No idea, but if he gets in the race, he is going after Cruz’s votes.
There will be a crowd of candidates going after the conservative vote in the primaries and one person going for the steady 20-30% establishment vote. Bush will only be a token presence in the first primaries except for his money. That will be used in abundance to smear the leading conservatives in the earlies as each noses ahead of the others. In the meantime most of the conservatives will be spending their own money cutting up the other conservatives. Bush will be concerned to keep any one conservative from winning more than one or two primaries. When they all are knocked out of effective contention by the serial whack-a-mole wins Bush will be the last man standing because, by not really contesting the earlies for himself he has no dirt on him and will win by default after which he can lay out for the election and permit his favored Democrat to win that. That was McCain’s strategy, and Romney’s. It is in the Republican Handbook for Managing Elections.
Fair point. A la Carson, Cain, Bachmann, etc.
Cruz will have competition from Huckabee for Christian evangelist voters, from Rand Paul for small government voters, from Walker for tax reduction voters, from Marco Rubio for Hispanic voters. Trump is the least of senator Cruz’s worry.