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Jeb Finally Takes on Trump
In case you’ve forgotten, Jeb Bush is still in the presidential race. When he wasn’t raising millions, the former governor has spent most of 2015 alienating the base and shoving size-12 cordovans into his piehole. Now that he finds himself in single digits far behind a former reality show star and a retired neurosurgeon, Jeb is fighting back.
This ad presents the obvious, but seemingly devastating case that Donald Trump is no conservative. He’s for higher taxes, he’s a close friend of Hillary, he’s been aggressively pro-choice, and spent much of his life as a Democrat. The ad doesn’t even get into Trump’s support of the assault weapons ban, expansive use of eminent domain, crony socialism, and myriad other red cards that would boot any other Republican from the playing field.
The tone of the ad is perfect until about 1:12 when the silly Jeb! logo appears. The Bush team should have put that in fine print since Jeb represents everything the GOP base is revolting against. For many, the anti-Trump message will be forgotten as soon as viewers think, Ugh, Jeb! I hate that guy!
Nice try by the Bush campaign, but I’m afraid the notorious RINO traitor cucksultant Rick Wilson is right on the money:
Published in General.@TheRickWilson: Trump supporters are post-rational. He can eat a baby and they’ll think it’s the greatest thing. http://t.co/V62AIGlQSA
— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) September 1, 2015
But that’s not what you said. You used the term “family” as opposed to “legal guardian”.
Are you inferring from this that Jeb! would run third party?
I think you’d like his policy more if you spent more time with it. He’s not a great salesman, but he’s slightly better than middle of the pack when it comes to Republican governors; the medicare expansion was awful, and it’s unfortunate that he failed on unions, but he’s accomplished a lot of other stuff and he has relatively few heresies.
Sadly, I think that he might consider that a positive result. He’s very, very proud of that fact. If everyone learns it, maybe his third run will do better than the first two.
That said, it’s a little early to celebrate his downfall. I’m hopeful that the October debate will exclude him, but if it doesn’t, and Jeb does something truly stupid, there’s every chance that he could take New Hampshire, and if he does that, he could take the nom.
To be specific, I appreciate the way he speaks of our responsibility to aid those who are less fortunate than us. That’s important. I don’t appreciate him using that as an argument for the Medicaid expansion, and therefore both undermining his fellow governors and demonstrating why conservatives tend to be queasy with such talk. It’s possible to speak of poverty with compassion and honesty in perfect consistency with principle.
I’m quite willing to believe he’s been a decent governor otherwise, and I would have no qualms voting for him against any Democrat. And I’ve read it the same way, that he’s the rational fall-back candidate for many Bush supporters. If he’s hardline on immigration, then maybe those who say they want Trump to push out Bush for a more conservative candidate would go for Kasich.
Which I think would be a travesty, given the other options.
I’ve gone pretty heavily in for Jeb. And I could only wish I was on his payroll. ;)
Right. This is Pauline Kael stuff. It happened last cycle, too; I remember The Young Guns/ Flagship shared podcast from CPAC talking about how CPAC had never been a friendly place for Romney. This wasn’t followed by an explanation of the consistent straw poll wins, or a discussion of the well attended Romney events. It was just assumed; they didn’t hang out with Romney folks, so Romney folks didn’t exist.