Free Republic

Before Jeb Bush announced he was “actively exploring” a presidential bid came news he was just as actively seeking a way to avoid appealing to conservatives. (The Bushies prefer the word “pandering.”) The would-be King Bush III consulted one of the country’s foremost experts on excelling in the Republican Party without being too conservative: Arizona Sen. John McCain. “I just said to him, ‘I think if you look back, despite the far right’s complaints, it is the centrist that wins the nomination,’” McCain told Bush, according to The New York Times. It’s definitely true that the establishment candidate usually wins...

Nationally syndicated conservative radio host Mark Levin, a former official in President Ronald Reagan’s administration, is calling on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to answer whether he stands with House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Majority Whip Steve Scalise in the wake of a blistering Scalise scandal concerning his longtime ties to a top aide to former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke.

First it was the Boston Globe. Then came the New York Times. Then Politico and Bloomberg – and now CNN. The Jurassic media is on the march, and their goal is to help the Republicans nominate Jeb Bush in 2016. In order to achieve this goal, they have started to soften the battlefield of ideas with their stockpile of shallow psychological tactics. This is just the same old psy-ops the left always tries. And why not? It almost always works on the Republican establishment in Washington. Inside the GOP-e in DC, reality does not matter -- only polls and media...

I think that Rich Lowry is right to notice the ways in which Jeb Bush resembles pre-Obama conservatives (like his brother for instance), but I think it is just important way to think of Jeb Bush as a reaction to Obama’s political success. Specifically, Jeb Bush’s strategy is based on how the Republican lobbyist and donor classes interpreted Obama’s 2012 victory. Basically, the Republican establishment blamed their 2012 defeat on social conservatives and opponents of upfront amnesty for unauthorized immigrants. The Republican establishment asserted that the policy problem with Romney’s failed establishment candidacy was that it did not sufficiently focus...

The political baggage he carries isn't likely to fly.Politically, Bushes are, like the value of the Ivy League degrees most of them have, vastly overrated. Jeb Bush, who recently, to the surprise of no one, all but announced he would run for president, is no exception. Ever since Jeb established an “I’m Thinking About Running for President Committee” (translation to English: I’m running for president) a week or so back, the conventional wisdom, whooped up by the chatterati and the various great mentioners, is that this latest Bush is a lock for the Republican nomination for president in 2016. They...

Jeb Bush, Eyeing Presidency, Quits Firm That's Profited From Obamacare By JOSEPH TANFANI As Jeb Bush weighs running for president, he has begun to unwind some of his financial affairs Jeb Bush quits Tenet Healthcare Corp., which profited from Obamacare, to focus on his political future When Jeb Bush completed two terms as governor of Florida in 2007, he reported his net worth was $1.3 million, about $700,000 less than when he took office. Today, nearly eight years later, he is a wealthy man. He has plunged into business and entrepreneurial ventures involving consulting, the paid lecture circuit and energy...

Cokie and Steven Roberts: Jeb, Hillary mirror each other Posted on December 21, 2014 COKIE and STEVEN ROBERTS Syndicated columnists Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton badly need each other. They cancel out each others’ greatest weaknesses and deprive their foes of some of their strongest arguments. Both have similar flaws and are vulnerable to the same charges: that they are too old (Jeb would be 63 on election day 2016; Hillary, 69), too out of practice (Jeb was last elected governor of Florida in 2002; Hillary was last elected senator from New York in 2006), too tied to previous presidents...

Election 2016: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush embraces one-size-fits-all national education standards that would turn schools into re-education camps for the left. His decision could cause trouble with GOP primary voters. As is the tradition these days, Jeb Bush, brother of one former president and son of another, has announced via social media that he is preparing to run for president, setting the stage for another Bush-Clinton contest in 2016 should former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton get the Democratic nomination. To be the Republican nominee, Bush must run a gauntlet of primaries where he'll need to persuade Tea Party...

'It's all about us being the No. 1 enemy of these people' PALM BEACH, Florida – With the announcement Tuesday by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush that he plans to “actively explore” a run for president in 2016, radio host Rush Limbaugh says the real reason Jeb is seeking the White House is to choke the influence of tea-party conservatives out of the Republican Party. “You want to know why Jeb Bush is thinking about running?” Limbaugh asked on his top-rated program Tuesday. “He’s … being looked at as savior by the big-money donor class and the consultant class –...

Jeb Bush, the pro-life former governor of Florida, announced today that he is forming an exploratory committee to examine a potential Republican presidential bid in 2016. Bush is known for signing pro-life legislation and a bill to try to save the life of Terri Schiavo. Bush, the brother of pro-life President George W. Bush, made the announcement on Facebook, saying he and his wife and family had long conversations over Thanksgiving about whether to run for president. “We also talked about the future of our nation. As a result of these conversations and thoughtful consideration of the kind of strong...

Jeb Bush is exploring a 2016 presidential bid. The former Florida governor said in a post on Facebook Tuesday that over the Thanksgiving holiday there was a lot of discussion about the future of the nation. “As a result of these conversations and thoughtful consideration of the kind of strong leadership I think America needs, I have decided to actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States,” Mr. Bush said. Mr. Bush said he plans to establish a Leader PAC next month to “help me facilitate conversations with citizens across America to discuss the most critical...

It’s crystal clear that Hillary Clinton has a glass jaw and is poised to be knocked out in 2016. With Barack Obama and his legacy of failure weighing her down, Hillary must cobble together a coalition by recovering the normal Americans who used to help Democrats win while at the same time satisfying the freak show that is the Democrat base. But she'll still be the face of the party of idiots who block you on the freeways, of morons who burn stores, of faceless Obamacare bureaucrats raising premiums, and of Goldman Sachs. Yeah, Wall Street crony capitalists pay hundreds...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: Apparently back then when Romney was thinking of putting [Chris Christie] on the ticket when he was running, when he was running, he discovered there were some problems, alright? Do you think he might use those problems against him next time? DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: Well, that opposition book is rather thick. If Romney doesn't use it, somebody else will. MATTHEWS: And therefore -- but I keep thinking Romney is going to be the nominee after all this is over. CORN: No. MATTHEWS: Look, I'm pretty good at this. CORN: No. No... He's not going to run....

Charlie Cook, one of the most respected political experts in the country, believes Hillary Clinton has only a 25-30 percent chance of running for president, and in any case he thinks she is either “rusty” or “she has lost her fastball.” He bases that on her disastrous book tour, in which she said some very inappropriate things and also did not sell many books. The author of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report newsletter for almost 30 years also disappointed a local audience when he did not give Jeb Bush much of a chance of gaining the Republican nomination. “Bush has...

We concede: You're exhausted from the election, the hurricane of attack ads and door knockers. Sick of Rick Scott and Charlie Crist. But brush it off, the 2016 presidential campaign is upon us, and Florida is in the spotlight like never before. Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush are seriously considering entering the race and either would stake a formidable claim to the Republican nomination. They will announce their intentions by early next year. For Rubio, it's a decision of whether to give up an almost sure shot of re-election. (By Florida law, he can't go for both.)...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said Monday that if he decides to run for president, he will announce it by the end of the year. Bush was in Sarasota Monday at a rally supporting Adam Putnam for Florida Agriculture commissioner. The rally's focus quickly turned to Bush and the 2016 presidential race. "It's a tough decision. It's a big decision,” Bush said. “I have a blessed life…I don't wake up each day saying ‘I'm unfulfilled, I've got to run for president.' It's not the way I look at it," Bush said.

Jeb Bush is throwing cold water on his son’s statement that the former Florida governor will more than likely run for the 2016 presidential nomination. In an interview that aired Thursday on MSNBC, Bush — backstage at a campaign event in Colorado on Wednesday for Republican Senate candidate Cory Gardner and gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez — said that his son’s opinions didn’t necessarily reflect his own. “He’s got an opinion. He didn’t talk to me,” the former Republican governor said, when asked about George P. Bush’s statement last Sunday that it’s a better than 50-50 chance his father will run...

Allies of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush say his chances of running for president in 2016 are becoming a more likely possibility now than ever before. According to Politico, Bush is laying the groundwork for a bid with private prep work on key international issues and visits to top Senate races across the country to campaign.

Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) touted former governor Jeb Bush (R., Fla.) as a potential contender in the 2016 presidential elections while discussing the merits of nominating a governor as opposed to a senator. “I think that governors who are successful obviously have a cachet that is probably helpful to them, particularly, since the Congress is held in low esteem,” McCain tells National Review Online. “I think there will be some who are very competitive, including Jeb Bush if he decides to run.” McCain says he hadn’t decided to back Bush. “I keep hearing that he may be considering a...

So things don’t look so encouraging for Rubio. But he may not be seriously eyeing a White House run anyway: A high-ranking GOP party official who asked that his name be withheld told me on Monday that Jeb Bush’s people have just met with Rubio’s people and a 2016 deal was struck. If Jeb runs for president then Rubio would drop out—and “Jeb is running,” according to my well-placed source. (Alert the media!)… Rubio knows his race will be tough since 2016 is the first time he would face a traditional two-person Senate battle. (His 2010 election was a quirky...