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Jeb Boasts of His Endorsement by… Eric Cantor?
A few days ago I recommended that Jeb Bush drop out of the primary. After sitting out the Obama years, Jeb’s political instincts are rusty, he’s far out of step with GOP voters, and he’s making the whole party look bad with his constant mistakes.
Little did I know Jeb was just warming up:
Eric Cantor, former House majority leader, will endorse Jeb Bush on Thursday evening and will be named a Virginia state co-chair of his presidential campaign, Republican sources tell POLITICO.
Cantor was courted intensely by other candidates. Cantor retains a strong political network in Virginia, a key primary and swing state. And he has enviable connections among Jewish business leaders who can be key supporters and donors.
“This is a big deal for Eric, and a big deal for Jeb,” said a top Republican involved in the negotiations.
A Cantor source said: “They have known each other for a long time, speak regularly and have great mutual respect for one another. Eric believes he is the only candidate with a real long-term vision for the country who can also actually implement it – not just talk about it.”
Eric. Cantor. The once-promising conservative who soon succumbed to the Beltway machine. The avatar of the self-interested, double-dealing GOP establishment. The target of the Republican base’s wrath who was tossed on his ample ear by unknown Tea Party candidate Dave Brat, despite the latter being down 30 points and many millions of dollars. Eric Cantor, who answered these anti-crony critics by immediately taking a job with massive investment bank and running their DC office.
Let me close with a quote by my favorite writer:
Published in GeneralJeb seems like a nice man. He had an excellent tenure as governor many years ago. But it’s obvious that his heart is not in this race, he doesn’t understand our Alinskyite political climate, and he is confused by both his base and modern media. The longer he vies for the nomination, the more he hurts himself and the GOP.
For the good of his country and his party, Bush needs to sit 2016 out.
If you don’t have it on disc, buy it. It’s totally worth it just for the commentary with Carpenter and Russell, who by this time have made some eight films together and are old friends having a couple of beers while talking about this fun lark they made 25 years earlier or so. Russell can’t stop cracking up through the whole thing, which for some reason I find utterly charming. Hey, I wanna sit down and have a beer with these guys!
They also have some interestingly perceptive and professional observations. One that really struck me is about how much dialogue there is in the film, and how fast-paced it is. They quite rightly noted Kim Cattrall’s mastery of it as well. Good stuff.
I once saw Eric Cantor waiting to be seated at a Midtown restaurant. He was frowning. Why? Why would Eric Cantor be frowning while waiting at a Midtown restaurant?
I am not equipped to express how absolutely jealous I am of this astute observation.
Funny thing is that Jeb would have been only one who could beat Trump, but wouldn’t be president either.
No no no. You stick the fork in to find out if he’s done. :) That’s how you find out. If the juices run clear, he’s done. :)
This is exciting news! This should ensure that he gets the vote of the donor class.
Nah. The general election is too chaotic to predict like that.
Truth is, it’ll come down to some scandal or gaffe or gotcha story that will come out in the first wk of october.
Does the sandwich have mayonnaise?
If he screams he’s probably not done. Just keep sticking him with that fork. When he’s done screaming, he’s done.
Right. :) :)
Yeah, and Trump makes GOP establishment types explode like Lo Pan’s henchman, Thunder.
Not if I ordered it.
“David Dewhurst, please pick up the nearest white courtesy phone for an urgent message.”
“Jeb will lose the general to a ham sandwich.”
Even if she’s been indicted.
In his parlance, ciega sordomuda.
MrG is too kind.
Just having Bush in the race diminishes all the Repubs who are professional pols, I include such fine candidates as Cruz, walker, Rubio, Kasich. Nominating Bush would be more of a disaster than any other candidate, including The Ego, who I still maintain is a Royal High es stalking horse.
Shun Jeb
Ignore Trump, but adopt his America-first, take no guff style
A Republican Party that took those too simple and self-evident steps would take 325 electoral votes and both arms of Congress
We just have to care enough
But what about the other two?
Ryan’s constituents still like him pretty well.
He says he won’t endorse this time around. If he did, it would presumably be his governor or his congressional ally — not Bush.
Paul Ryan? The limited govt conservative who voted for the auto bailout?
Yes, that Paul Ryan. The same one who is enthusiastically pro-Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
That should be no surprise. Ryan was a protege of Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett. Their contribution to our illegal immigration debate was to oppose Proposition 187 in 1994, in a full-page ad in California newspapers just before the state-wide election. Pete Wilson, who had been down in the polls to Jerry Brown’s sister, supported 187 and rode it to re-election in the gubernatorial race.
Well, they eventually got their way. Prop 187 was thrown out in the courts. That’s really worked out well for California Republicans and conservatives, hasn’t it?
Paul Ryan has done more to shift the actual policy platform to the right than anyone else. That’s just simple fact.
He has more bad votes than one — he also voted for NCLB, though I think he says now that was a mistake. No one is right on everything. But he is conservative.
He’s unquestionably for comprehensive immigration reform. But I’ll give him this: if he were in charge, I’ve no doubt he would also take the part about securing the border seriously.
Bush will lose no votes for this; if you’re offended by his endorsement by Cantor, you were never going to be for him.
Bush will gain a few votes for this; Cantor has some serious fans.
Bush will gain money from this. There aren’t that many Jewish Republicans for whom Cantor was a big deal, but those that exist generally aren’t poor and pay attention to this stuff. It also helpful for reminding people that he’s a foreign policy guy.
It’s a win for him. It’s not a particularly unexpected win, but it’s a win nonetheless. The election isn’t decided by who Ricochet likes.
Standard disclaimer for my “Jeb is still second in the polls, first in fundraising, and Trump is still in the race, which makes Jeb the most likely guy to win the nomination” comments; I’m not just not in favor of Jeb; I’m putting time, effort, and money into stopping him. I’m not saying “roll over and accept your new Floridian overlord”, I’m saying “you know, making an effort to support an actual candidate (“message” candidates don’t count) might be a good idea; this isn’t going to be easy.”
I agree — outside Virginia. But I’m not sure that’s true here. Cantor has some fans, but he has more non-fans among Virginia Republicans, according to the polls. Bush is perceived as an out-of-touch elitist who is wrong on immigration; he’s fighting that perception by associating himself with the state figure best known for losing his job because he became an out-of-touch elitist wrong on immigration. It confirms everything people distrust about him and adds a local flavor to give it emphasis.
I’m guessing he figured it was worth that risk for the money, and maybe it was for him. But it’s not going to help him win this state.
I take it you’re not convinced by the argument that Trump is protecting the rest of the field from the Establishment’s withering attacks so that eventually Walker or Cruz can… somehow… suddenly emerge?
“(W)in this state” when? Virginia is too late in the primary season to matter to Bush: his fate will be sealed by then. If you mean win in the general, then his calculation is the state either goes Blue or Red, not Conservative or Non-conservative. So it’s the calculation GOP grandees make year-in, year-out: in the end, a Red of any flavor will get any/all Red votes since their only option is an unacceptable Blue candidate. It’s the ‘lesser of two evils’ strategy. Maybe a mushy Red will bring along some stiffer Blue votes, but in any case Reds have no choice.
This strategy generally works, especially in places like Virginia. Usually. The question is whether there’s been a sea-state change. What Trump has demonstrated is that
havingespousing conservative views does not immediately end your political life. It enhances it. The former has been the working assumption of the consultant class for a long time. The latter is what gives this Virginian hope for the strategy you cite: a conservative emerging from behind the Trump defilade.Too late to matter? Virginia’s a Super Tuesday state. Given the shape of the field it’s more probable than not the race will still be to some degree competitive.
At the very least he has equally demonstrated that if you are politically incorrect enough, you can praise socialized medicine on-stage in a Republican primary without immediately ending your political life. Honestly, I don’t think that’s an improvement, whatever else he does.
I double-checked the CoC. While it’s not OK to sound like a conspiracy theorist, it IS OK to sound like a Republican consultant.
Well, someone without a win (or placing very strongly) in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina (traditionally all held before Super Tuesday) is toast. I suppose an awesome Super Tuesday showing could overwrite those three, it just never happens that way. Instead, someone with a credible front runner claim in February goes on to win the nomination. Romney, for instance, was second to Santorum in Iowa by only 35 votes (figured out later, BTW, which sort of makes my point) then won New Hampshire walking away. He lost S. Carolina to Gingrich, but the strength of the first two events kept him the front runner from then on.
Jeb! currently is in single digits in polls for Iowa, New Hampshire and at national level. Yeah, polls don’t mean much in August; but it’s pretty bad for a presumptive front runner to be in the humiliation zone at any time. To be behind two non-politicians by a higher number than your own poll numbers . . . well, it ain’t good.
I offer the below quote from Michael Needham, CEO, Heritage Action for America (said today on Fox News Sunday) as an alternative explanation for the Trump phenomenon:
But that proves only that to be competitive you need to have won something by then, not that the race is settled by those three states alone. Right now, it still seems unlikely that Bush or anyone will have established that kind of overwhelming lead. He is extremely unlikely to perform as well as Romney in Iowa. But even after that, Santorum managed to drag it out. Bush is likely to face that same situation, or worse if the challenger is more credible — and he also has the money to wait it out if he underperforms early on. He needs to do well on Super Tuesday. The Cantor association may give him money, but it probably makes one of those states a little harder to win.
I understand that people are angry. I do not understand why conservatives with influence who ought to know — talk radio hosts, for instance — are failing to do their research and to tell those they inform the truth: the person who sends mud into the swamp isn’t the guy who cleans it up. The political newcomer gets to pick his positions by the polls with a special flavor of shamelessness.
Or rather, I do understand why: Ratings. Money, that is. At least for some.
As for Washington, some are corrupt, and the “elitist” label fits perfectly. Some are simply moderate. Some are cheap populists. And some are genuine conservatives, with varying degrees of commitment to principle or of ideological intensity. They can be distinguished. We cheat ourselves if we don’t, and turn to the guy “who shouts freedom loudest” with no deeper thought.
There is no faster way to victory than the long, hard slog conservatives have fought for the past several years. Donald Trump will not find one for us.