempts to unify education standards is now considered by most of the base to be devil's work. As Mitt Romney had to denounce his own healthcare accomplishments, Jeb Bush is going to have to throw his entire education platform under the bus before the debates get underway. Ditto on immigration.
Once Jeb Bush tosses aside his signature issues, then, he's left with a rather weaker argument for the presidency, a far more generic vote-for-me because (1) my name is also Bush and (2) I was the governor of a state too.
Did I mention the knives were out? And that due to Bush's extensive Wall Street and other business dealings, there's a lot of dirt to find?
A company linked to Jeb Bush blocked a group serving the blind and disabled from landing a government contract, a revelation that could cast Bush's corporate work in an unfavorable light as he prepares for a possible White House run. [...]
Ben Ray, a spokesman for American Bridge, said Bush's corporate work won't sit well with voters.
"It's about his values and his priorities and best I can tell since he left office, and maybe before, that was get rich," Ray said. "The only thing they cared about was profit and if that meant that they had to fight some blind and disabled people they were willing to do it."
This, too, shares similarities with the Romney campaign, in which Notable Businessperson Mitt was constantly fleeing questions relating to how he made his gigantic piles of money and how many people just happened to get hurt by that. As for Jeb, he says through a spokesman that he does not "recall" that, which is likely to be a common refrain throughout the primaries.
In the meantime, Bush's fellow candidates are already pointing out that they are not Jeb Bush, and even those that have been close allies to Bush are attempting to gracefully distance themselves from him now. Or, in the case of Marco Rubio, not so gracefully.
Brian Ballard, a Tallahassee lobbyist and GOP fundraiser, said Rubio “was in the role of — not necessarily a protégé, but someone who really respected Jeb’s political skill and his intellect and his policy wonkiness.”
Ballard said the relationship was “outstanding,” but, he added, “it’s just that sometimes you compete with your friends.”
Rubio, in the interview, sought to make clear that he did not spend extraordinary amounts of time with Bush. “I never worked for him,” Rubio said. “I was never a staffer of his.”
Nay, the man never spent
extraordinary amounts of time with Bush. I suspect that will become, in some more polished form, one of the primary selling points of all of the non-Bush presidential candidates.
As for Jeb himself, it looks like the other candidates aren't going to politely wait as he travels the country locking up big donors. Won't that be fun.