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Jeb: Maybe I’ll Take My Silver Spoons and Go Home
Four thoughts:
1) Jake, you need SaneBox.
2) I’m seeing the Donald’s new ad slogan: “Elect Trump if you want that.”
3) Jeb — if I may? — I have to say that if Trump’s under your skin so bad at this point, you might consider that you might not enjoy dealing with Putin, al Baghdadi, Ayatollah Khameni, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un et al. Whatever cool things you could be doing would definitely be more fun than listening those guys demonizing you.
4)
Published in General
If a Jeb! candidacy hadn’t existed, it certainly would not have been necessary to invent it.
Headline: Jeb! threatens to quit race if people aren’t nicer to each other. Ranker and invectives increase as Republican base gains hope.
Don’t let the door hit you on your way out Jeb!
#3 BRILLIANTLY HILARIOUS!
Now onto #4
UPDATE: #4 – I’m cry’n I’m laughing so hard. Thank yooooou!
Jeb really needs to just stop running for President. He’s made enough comments like the one above. He seems to have little patience for the battle, and for the primary electorate that doesn’t share his view on issues. Go do some cool things, Jeb. Leave the politics behind, we’ll be OK without you.
If Jeb! candidacy never existed I don’t think we would be seeing Trump doing so well. Lets be honest seeing Jeb! at the top of those polls back in April and May with all of punditry telling us he is the once and future nominee I think really made a lot of people want to punch something and supporting Trump is like throwing a haymaker right at the GOP establishments face.
Hey Jeb! I’ve got a hashtag for you: #WontBeMissed
I am no fan of this man but I hope that is a misquote, such whining would be truly pathetic and shameful.
If not, well then please commence your other “cool things” activities sir. The nation will be grateful.
Seriously, how did that become public? Seems like something he wrote to someone in confidence. Is someone trying to nudge him out the door? Did someone think this showed he wasn’t power-hungry and so made him look good?
“OK” without him? We’re talking Cheetah flips! I can stop supporting Trump once Jeb! finally smells the Espresso he apparently never drinks. (Do you think Jeb! realizes he just confirmed Trump’s “no energy” meme with this asinine ‘poor-me-I-have-to-work-for-it’ schtick?)
I feel bad for him. I never would have voted for him, but even so, I feel bad for him.
My first instinct is to cynically assume that this is a carefully orchestrated “leak” on the part of Jeb’s campaign. The statement seems just a little too well-crafted to be a private message jotted in haste, and it fits to his campaign’s preferred message of “I’m the sane guy above the partisan rancor” just a little too well.
@leigh They were public comments made on the stump in South Carolina today: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/24/politics/jeb-bush-campaign-donald-trump/index.html
Why feel bad for this guy? All he has done is reveal who he really is: compromise no matter the cost, that way you’re “getting things done.” He brings to life Margaret Thatcher’s insight:
Like I said, I never would have voted for him, but I feel bad for anyone who has such a public meltdown. He will never live this down.
As the comments imply, this makes him appear weak even if one is sympathetic to his call for supposed realism. It’s bad campaigning.
More importantly, what he mistakes for realism is compromising before the battle has begun. He would undoubtedly prefer “negotiation” to “battle”, mistaking Democrats for lawful gentlemen acting in good faith. Someone who favors legislative action over legislative content is no advocate of limited government.
That would seem to require a singularly inept staffer.
I have difficulty imagining any constituency for whom this remark would make the man more appealing. I believe I see where you’re going with this but if you are correct and that is the case it would certainly strike me as a mark of desperation.
Wow. If he wasn’t entirely washed up before, he is now.
He may have spared us some misery, though. At least he spilled his “47%” in the primary race instead of the general. I’m grateful to him for that.
Per Yeti’s comment above, my instinct would seem correct. Not just that, but the statement was likely vetted by Bush’s team of superstar consultants as well.
I think it’s obvious what type of theoretical voter Bush is trying to appeal to: the “I’m so sick of politicians fighting, I’m not going to vote for any of them” voter.
The open questions are: a) does this type of person really exist, b) if so, do they really vote, and c) if so, do they vote in Republican primaries? My guess is no to at least one of those.
Right on all counts: he misjudges his opponents, tosses in the towel before the bell, and favors achieved compromise over principled stand-off. If only Obama and Hillary were made of such flimsy stuff!
I’d only seen them in Tapper’s phone pic. That makes it look like an email. Honestly, in context it’s a little better and was evidently received well:
He’s not saying the primary makes him miserable (I think), he’s saying getting elected and being stuck playing empty gridlock politics would be miserable (fair enough). I think what he’s trying to say is that Trump would just “fight” but accomplish nothing, while he wants to actually get things done.
I don’t give Bush any credence for this quote – 1) it’s Bush, and 2) he is probably just reading a script someone else put in front of him.
But I have to admit I agree with the overall sentiment. This phase of the Republican primary has turned into a meaningless silly season over the last few cycles. It has morphed into a circus and vanity show in which the base supports an unwinnable candidate in order to make a rhetorical statement (Trump, Bachmann, Buchanan) at the cost of some of the most promising candidates (Perry, Walker).
If I knew a candidate genuinely held the views in Bush’s speech I would think more of that person, for they would have demonstrated a sliver of sanity.
Oh, man. I think I just figured out Trump’s appeal. People have been told why he’s running for president: He wants to “make America great again.” And they believe him.
Jeb!? He wants to make government great again so politicians are happier on the job. No wonder he’s so readily disliked.
If this is so it makes you question their sanity. The impression one gets from it is not the “I’m above the fray and dedicated to serious discussion” but rather the “I can’t believe this is so hard for me” vibe. I didn’t read a statesman in that blurb, rather a child threatening to takes back his toys and play by himself at home.
Another squish bites the dust.
I immediately thought why, of all the combined years of experience the entire Bush Family has in public office, this? Someone else has to be responsible for authorship that may be behind it, sounding like a loser, with that type of experience.
Smells like Mike Murphy.
Good words here. The democrat primary is a contest to determine who is the most credible to carry the message of big government everywhere all the time into the
primarygeneral.The republican primary is about what the heck does it mean to be a republican. I have no idea and if we ask 10 people on Ricochet we get 11 or more good answers.
The landscape on the right has shifted a great deal, more than I realize, since his brother last ran in 2004. A Bush isn’t going to recognize much of what is going on. The Tea Party is a foreign concept to them.
The problem for me with Bush isn’t his cincerity or even his positions. It is the attitude I get from the guy. I get the feeling like someone came to him and said, “Hey buddy, you seem like a good chap, with a fine pedigree, spiffy resume and innocuous views. Why don’t you run for president, we will give you all the money you need to do it.” I guess what I’m saying is that to me, Bush doesn’t seem like his own man. I don’t know why he is running, I don’t think he knew why he was running, but I think now he just doesn’t want to be the guy that looses to Trump of all people, and lets face it that is the way this whole thing is portrayed.
And so somehow Bush will get things done without fighting? What might those things-not-fought-for look like? Exactly what we’ve been seeing for years: the ‘compromise first, fight never’ school of GOP leadership is Boehner’s House and McConnell’s Senate. No thanks, don’t need more of that.
I suppose I am in the I have trouble believing “this type of person really exists[s]” faction and doubly so when paired with “they vote in Republican primaries”.
Interesting speculation though.