Anne Laurie mentioned Jeb’s appearance on all the talk shows yesterday morning, but I had to chuckle seeing this headline in the Guardian today. I happened to see a couple of minutes of Jeb on Face the Nation and I agree with Steve Benen: It’s still pretty hard to figure out Bush’s immigration position after he changed it four times in the last six days.
Still, immigration aside, if your campaign strategy is to bravely embrace the disaster that was your brother who, four years later, voters are still blaming for our economic disaster, and who remains the only living ex-President with an approval rating under 50%, then you had better be out raising a shitload of money, because Bieber knows you’ll need it.
c u n d gulag
“Bush” ain’t a 4-letter word fer nothin’!!!
Alex S.
Hmm… President Carter is more popular than I thought.
Jay
Carter is popular because he built 47% of the homes the Blah people live in personally.
liberal
Anyone else see this exercise in political naivete by Sawhill and Holzer?
mass
Yeh, good luck trying to un-shit THAT bed, Jebster!
MattF
Jeb certainly has problems, but name recognition isn’t one of them. And holding a variety of contradictory policy views isn’t really all that much of a liability, truth to tell.
Napoleon
@liberal:
Jackasses like that can’t get hit by a train fast enough for my taste.
Brandon
Instead of praising his brother’s record, it would probably be better to ask the voters for a mulligan on the family’s track record and try to stand on your own as the ‘competent Bush’. After all, he still needs to penetrate the base/rumps loathing and distrust of both his father and brother, who were responsible for ushering in Clinton and Obama as Democratic Presidents following their respective disasterous turns at the helm. Plus, how damaging would it be for the future of the Republican party if only a Bush could get elected in the 30 years following the reign of St. Ronaldus Maximus? That cannot be good.
Arm The Homeless
The Teahadists want blood, and Jeb! is about as popular with the activist set as explosive diarrhea. I have no doubts many of them will grudgingly fall in line once he outlasts whichever loonies he is up against in the primaries, but the optics of watching him attack Rand Pauls right flank will be schaudilicious.
Speaking of Floriduh pols, I saw Crist on the teevee box speaking to a county women’s group yesterday. It’s a bit disheartening to know FL Dems’ best chance to regain the State House is with a warmed over moderate Republican.
danielx
It’s going to take more than a shitload of money, given that the idea of another Bush in the White House within our lifetimes is more than most people can stomach. On the other hand, there are four years of voter suppression and wingnut tranquilizing to go, so anything is possible…I never thought I’d be seeing the political resurrection of Newt Gingrich two years ago at this time, much less Rick Santorum being considered as a serious presidential candidate. But then I didn’t foresee the freak show that the Republican primary season became, either (Who knew they had so many candidates of presidential timber?)
But Jeb(!) isn’t exactly a thoroughbred even if his last name is Bush, which these days isn’t the most positive type of name recognition one could have – kind of like Manson that way (which do you prefer, Marilyn or Charlie?) Family dirty laundry doesn’t matter; House Bush has been up to its double chins in slimy underhanded shit since the 1940s, and it hasn’t stopped them from becoming richer and more powerful the whole time. No, he’s more like a Clydesdale, and one with his own record (free Terri Schiavo!) and his brother’s chained to him like a dead 1981 Chrysler Cordoba (with seats of rotted Corinthian leather, natch). You know, his brother? He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, especially by Republican pols?
Granted that Jeb(!)’s record as a Republican governor, aside from that whole Schiavo unpleasantry, looks like a miracle of enlightenment and liberalism beside those of, oh, Rick Scott, or Scott Walker, or John Kasich, or…whoever. Not a hard thing to do in a state as corrupt as Florida, but that very same record will be hung around his neck by wingnuts for the next four years. Watching him turn himself inside out for four years in an effort to polish his wingnut credibility will be something to see, especially since we all know that as a Bush (and hence a patrician/born rich fuck) he won’t really have his heart in it. Oh, he’ll go through contortions, maybe bite the heads off a few live bats, advocate workhouses, debtor prisons, public floggings…but if you want to know what a Bush will do in any given situation, follow the fuckin’ money, which is not necessarily where the tea party/wingnut axis would go.
Tone in DC
Carter being more popular than Dubya is no surprise. Thing is, after those eight years, ebola laced with salmonella and topped with strychnine is more popular than Georgie Jr.
Off topic, but I just have to mention this. The Krugster mocks the RWNJs with much mirth and merriment.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/11/breitbarted/
NonyNony
I believe that Jeb Bush will attempt to frame his campaign as a campaign to be the 44th president of the USA. Basically he’ll campaign on a platform that since the presidency passed from 8 years of Clinton directly to 8 years of Obama, the Democrats have had the Oval Office for 24 straight years and just look at how much of a mess they’ve made. The groundwork for this approach (the “George W Who?” approach if you will) is already being laid by the press.
Omnes Omnibus
@danielx:
Shirley.
The Moar You Know
The wingnut powers that be hath decreed that George W. Bush is a “liberal”.
Rehabilitation is not possible under such circumstances. Jeb better drop that shit fast if he wants to make it through the first round of the primaries (FWIW, I don’t think he will).
Scamp Dog
@liberal: it isn’t naïveté, it’s the MSM standard viewpoint. They want Obama to support the policies he already supports, but acknowledging that he wants them is Against The Rules of Washington Discourse. And helping him succeed at what he wants to do would be partisan, even if they do want it themselves and think it would be good for the country.
Betty Cracker
This is what happens when the Corleone family lets Fredo run shit before Michael.
The Dangerman
Jeb has it bad, but Rudolph Hitler had it worse.
cmorenc
@Arm The Homeless:
Frankly, what we most need to change the political dynamics of this country for much the better is for a bunch of “warmed over moderate Republicans” to see the light enough to jump the fence and start voting for Democrats. How many times have you been in conversations with ordinary folks who actually agree with you (or you them) on maybe 70-80% of issues but where the rubber meets the road in the voting booth, mostly vote Republican? Because they recognize two or three more or less sensible things a given GOP officeholder has done (or claimed to be for), but are in denial about how far the officeholder has jumped the shark into the ocean of insanity the other 85% of the time?
Take our own John Cole, for example. Well, ok reportedly once upon a time Cole was one of the swimmers in the ocean of GOP insanity himself, but…the example works well enough anyway.
catclub
@MattF: “And holding a variety of contradictory policy views isn’t really all that much of a liability, truth to tell. ”
Do the first part and you are Mitt Romney winning the GOP nomination. Romney never got around to the truth telling part.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: True dat.
Mike in NC
Jeb may well become the media’s favorite go-to “moderate Republican” (as if such a creature has existed for decades) and he may even start elbowing Gramps McCain off the Sunday bobblehead shows. He’s tanned, rested, and ready and there are books to be sold, dammit!
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: I think it is more that each one of those has a ‘single issue’ like Abortion or havin-as-many-bazookas-as-God-intended or whatever that in their lizard brains overrules logic.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Jeb(!) seems to feel that he needs to prove that he’s a Real Conservative lest he get Santorumed in the primaries. That will leave him, as it did Romney, spending the run up to the General Election trying to prove to the rest of America that he’s not what he so fulsomely declared himself to be a few days or weeks earlier. Count on the Very Serious People to explain away the inconsistencies as they so valiantly did for Romney. Count, too, on the VSP’s to explain how nostalgic we really are for the glory days of C-aesar. Finally, count on the Democrats to nominate someone who can eke out a defeat.
TriassicSands
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t know, isn’t George more like Sonny, than Fredo. It’s been many years since I’ve seen any of the Godfather films, but I remember Sonny as the fast-living, reckless son who probably would have gotten the whole family killed if he hadn’t been gunned down at a toll booth. Fredo, it seems to me, was the well-meaning, but inept one who screwed up everything he touched.
Hmm. I guess that makes George a Sonny-Fredo hybrid.
Where is Lacuna, Inc. when I need them?
catclub
@Arm The Homeless: “The Teahadists want blood, and Jeb! is about as popular with the activist set as explosive diarrhea.”
They hated Romney about as much. But they are so disorganized they could not agree on one opponent for him. And Jeb would be getting 35-40% of the early GOP primaries rather than the 25% that Romney got while still winning.
JCJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
Is she your #1 Crush?
liberal
@Scamp Dog:
I’m taking the angle that these guys are pretty liberal, and if they think that cutting stuff for the olds is going to help the youngs (as opposed to more tax breaks for the wealthy, or perhaps more military spending), they need to get their heads examined.
Villago Delenda Est
Anything that came out of the womb of the Quaker Oats Man is tainted.
Arm The Homeless
@The Moar You Know: I didn’t think Baron von Mittens would make it either. But here we are. By 2016 there will still be a schism in the GOP and the money men in the party aren’t going to roll over for the Jeebus freaks or the Teahadists. They will run with the well heeled sack of shit they have, not the one they wish they had.
Jeb! will be the reasonable alternative candidate that the Village will pimp as the only person who can both stand up the the (reasonable) excesses of a nascent Real ‘Murican movement and those dirty uncouth hippies. Third Way!
Petorado
Doubling down on W? Well there goes any pretense about Jeb as the reasonable one.
“Out, damned spot! out, I say!”
ET
Is there some weird psychological game going on? Does he not want to be president so is sabotaging his chances because he doesn’t want to say outright he doesn’t want it?
Villago Delenda Est
You’ll recall that Taco, the morning after UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH! paved the way to VICTORY! for the Marquis du Mittens (after all, the Cadillac of Pollsters said it was going to happen!) was touting Jeb(!) as tanned, rested, and ready, without so much as missing a beat.
Schlemizel
@Betty Cracker:
WRONG! This is what happens if the entire Corleone family is a bunch of Fredo’s! They should go to bed every night only after thanking whatever power runs the universe that ol granddad was able to amass such a fortune & establish connections that even an entire family of Fredo’s has not yet managed to screw it up so that they get the extreme poverty they so richly earned.
quannlace
The GOP is still in the same mindset it was in 2012, heck, even back in 2008.
Still waiting for that knight in shining armor to come riding out of the mists and save the party.
Palin (Maverick!)
Rick Perry
Christie (Oops, still in the doghouse for embracing the Kenyan Muslim)
Rand Paul (Truth to power and great bladder control!)
And now, for the next five minutes, it’s Jeb Bush
They all supposedly, ‘excite and energize the base’, till they quickly fizzle out like a wet match.
Comrade Dread
To: Jeb Bush
Positive talking points of the Bush administration. Stay on message.
* Have you seen a globe lately? I mean, just look at how many countries he didn’t lie about to needlessly invade. There are a lot, people.
* Did more for education than any previous president by contributing hundreds of new words to the English language.
* Reinforced confidence in the old adage that literally anyone could become president in America. Seriously, Americans will vote for anybody to run their country and several thousand nuclear weapons.
* Think of all the career boosts he gave to struggling comedians to help stimulate the economy.
* As the most pro-life president, demonstrated his commitment by keeping Dick Cheney distracted with other things so he could no longer descend from his castle to the village and steal babies for his dark brides.
Arm The Homeless
@cmorenc: That may be a decent plan on the National level, but at the state level here in Floriduh, development is king. There is no room for anything with the waft of populism, so the best that can come from us at the moment will be Blue Doggish at best. The tipping point will be the further movement of middle class Hispanics into North Central Florida or the collapse of the aquifers in the Tampa region throwing our already fragile, tourist based economy, into a tailspin.
Just One More Canuck
@quannlace: wet match? More like a wet fart
Cassidy
I’m still calling it now: Nikki Haley.
@cmorenc: That doesn’t really work in Florida. It’s something about Southerners, but the whole social dynamic is “At least I’m better than someone.” There is no interest in voting for personal interest even though the majority of North Florida is poor to middle class and could use some Democratic policies. No, it’s all about being “not the worst” (trailer trash) and value(s) judgements.
Omnes Omnibus
@JCJ: Well played.
Arm The Homeless
@Cassidy: At this point I would be happy not to fall into another Disston Era where everything outside of the tourist areas looks like Bantustans.
kindness
One redeeming feature of Dubya’s presidency? We won’t elect another Bush to national Federal office for a generation.
Thank God for that.
Cassidy
@Arm The Homeless: Unfortunately, that’s what works here. TBH, the less white people I’m around, usually the happier I am.
GregB
Rumor has it the Democrats are shaking in their boots at the prospects of a resurgent Fred Thompson candidacy.
If he picks Sarah Palin as a running mate the Demonrats are doooooooooomed.
catclub
@kindness: So we’ll just appoint one, instead. Small consolation.
Arm The Homeless
@Cassidy: If I may ask, what part of the state do you hail from? I can’t complain too much about our little blue oasis here in FlorGaBama
geg6
@Mike in NC:
Yep, and Gramps McCain has made a spectacle of himself lately what with the Senate floor bashing of the brave and principled Rand Paul, bipartisan hero and all around expert on civil rights and Benghazi!11! and OH, NOES! THE DRONEZ!
MomSense
@liberal:
If it were possible to set aside the false assumptions and blatant untruths, it would also just be a stunningly dumb piece for how uninformed it reveals the authors to be.
I wonder what would satisfy them. Maybe we should just guarantee retirees 2.5 years of dignified, enjoyable retirement and then let’s hand them over for soylent green production. If you suggested this to these jerks they would probably counter with 1.75 years–anything more would be too costly. Do the people who write these awful opinion pieces even realize that they are talking about human beings?
geg6
@TriassicSands:
Nope, W is definitely Fredo. Neil, OTOH, could easily be Sonny. Nothing like some high-priced escorts in Thailand and Hong Kong, along with some voodoo, STDs, adultery, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, and education grifting to completely push the Silvarado Savings and Loan right out of top-of-mind. This is guy pretty fucking spectacularly stupid and corrupt. He makes W look like a piker.
Edited to add link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Bush
Cassidy
@Arm The Homeless: I’m in the Jacksonville area.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense:
[Rant mode]Social Security and Medicare are not fucking charity programs for old people to suck from the government tit and deprive younger people of their hard earned dollars. Both programs were set up as insurance programs and only pay out to people who paid the premiums and then experienced an event that triggers the payout. My fucking payments into Social Security are not designed to be payments into a fund marked for my use any more than my payments to GEICO are saved to cover the cost of repairing my car. Fucking dipshits piss me off. [/Rant mode]
Note: @ MomSense: The rant was not aimed at you.
soonergrunt (mobile)
@geg6: old Neil is a real piece of work. I lived in Colorado during the Silverado S&L thing. How he managed to not get indicted is beyond me. And of course our press corpse, which made endless support of Billy Carter’s alcoholism just ignored Neil´s criminality because it was wrong to mention him with respect to Bush, Sr, who was just so decent, you know.
Arm The Homeless
@Cassidy: Ah, yes, Tebow ground-zero. Then you are very well versed in the contradictory mindset of the average Florida resident. What is your sense of how a Dem would fare when Nelson eventually retires?
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
Rant away! I had tirade number 8,973 after reading that piece.
max
It’s still pretty hard to figure out Bush’s immigration position after he changed it four times in the last six days.
MORE CHEAP LAWN CARE, FEWER BROWN VOTERS
max
[‘That’s his actual position. His announced position is whatever you want it to be.’]
BArry
@danielx: “Watching him turn himself inside out for four years in an effort to polish his wingnut credibility will be something to see, especially since we all know that as a Bush (and hence a patrician/born rich fuck) he won’t really have his heart in it. Oh, he’ll go through contortions, maybe bite the heads off a few live bats, advocate workhouses, debtor prisons, public floggings…but if you want to know what a Bush will do in any given situation, follow the fuckin’ money, which is not necessarily where the tea party/wingnut axis would go. ”
OTOH, he’ll have a few years to cut deals with the Tea Party.
My single prediction for the 2016 election is that the GOP will not permit the freak show of 2012; a candidate will be selected much earlier, and the number of people invited to debates and such will be limited to a few, all of whom can be trusted not to go whackjob.
Chris
@BArry:
That is most definitely what they’re gonna be shooting for, I just think the teabaggers might be enraged and mindless enough to reject the establishment candidate and spend months trying to field one of their own again.
BArry
@TriassicSands: “I don’t know, isn’t George more like Sonny, than Fredo. It’s been many years since I’ve seen any of the Godfather films, but I remember Sonny as the fast-living, reckless son who probably would have gotten the whole family killed if he hadn’t been gunned down at a toll booth. Fredo, it seems to me, was the well-meaning, but inept one who screwed up everything he touched.”
Fredo would be Neil Bush.
WereBear
@Villago Delenda Est: In her youth she was quite the hot number.
Shows what HATE will do for your looks, I suppose.
Yutsano
@Chris: Rand Paul third party run. We can make this happen people!!
WereBear
@Cassidy: True. The South invented race to the bottom; hey, maybe you’re living in a shack with no teeth and hookworm… but at least you’re white.
If they didn’t rebel against that, I’m not taking bets on too many waking up now…
maya
Jebbie, Jebbie, he’s our man,
If he can’t do it,
Marvin can.
Paul in KY
@kindness: A generation isn’t long enough, IMO. How about an epoch or an age?
WereBear
Let me be clear about disparaging the South: I lived in Florida for ten years. I came there from Northern Indiana, a hotbed of determined ignorance, oppressive conformity, and Bible belts… used on children.
I fled to New York almost as soon as I became an adult and recent events have proven me prescient. I never thought the literal state one lived in could determine if you lived or died… not in America.
But I was wrong.
Paul in KY
@BArry: True on GWB never being ‘well meaning’. I do think he is like Fredo, in that he is a fuck up, knows it, but thinks he should be a bigshot.
Cassidy
@Arm The Homeless: If left up to North florida, they won’t. Also, I don’t know about statewide, but their was a lot of GOP ratfuckery in local elections here with someone running in the Dem Primary then dropping out before the election leaving the Republican to run unopposed.
Honestly, I don’t know. The Dems in the State Senate are woefully outgunned and I don’t see what it’s going to take to win that back. The unions have been beaten up and even Dems (Mayor Alvin Brown of Jacksonville) are trying tobabalnce the budget with huge concessions from the public service unions. Odds are your teachers are jeebus freaks anyway. Anecdotally, the FF’s I’ve been dealing with are largely conservative. It’s a mess. Central and South florida have to pick up the slack, because North florida has decided they like being third world.
@WereBear: Yeah. It blows my mind. I always described Jacksonville as the largest small town in America. You can bring all the football teams and soccer teams and other sports teams and arts and traveling shows and business, but this place will never get beyond Jeebus comes first and you suck if you’re not white.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
They don’t care about human beings, they only care about themselves.
WereBear
@Paul in KY: My vote is W as Fredo, too. Neil Bush is definitely Sonny.
This leaves Jeb as their Michael. And I will let that stand as a sad commentary on our ruling elites.
TriassicSands
After reading the responses to my Sonny-Fredo hybrid hypothesis, i no longer have any idea which brother, if any, W would be. I guess I’ll just have to settle for “Worst President Ever,” a title Neil will never have a shot at, and we can only hope Jeb won’t either. Two Bushes in 4-1/2 billion years is more than any planet should have to endure.
Arm The Homeless
@Cassidy: The ratfuckery is a new one to me. When we traded in our Blue Dog St. Joe knob-slobber in the House for a Teabilly St. Joe knob-slobber, it seemed fair and square. But our local Dems have pretty much conceded half the district to conservatives in hopes that they can focus on Tallahassee specific projects without having to fight rearguard actions to make sure we can retain a 21st century standard of living.
Even our pro-union rep Vasilinda is drowned out by the more powerful growth machine reps. The only ray of sunshine I can hope for involves a fusion of Hispanic agricultural workers’ unions with the sclerotic Dems in something akin to Minnesota DFL party.
Patricia Kayden
I live in Maryland and recall seeing a crazy man with bumper stickers that read “Do you miss me yet?” under photographs of Shrub. I was shocked but I guess there are delusional people out there.
Perhaps Jeb already knows he has some hardcore people out there who love his brother and will vote for him no matter what.
Cassidy
@Arm The Homeless: Honestly, it feels like the Dem Party and progressive activists have given up here. I’ve tried to make contact with several organizations, that now seem defunct, because I want to be a part of gun control advocacy. Nothing but crickets.
JustRuss
If the man who brought
ObamacareRomneycare to Massachusetts could win the Republican nomination, I wouldn’t rule out Jeb. But it will take a crapload of voter suppression and a hinky Supreme Court to get him into the Whitehouse. Which doesn’t rule him out, sadly.mclaren
The smart money says Jeb is positioning himself for martial law.