It is not inaccurate to say the Bushes are political chameleons. Poppy was the epitome of an Establishment centrist, and ran as one, letting Atwater do all the dirty work with the Right in 1988. W. was packaged by Rove as a rednecked social conservative who said Jesus was his favorite philosopher, and managed to get reelected by running against gay marriage during a year when the issue was beginning to draw national attention because of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling legalizing it there, and he and Rove had the luck of drawing an opponent from that state who was nominated at a Democratic convention held in Boston. The movement of anti-marriage referendums on state ballots across the country proliferated in 2004, and it would not be a stretch to say that if not for the gay marriage issue promoting an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot in Ohio, spiking turnout of religious conservatives in the deciding swing state, Bush might have lost the state, and the election to the walking cadaver that is John Kerry.
W. was hardly a bigot in private. The GOP was led by a gay man, Ken Mehlman (though closeted then, now out) during Bush's presidency, and a gay male prostitute had security clearance to the White House, as evidenced by the Jeff Gannon scandal.
So how would Jeb run in 2016? Not very likely the way Mitt Romney did in 2012, as a "severely conservative" governor. He would have to bash Common Core, which he will never do, and embrace the nativist politics of the Tea Party, which hurt Romney with Hispanics, which he will never do.
Jeb dropped a possible clue when he recently eulogized former Democratic Florida Governor Rubin Askew. Askew was a rare liberal in that state, a champion of gender and racial equality whom Jeb characterized as, "as a great Floridian and a committed, accomplished public servant."
Unlike Romney, Jeb realizes he has both the connections and the money behind him to run as anything he wants, bulldoze to the nomination over any conceivable opponent, and position himself as he sees fit for the battle against Hillary.
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