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Saturday, February 24, 2007

I'll believe Jeb isn't a candidate after the Republicans nominate someone else
Posted by Jill | 9:29 AM
With John McCain more unable by the day to navigate the line between supporting Bush's war and not alienating the very moderate Republicans who used to be his bread and butter, Rudy Giuliani's marital history ready to explode at any opportune moment, and the second tier just too trivial to even note, it's not unreasonable to think that the Republican Party may just have Jeb Bush up its sleeve, ready to bring him out as the Shining Warrior to Save the Party -- a sort of Christofascist Aragorn reluctantly accepting his Divine Destiny.

Eleanor Clift disagrees, but I think the reluctance she talks about it is just for show. My guess is that the plan is already in the works:

There’s one politician the Christian right could get excited about: John Ellis (Jeb) Bush. But he’s not running—surely in part because the Bush brand has been so badly tarnished by the Iraq misadventure. A handoff from brother George would have been easy—if only the president had stayed focused on finding Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan rather than rushing off to invade Iraq. But for his brother’s mess, Jeb would be a formidable candidate.

He’s still a likely contender at some point—maybe even as a vice presidential pick in ’08. He can raise money, he has a Mexican-born wife who could help with California, and he can deliver Florida. The restoration is premised on the Republican nominee needing the credibility with the religious right that Jeb could bring. The Bush family seems to be moving its chips to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. Several of Jeb’s gubernatorial staffers have signed on with Romney, and Jeb’s sister, Doro Bush Koch, is cohosting a fund-raiser for him. Mom and Dad are reportedly telling friends he’s a fine man and the class act in the race. With front runner John McCain faltering and Rudy Giuliani an unlikely fit with Republican primary voters, Romney looks like the Bush Dynasty’s best bet.

Jeb’s ambition, his intellect and his tenacity have not dimmed. Combine these personal characteristics with his ability to raise money and you’ve got a potent political force, says S.V. Dáte, the Tallahassee bureau chief for the Palm Beach Post and author of “Jeb: America’s Next Bush.” The book is not particularly flattering. Dáte says Bush governed with the openness and transparency of the Politburo; that his tax cuts went to the top 4.7 percent of Floridians and that he created the lowest number of jobs of any governor since 1970. Despite that record, polls show a consistent high regard for him, especially among social conservatives who remember his tireless efforts to sustain Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman whose survival in a vegetative state—in the face of her husband’s efforts to end life supports because of the grim prognosis—became a cause célèbre for the religious right.


A strong Democratic candidate could turn Jeb Bush into Candidate More Of the Same; Candidate If You Liked Four Years Of George Wait Till You See This Guy; or Candidate Butt My Nose Into Your Family's Medical Decisions. But given the kind of mainstream media love-feast that we'd be likely to see during a Jeb Bush Candidacy (*cough* Chris Matthews *cough*), I'm not sure that even pointing out the obvious areas in which Jebbie would be a terrible choice, never mind his spouting of family values when he has not one but THREE children with arrest records, would suffice when put against this peculiar American drive to install a royal family here.

A more likely scenario, should Mitt Romney's sudden and miraculous conversions on all issues of importance to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade falter, would be a deal in which the Bush family supports John McCain, on the condition that he agree to step down after one term and make Jeb his logical successor in 2012. Assuming two Jeb Bush terms running until 2020, that would give the Bush family control of the United States (if you want to argue that George H.W. Bush ran the Administration for much of Reagan's second term) for at least thirty of the last 36 years by the time someone else assumed the office in January 2021. And after 36 years at the forefront of the Executive Branch, the Family would have undoubtedly fixed the system sufficiently that Jeb's son, George P. the Girlfriend Stalker Bush, would be the new Chief Executive as of January 2021.

Is that really what Americans want?

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