How the Bush family’s reinvention is now hurting Jeb Bush

(Washington Post) - Prescott Bush — businessman, banker, father of George H. W. Bush and grandfather to Jeb and George W. Bush — was Connecticut's senior senator for most of the 1950s. When George H. W. Bush first ran for the presidency in 1980, he ran as a Texan despite having been born in Massachusetts and lived in Connecticut. H. W. and his family moved to the Lone Star State after he served in World War II and graduated from Yale. So while George W. Bush was born in New Haven, he grew up mostly in Texas.

There's significance to that. When George H. W. Bush won the presidency in 1988, Connecticut had voted Republican in 8 of the previous 11 presidential contests. It hasn't since. The Bushes, like the Republican Party, moved south and west and became a dominant force in American politics.

When George W. Bush smiled and waved his way onto a stage in South Carolina on Monday night in an effort to bolster Jeb's candidacy, there were a lot of observations that came easily. George W. Bush — in part due to enjoying the freedom of not being the candidate — seemed much more natural at outlining the case for his brother than Jeb has at any point over the last year. He did the best job that he possibly could ensuring wobbly South Carolina voters that electing another Bush would mean electing another Bush — that Jeb would be the same steady hand and affable leader that so many Republicans appreciated from 2001 to 2009. But given Jeb's campaign so far, this is not necessarily an easy sell. Read more.