Will JEB! be Romney 2.0?

(CNN) - Ben Carson suggested to CNN on Wednesday that prisons can turn straight people gay. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee called being gay a lifestyle choice, like drinking alcohol. I guess the next thing these two presumed 2016 presidential hopefuls will tell America is being black is a choice, too.

Like it or not, it's no wonder Jeb Bush is emerging as the Republican Party's 2016 frontrunner.

Of course, there is that awkward little name thing, something he seems fully aware of -- despite only being in the exploratory phase of a potential campaign, Jeb has already declared he's not just another Bush.  "A lot of people know my dad, they know my brother. As in everybody's family, we're all a little different," he reportedly told a crowd in Las Vegas this week.

And he seems to keep trying to distance himself from his family. "Do you have brothers and sisters? Are you exactly the same?" he insisted. Yet Jeb is banking hard on the same vault of donors and operatives his father George H. W Bush and his brother George W. Bush used in their presidential campaigns. He's already raising lots of money, asking donors recently not to give more than a still eye-popping $1 million to his super PAC. "They didn't need to be persuaded," Howard Leach, a Republican fundraiser for Jeb, told the Washington Post.

So, what exactly is in a name like Bush? Apparently, a whole lot of cash, which helps win presidential nominations and elections. And if Jeb wins the nomination in 2016, it will likely be less "joyfully," as he promised last year, than ruthlessly. Read more.