JEB! tiptoes above the falls: He’s got to convince conservatives he’s one of them without alienating everyone else

(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) - Jeb Bush has been a putative candidate for the White House for only a few weeks and already he is discovering that presidential politics requires an elegant equipoise. His father and brother discovered this before him, and for both of them the exercise required a sophisticated type of flexibility. This sort of flexibility requires a candidate to be a kind of Nik Wallenda — to walk across the tightrope of Republican politics without falling into the cataract of issues below, or to let flexibility look like what it sometimes is: a lack of conviction. More than anytime in a half-century, this requires great skill. Mr. Bush tiptoed into the 2016 campaign as a Republican moderate, his natural opponents for establishment GOP votes being Mitt Romney and, after the former Massachusetts governor stood down, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. The theory was that Mr. Bush must first defeat Mr. Christie and emerge as the undisputed champion of establishment ideas and voters.

But this is not his father’s Republican Party, nor even his brother’s. Read more.