"...it would be a mistake to vote for this Bush, because like Mitt Romney, he cannot win a general election.
Period. Both guys look great on paper, but when voters look at either former governor, they can't get past the perception that they are gazing at a son of privilege and a creature of the establishment. Worse, both former governors think they're underdogs, not sons of privilege and creatures of the establishment.
Then there's his Hamlet shtick: To run or not to run? Bush told Fox News' Shannon Bream that he's not sure he wants to run unless he can do so "with a hopeful, optimistic message" and without watching his rhetoric get sucked into "the vortex of the mud fight." (That's another plus. He uses words such as "vortex.")
Bush also said he wants to campaign "joyfully" and free of the "convention of the politics of the here and now." Here's the headline: Bush not sure GOP is good enough for him.
This bothers me: Bush says he has qualms about slumming it in the muddy GOP primary, yet somehow the Sunshine Stater didn't think it would dirty his hands to fly to Las Vegas to kiss the ring of Sheldon Adelson, the GOP mega-donor whose millions kept Gingrich in the endless 2012 primary...
Methinks they're trying to make up for the sick twist of fate in 1994 that robbed Jeb of victory in his first gubernatorial bid when his less serious politician brother George won Texas. With that edge, the cockier Bush won the Oval Office in 2000. For the chattering class locked in its own way-back machine, Jeb will always be the Bush who got away."
The Republican Party's real problem is that the "chattering class" (and the Adelsons of the world) may be sufficient to buy Jeb the nomination rather cleanly over the Tea Party and Paulite "dwarves," and keep him from getting his own hands very dirty. The Bushes have always preferred to have others do their dirty work for them, and Jeb will be no exceptions. He won't run unless the donors can guarantee him he won't get any mud on his own velvet gloves of entitlement.
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