Turn out the lights....

DelusionWatch - JEB! Bush Thinks Donald Trump Is Afraid of Him:

NYMag. Read more.

ConceitWatch - JEB! Bush: 'I'm In Second Place...It's Basically a Jump-Ball':

Townhall. Read more.



Fun Vid of the Day - Watch JEB! Bush Squirm Through Almost A Minute Of Donald Trump’s Insults

DailyCaller. Watch here.

Politico - The Bush blame game begins. Read more.

NBC News- JEB! Ramps Up Hits on Rubio, Cruz. Read more.

New York Times - King George II Walker, Quiet So Far, Could Reemerge for Fiery February Goetterdammerung End to JEB! 2016. Read more.

JEB! 2016 The DeathWatch Celebration Begins

Poppy, it's just not fair! It's MY TURN!

JebWatch briefly returns from the dead to celebrate the impending death of JEB! 2016.

Voting will soon bring a swift end to the entitlement delusion that has been JEB! 2016.

Join us for the party, and laugh and cheer as JEB! dumps his remaining SuperPAC millions into a futile nor'easter of negativity to destroy his traitorous protege Marco Rubio.

BYOB

GOP Wars, Episode 2020, A New Hope!

For those nerdy denizens of corporate cubicle hell with nothing more exciting to do, the forth most popular betting pool gabble around the water cooler and in the break room these days, after the Super Bowl matchup, tonight's college football national championship, and whether Rey is Luke Skywalker's daughter, must be about the date JEB! Bush will "suspend" his doomed presidential campaign. For those pool organizers, limit your available dates to those after the South Carolina primary on February 20, and before the Florida primary on March 15.

If JEB! 2016 had a campaign song that correctly sums up the Crown's Prince emerging terminal strategy for his current Bush Restoration incarnation, it surely would be a title play on Leslie Gore's "golden" sixties' oldie, something like, "It My Party, and I'll Kill It If I Want To."  JEB! is going down fighting, and doing it the way only a duplicitous Bush would do. He is lashing out with his SuperPAC bankroll at every other establishment candidate, trying to destroy their chances of being the alternative to him, which will certainly help either Ted Cruz or Donald Trump.  It's conceited and nihilistic of course, but it's not without purpose. JEB! the 2016 loser has a plan for ultimate victory, even if it's a real long shot, and a draw to an inside political straight.

It involves hoping Trump can be stopped, and Cruz will win the nomination by default.  Why Cruz?

A Trump nomination and loss would be explained by the media as a failure of Donald Trump, and his openly racist and revanchist rhetoric, or as his Manchurian Candidacy for Hillary Clinton calculated by Trump himself to fail. A Cruz nomination would be spun as a victory for the tea party wing of the party against the establishment, and a resultant Cruz landslide loss in the general election would be spun as a predictable defeat for tea party reaction. Certainly something a Bush Crown Prince would want.

...And in time, Amerika, like my
father and brother, you will call me
MASTER!

JEB! will be 67 years old in 2020, two year's younger than Hillary is this year, and he is looking at a Maoist "Long March" to power, if there is any road at all for him. Now that it's obvious JEB! and his family cannot buy him the nomination in this election cycle, and certainly not the presidency itself, why not give the tea party rabble what they want, and then kneecap them?  This JEB! may be able to do in the first instance, and most likely can do in the second.  Conspire to hand the nomination to Cruz then work secretly to ensure his defeat in November.  Hope Hillary runs into trouble over the next four years with the economy and terrorism, and then come back in 2020 and buy the nomination after the tea party clone voters his family created to serve their interests, but now no long need are demoralized and discredited.  It's the only option JEB! has at this point for any Bush neoconservative Restoration under his name during his lifetime.  It's either this, or abdicate as Bush Crown Prince in favor of his son, Prince Jorge P.

JEB! is not ready to abdicate. Just as you can bet another Disneyfied episode of Star Wars is coming to a multiplex near you in a year not too far away, you can bet that the Crown Prince of the Dark Side of the political Force is busy plotting how to turn this "loss" for him now into a loss for the American Republic later.

JEB!'s (very) long shot (and only remaining) path to victory is a chapter from the Atwater / Rove playbook that must be played soon.

No, we are still on "vacation" as JEB! 2016 remains on hospice care, but one thing remains relevant about JEB!, and Karl Rove telescoped it to the world back on November 4 in his Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, The Path to a Wild GOP Convention. There appears only one long shot option at this point for the Crown Prince to obtain the nomination, a brokered convention, and even that is out of JEB!'s reach unless Rubio implodes. Time is running out for JEB! to take out Rubio in full Bush style, and if he doesn't, his campaign will end before the Florida primary, since he will never allow himself to be humiliated by a single digit showing in the state he ruthlessly governed for eight years.

He will not take on Rubio directly, of course.  If it happens, it will follow a certain pattern. Look for a stealth Bush partisan in the corporate media world, one preferably not at FOX (more likely at the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, or a Florida newspaper) to serve up a lethal hit piece revealing devastating information that sinks Rubio's campaign.  For this to happen, there has to be something out there to sink Rubio with.  Merely running superPAC attack ads over abortion or his absentee voting record in the Senate is nowhere near enough, even if you ran them 24-7. To quote Edwin Edwards, JEB! has to put Marco, metaphorically if not literally, in bed with a dead girl, or a live boy. JEB! seemed to have regarded Rubio in the past as his protege, and perhaps he is a bit reluctant to destroy him, but at this point, destroy him he must, and if he is a Bush, he will at some point, authorize such a hit if the ammunition is there. The next 30-45 days should reveal whether or not the next Bush in line is up to his familial political legacy.

Even it that happens, it's still no lock for the Crown Prince. The "brokered" nomination has to unfold during a deadlocked primary season.  Say, for instance, Trump, Carson, and Cruz remain viable, and each get 20-25 percent of the vote.  JEB! by taking out Rubio, combined with the natural attrition of Kasich and Fat & Furious (Christie) becomes the de facto establishment candidate and manages to up his single digit game to a level roughly equivalent to the three "outsiders," around 20 percent. Rand Paul stays in and gets the 10 percent "libertarian" vote all the way through.

Then no one gets enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot, and the bargaining begins, and out of the dust JEB! manages to buy the nomination.

It could happen.  It would split the party. It might cause Trump to run third. But it would give the Crown Prince his "turn" to lose to Hillary.

This may be one of the few times that the GOP establishment, with or without JEB! as their candidate, actually wants a brokered nomination, either to put JEB!, Rubio, Romney (again) or a dark horse on the ticket since it is very unclear at this point that any establishment candidate can win enough primary votes to get the nomination on the first ballot.  Rubio probably can in the end if not destroyed by JEB!, but we will see.

Miami New Times: AS GOVERNOR, JEB BUSH STOPPED AT NOTHING TO RETALIATE AGAINST HIS ENEMIES

JEB!watch going on conditional vacation as JEB! 2016 is put on deathwatch

Donald Trump has JEB! right where he wants him, making him defend his brother in ridiculous ways that all but destroy his chances for the presidency, and undercut any ad hominem arguments the Bush Republicans generally make against Hillary.

Trump's masterful, if not brilliant, political chess match with JEB! Bush has produced such great results that JEB! has sunk as low as 5 percent support in some recent polls. In fact, Trump has accomplished something even more devastating. He has brilliantly maneuvered the entire establishment right flank of the GOP into an incoherent and doomed defense of the GWB presidency with his latest line of attack on the Bush legacy, as evidenced by this pitiful Red State article equating the presentation of any evidence or argument of negligence by George W. Bush prior to 911 as Trutherism.

With all this good news in mind, JEB!watch will go on vacation!  Now that the threat of a third Bush presidency has been caged, for the time being, there isn't as much need for us anymore. But don't worry, we'll be back if JEB! comes back! But we hope neither of us do!

If JEB! does, and buys the Republican nomination with a little help from his family friends, then Trump will run as a third candidate, and finish him off next November. You can take that to your nearest "too big to fail" bank and deposit it. Whether Trump is a Manchurian Candidate for Hillary is debatable. Enough Republican voters bought the scam George W. Bush sold them in 2000, and enough appear willing in 2016 to buy Trump's scam, while others take Trump's bait and rally around the "W. kept us safe" mythology, so if he is working for the Clinton's, the champagne is already on ice in Chappaqua, and inaugural ball invitations are ready to send to the engravers. At this point, the only thing standing between Hillary and the presidency is Obama and the FBI.  And if they take her out, say hello to President Biden, and Vice President Warren.

Who stands to get a now likely worthless Republican nomination if the plutocrats can't revive their Crown Prince and put him over on the base?  It's really not at all clear, nor does it likely really matter much, so enjoy the Great Trump Circus while it's still in town. Make America GREAT again! By stopping JEB! 2016.  Thanks Donald, at least for that.

Game, set, match?...Trump has figured out Jeb Bush's greatest weakness as a candidate, and it's not his energy level

(Vox) - I don't know if Donald Trump will win the Republican nomination. But even if he doesn't, it's increasingly clear he's going to destroy Jeb Bush before he loses.

Over the past week, Trump and Bush have been in an argument that basically boils down to the question of was George W. Bush president on 9/11/2001?

Trump insists that Bush was president both prior to and during the 9/11 attacks, and he was therefore at least partly responsible for the security failures that permitted the tragedy. And to Trump's credit, there is considerable evidence that George W. Bush was president on 9/11/2001.

Jeb Bush's position is harder to parse: he argues that his brother was only responsible for what happened after 9/11, suggesting, perhaps, that someone else bore the responsibilities of the presidency on 9/11/2001. Or, to be a bit kinder to his position, he argues that the measure of as president isn't whether something like 9/11 happens, but whether it happens again.

The result is this absolutely brutal interview CNN's Jake Tapper conducted with Bush. "If your brother and his administration bear no responsibility at all," Tapper asks, "how do you then make the jump that President Obama and Secretary Clinton are responsible for what happened at Benghazi?"

Bush's response is almost physically painful to watch.

Trump has a bully's instinct for finding someone else's true weaknesses. His continued crack that Bush is a "low-energy" candidate is devastating precisely because it identifies a weakness not just in Bush's campaign style, but in the nature of his campaign.

Now Trump has pulled Bush into an even more dangerous quagmire: his brother's presidency. Trump is reminding every Republican voter that nominating Jeb Bush will mean running a general election campaign with two disadvantages. First, Republicans will have to answer for George W. Bush's failures in a way they wouldn't if they nominated Marco Rubio or Carly Fiorina or Donald Trump, and second, they'll need to somehow explain why they're holding Hillary Clinton responsible for Obama's presidency even as they don't hold George W. Bush responsible for George W. Bush's presidency. 

Read more.

CNN host destroys Jeb Bush: You blame Hillary for Benghazi but insist brother blameless for 9/11

(Rawstory) - Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush struggled on Sunday to explain how he could blame Hillary Clinton for the attacks in Benghazi while insisting that George W. Bush was blameless for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

While speaking to Bloomberg last week, Trump reminded the interviewer that George Bush was president when the World Trade Center was attacked in New York.

“He was president, OK?” Trump said. “Blame him, or don’t blame him, but he was president. The World Trade Center came down during his reign.”

The comments sparked Bush to respond by calling Trump “pathetic” in a Twitter post. And on Sunday, he continued to defend the 43rd president during an interview with CNN.

“My brother responded to a crisis and united the country, he organized our country and he kept us safe,” the GOP hopeful told Tapper. “And there’s no denying that. And the great majority of Americans believe that. And I don’t know why he keeps bringing this up.”

Tapper wondered if Bush’s loyalty to his brother “might be in some ways a political or policy liability blinding you to mistakes he made.” Read more.