Posted on 02/06/2011 9:37:34 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
John J. Miller has a cover story in the new issue of National Review that’s a compelling portrait of the accomplishments of Jeb Bush. Four years after leaving the Florida governor’s mansion, he remains one of the most impressive Republican politicians in the country, a formidable policy mind with the political chops to drive conservative reforms even out of office. So why isn’t he running for president? Bush told Miller what he’s said to others, too — he won’t run in 2012, but he’ll consider 2016. This is a mistake. Bush should run now for at least eight reasons:
1) It’s a wide-open field for a nomination that’s worth having. Rarely do you get such a convergence of a beatable incumbent president with a wide-open field to challenge him. Obama is slightly below 50 percent in the polls, with a real weakness in the middle of the country, and he’s saddled with a recovery that has yet to produce substantial job growth. Yet there is no true frontrunner in the race to challenge him. It’s hard to imagine an environment better suited for a heavyweight like Jeb to make a run.
2) 2016 is too late I. By 2016, Jeb will have been out of office ten years. No doubt he will have made many contributions to the cause in the interim, but by then his main credential — his governorship and its accomplishments — will seem like yesterday’s news. Right now he has the feel of an elder statesman of the party while his time in office is still fresh.
3) 2016 is too late II. By 2016, a bumper crop of Republican talent will be poised to storm the national stage. Marco Rubio not only will be the hot new thing out of Florida, he’ll be seasoned. Chris Christie will be ready. A host of senators and governors — freshly minted in the 2010 elections, so it’s too soon for them to run now — will be ready to go. Jeb will not be such a predominant figure in such a robust field. The crop of prospective GOP candidates this time reflects the downdraft in Republican fortunes in 2006 and 2008. Jeb would loom all the larger for it.
4) The Bush rehabilitation has begun. George W. Bush is not exactly popular, but two years of Obama have taken the edge off W.-hatred, and he’s risen from the depths of his unpopularity near the end of his presidency. Gallup had a poll in December that had Bush’s approval rating very slightly above President Obama’s. Bush’s book, Decision Points, and the accompanying media tour were successes. In 2008, Jeb’s association with his brother would have been an absolute killer. That’s not true anymore. The controversies that made the Bush years so venomous have faded, and — partly through the miracle of the accelerated news cycle — 2000–2008 already feels somewhat distant.
5) Jeb will still be a Bush in 2016. There’s no doubt that it will always be awkward for Jeb to be the third Bush; it will always have a dynastic feel about it. But that will remain as true in 2016. If Jeb runs in four years, after Obama presumably wins a second term in 2012, he will still be vying to be the third Republican president in a row who’s a Bush. Waiting until 2016 won’t make that fact any less odd.
6) He’s not just another Bush. Jeb is different from his patrician dad and different from his thoroughly Texan brother. As soon as people see him on the national stage, they’ll realize he’s his own person and has to be taken on his own terms.
7) Jeb can unite the party. Jeb probably has a better chance to unite the establishment and Tea Party wings of the GOP than anyone else, certainly a better chance than Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney would seem to have at this juncture. The establishment would presumably flock to Jeb, while he’d have a record of solid conservative accomplishment to sell to the conservative base. Some tea partiers will have zero interest in another Bush, and Jeb will take his lumps on immigration (at NR, we’ll look forward to administering some of them, and trying to change his mind). It’s a very volatile environment, and were he to run, much would obviously depend on how he actually campaigned. But he would stand a good chance of avoiding a damaging division in the party.
8) Waiting is almost always a mistake. It’s an axiom of presidential politics that you have to run when you have the opening, even if it seems “too soon.” This is why Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were elected president and Mario Cuomo never was. Jeb’s opening is now — “too soon” after his brother’s presidency, “too soon” into his life as an ex-governor — and it will probably never quite be there again.
In short, if Jeb feels a call to run for president, it has to be 2012, not 2016.
Good one.
Jeb is so far along with the NWO agenda, he's already put abortion-on-demand in his rearview mirror and is boldly and manfully taking on tomorrow's issues: how to deal with euthanizing the Boomers ..... and recalcitrant Oldthinkers.
NO 8 times and more.
No to any Bush’s Romney’s Huckasquirrel and Newt’s.
These idiots don’t realize the Tea Party came about NOT just because of O and his Marxist policies. The Tea Party has it’s origins opposing Bush’s bank bail out. This is what the DC elite don’t understand. We don’t want any more establishment types.
Not true IF..................Jeb would chunk the Bush family tendency to allow liberals to get away with lying about them. IF he is willing to go against family tradition, and FIGHT the lying SOBs, then he has my support.
Last year Obama would have lost easily. In fact many here had their 2012 victory celibration last year, a bit prematurely.
Next year it is not so clear. Losing Pelosi as Speaker definitely helped Obama in 2012. He is playing to the center now and has the MSM transmitting the message that he is ‘doing all the right things’ to help him win even though things are bad.
I think we will know by August who has the upper hand, certainly by years end.
He should run for office in Mexico.
Amen to that.
He blinked, when someones life was in his hands. I dont know how he lives with himself.
He has no moral character. GET LOST
It isn't wide open for a Bush, when the Bush family is busily bashing conservatives.
“Rich is a closet RINO who just outted himself.”
He has been out of the closet for a long time, VR...as has National Review. It is no longer relevant except inside the Beltway echo chamber.
As for Bush, let him run. In her speech at the Reagan ranch, Palin adverted to the coming clash between the anti-Government Reaganism that she now represents and the 20 years of “subtle” Bush-Clinton government expansionism (under the guise of compassion) which led to the financial crisis, big government “on steroids” and Obama, in that order. I believe she intends to run against both Bush and Obama.
If there is no Bush in the primary race, her campaign against the Bushes will be more “subtle”, to use her phrase. If Jeb Bush enters the race, she will be able to draw an even sharper distinction between herself as a kind of retrograde Reagan, on the one hand, and the 22 years of Bush-Clinton-Bush, that spawned Obama and the $14.3 trillion dollar hole we now find ourselves in.
If Bush does run, she would be able at once to attack Obama and disengage herself from Bush’s big government baggage at the same time.
That said, I doubt Bush will run, because he probably knows he couldn’t beat her or Obama and he would not risk his family’s future on a fool’s errand like this one. But, if he runs, Sarah Palin’s strategy is clear. And a spirited primary with Bush might actually benefit her.
YES, he SHOULD run - FOR MEXICO!!!
He and his the rest of his idiot family believe in open borders and one world globalism.
The National Review is no longer worth the paper its printed on.
William F. Buckley must be twisting in his grave.
If that's what it takes to keep out da Bushes, then that's what it will take.
Nixon, Dole, Bush, except for 1964 and 2008 every republican ticket since 1950 has featured someone with one of those names on it. It is time for us to move on.
Yup. But the important thing is....the Royal Family will live on, and in the manner to which they have become accustomed.
And it doesn't matter who the peasants are, they can be controlled: white, brown, black. And when you're finished with them, as you said....lights out. We don't need ya anymore, Sucker.
Pretty restrained statement about the ranting cracker POS who murdered their daughter in the cruelest way possible.
Little Jebby coulda done something but he clutched when he thought it might have crimped his career plans
Thank you Reverend Jackson.
>>>This isn’t Central or South America: We’re not a banana republic where the same families take turns “ruling” the country
We became a banana republic when we voted for George W. Bush in the year 2000, based on name recognition, instead of voting for a real conservative such as Steve Forbes.
Since I was helping Steve in Iowa at the time, I tend to agree with you.
“Rich, just shut up and go away for about 12 years or so...”
Didn’t you forget a “0” after the “12”?
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