There are some within the GOP who think Jeb has little chance of winning the nomination. The two most often-cited reasons are his support of immigration reform and the Common Core educational standards, both hot button issues among the conservative base.
But John McCain won the Republican nomination in 2008 despite standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Ted Kennedy in the summer of 2007 in favor of comprehensive immigration legislation. And Mitt Romney won the nomination in 2012 despite having authored and signed RomneyCare -- a bugaboo for the current GOP base if there ever was one -- into law while governor of Massachusetts.
In both cases, the Republican base held its nose and voted for the candidate who was seen as the “most-electable.” After losing both elections, party activists groused that was precisely the reason they had lost: nominating an “electable” candidate instead of a true conservative had failed to motivate the base and hadn’t offered voters a “clear choice.” They vowed not to do it again.
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The GOP field in 2016 will not only have quantity but quality. This will not be another case, as the 2012 race was occasionally described, of Mitt Romney and the seven dwarves. The GOP will likely include a number of candidates, Jeb Bush among them, with significant executive experience and records of accomplishment. The ideological spectrum will run the gamut from establishment Republican to mainstream libertarian to conservative firebrand.
And though the advent of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, along with the appearance of super PACs, have made it possible for little-known upstarts to catch fire and have more staying power than they might have otherwise had in the past (see Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich), the race for president still favors those who have name recognition and the ability to raise huge amounts of money.
Among the 2016 field, Jeb Bush stands out as someone with both. And although the name recognition remains a double-edged sword, Democrats flocking to Hillary Clinton’s banner will be hard-pressed to decry the idea of a legacy candidate. Nothing, however, has done more to mitigate the “Bush” name issue than Barack Obama’s troubled second term. As the president continues to stumble through a cascading series of crises, many voters — and not just Republicans — look upon Bush 43 with kinder eyes, and now think fondly (rather than mockingly) of the man who once described himself as “The Decider.”
Democrats have been “ready for Hillary” since the day Obama won re-election. Now, given George P. Bush’s statement on Sunday, Republicans have to start asking themselves whether they’re ready for Jeb.
