Bush made his attack on Rubio based on cold calculation and nothing less.
Bush had almost exclusive access to the tens of millions of establishment Republican K St. lobbyists, Wall Street crony capitalists, Chamber of Commerce cheap labor greedy contributors. His lackluster performance on the stump made so painfully and embarrassingly obvious by his debate performances as well as his one-on-one interviews, have caused these very calculating fatcats to reach the unavoidable conclusion, Jeb Bush will not win.
So they cast about for a replacement and saw that Chris Christie had been ruined by Bridge Gate so he was dismissed as the wrong horse. They look at Governor Kasich of Ohio and they see an erratic individual, good for their issues, even soft enough on immigration, compliant enough on supporting Obama care but with deficiencies in the charisma department, so they know he will not present a coherent, effective candidacy which has been clearly confirmed by his weak polling numbers. Carly Fiorina, while brilliant on her feet, has a timebomb in her biography which simply cannot be diffused and, besides, it is not clear how reliable she would be. In other words, it is not clear whether she would be an honest politician in their eyes, one who when he [or she] is bought, stays bought.
All eyes now turn onto Marco Rubio who has demonstrated he has all the qualities they need: a willingness to betray the people who put him in office and the debating skills necessary to sell the deal.
Jeb Bush's advisers, if not Jeb Bush himself, were smart enough to see the obvious and knew that all the money with which the Bush campaign and the Bush family intended to win this election in an air war with Hillary, were about to cut off the financial tap and they understood immediately that Rubio must be destroyed or their campaign was over.
The Bush campaign understood that before they could beat the insurgents for the election they had to maintain their exclusive hold on the establishment and the establishments money as a base from which in Mitt Romney style they could finance television blitzkrieg and when the primary elections when they got expensive. Marco Rubio threatened all that.
So Bush took his only option, to attempt to destroy Marco Rubio in the debate while he could still draw down on his relationship with the Republican establishment's fatcats. Bush failed, he blew it, the attack backfired, Bush is finished, and Marco Rubio becomes the anointed as well as the financially supported darling of the Republican establishment.
For reasons which I have posted before, that means this race ultimately will be Rubio vs. Cruz.
