While there has been endless talk of Jeb! alternating from running from and embracing the legacy of his brother,
"he's the smart one!"
"my brother kept us safe!"
"he's a uniter!"
The candidate that is the second coming of "W", the '99-'00 "W", is Marco Rubio. And we should ignore the other candidates and work on the strategy to fight against him.
The top 3 GOPers in the polls will never ever be on a Republican ticket: Trump, Fiorina, and Carson. The only thing to do with them is to try and tie the entire party to their craziness, which has been effective with Trump's bigotry against immigrants. The leading acceptable candidate is Rubio. And he has several aspects to his candidacy that echo W:
1) Low expectations. Ever since beating out Crist in the 2010 primary, and coming in the Senate as the fresh face of the future, he hasn't been seen as particularly substantive or a wonk, or a superstar legislator, but that means all he needs to do is smile, do enough not to get blown out of the water in any policy discussion, and he gets kudos. Contrast this to the curve that Hillary will be graded on for any policy discussions, or the level of detail and scrutiny Bernie will get for anything that he proposes? Remember the difference in how Gore and Bush were 'graded' after debates?
2) Compassionate Conservatism. Rubio is staking out a position similar to the front that W put on in his campaign. Proposing legislation designed not to go anywhere, but addressing diverse issues so he can show he cares about a diverse set of issues. The 'nice' conservative that middle America falls for generation after generation, wondering why they keep falling for it.
3) Latino vote. The damage Trump's candidacy has done to the GOP standing in the Latino community will hopefully last, but some of that can be counteracted through his candidacy. The GOP needs at least 41-42% of the Latino vote to win, I don't know if they have any other candidate that could hope to get to that level. W was portrayed as being able to relate better with that community than other Republicans because of his involvement with the Texas Rangers and being the governor of Texas.
4) The "who would you like to have a beer with" factor. Another thing that middle America falls for all the time is this likability proxy. It's often brought up in how W was able to prevail over a clearly better qualified candidate in 2000 and 2004. I feel Rubio will come out ahead in a matchup against Hillary or Bernie in this respect.
5) The "future" or "change" factor. It's apparent that many voters are 'angry' and disappointed in the direction the country is going, despite the fact that the economy has greatly improved over the last 7 years, and Obama has accomplished a lot. While Hillary has gone to great strides showing how the GOP platform will take us backwards, Rubio will be portrayed by the media as the change / future candidate. If Bernie prevails in the primary, while he can claim dramatic change in his platform, just on the identity factor alone, Rubio will again be portrayed as the "future". This helped W in 2000, with people expressing Clinton 'fatigue'