Jeb Bush, the candidate for donors focused on the future.
Mitt Romney's announcement that he's
considering a 2016 presidential run sets up a potential Republican establishment face-off between Romney and Jeb Bush. Wonkblog's Matt O'Brien
sums up the optics:
Nothing says democracy like a private-equity-manager-turned-governor whose dad ran for president facing off against a governor-turned-private-equity-manager whose dad was president over, you guessed it, the presidency.
But Bush's allies are trying to sell him as
the fresh new choice:
“If donors are wistful about the past they can wait for Mitt,” said the donor, who is close to Bush. “If they’re focused on the future, [the] Right To Rise is accepting checks, cash and credit cards.”
Bear in mind, Bush left office as governor of Florida the same year that Romney left office as governor of Massachusetts—and a year before Bush's brother George W. left the White House. His only qualification as the new hotness is that he didn't bother to get beaten in 2008 and 2012, taking those years instead to make money and push school privatization. And really, his brother's unpopularity was such that Jeb needed to give voters time to forget what 2006 to 2008 felt like. Still, when Mitt Romney is the opposition, the bar for staleness has been set pretty high.
It's a choice to make private equity managers—and few others—tingle with anticipation.