In a strategy shake-up, Bush is canceling ad buys in Iowa and South Carolina and shifting staff from his Florida headquarters to early voting states.
I thought he came out well way back when he said he wasn’t his father or his brother and he was his own man. That’s how you’d go about rebuilding the family name. Then right after that he said, knowing what we know now, he would invade Iraq again. Wat.
He’s his own man. It just happens, that that man is an idiot.
Haven’t heard much lately about Jeb being the smart one.
He’s his own man, and his own man wants to be elected President on a Republican ticket. That means he has to support policies that Republican voters and Republican party leaders support, but since he’s not Trump, he can only support past Republican policies.
He needs his base. His base doesn’t need him. And the country as a whole doesn’t need or want the kinds of things he has to offer in order to attempt to attract his base.
I can’t help pondering those few days, right when he was diving into the fever swamp. It was all set, game over, Bush had bo-coo bucks, he would swamp the airwaves, all the contributions would be going to him, and nobody else would get any traction, game over, man, game over!
Then he wasn’t a sure thing, just the prohibitive favorite, then maybe not so much, then even less that that and finally…he spent thirty million dollars on advertising and got…nothing. Zero, zip, zilch, nada damn thing.
Tantalizing. Is it just his cream cheese charisma, or is this the canary singing cheerfully in the coal mine, that maybe money is losing its clout in our politics? Brothers and sisters, pals and gals, could this be a first sign of our deliverance? Not in the squeal-like-a-piggy sense, but in the good way!
Donald Trump is the front runner. They haven’t eliminated the influence of money in politics, they’ve just cut out the middle man.
Not even suggesting “eliminated”. Only the bright hope that the grip around our collective throat may have weakened. Further than this, the despondent sayeth not…
OTOH, if we replace the influence of money with the influence of celebrity, we’ve probably set ourselves up for government of, by, and for the clowns UFN.
Several other countries have elected, or nearly elected, folks who were entertainers with name recognition and little more. In almost all cases the results have not been good.
Though I’m no fan of Reagan, by the time he was running as POTUS, his name recognition stemmed much more from his time in CA politics than it did from his time as a B-movie second stringer. So IMO the US does not yet have experience with electing celebrities to high office. That might change next year. Not an experiment I’m looking forward to making.
The influence of money in politics is greater than ever, it’s just that from time to time we are reminded that its influence alone isn’t omnipotent – say if the candidate that the money is supporting is a characterless dipshit with no clear agenda and no appeal to anyone. The plutocracy can’t get too complacent and careless, such as anointing as their chosen figurehead a cardboard cutout that has a string that you pull and it says “I am not my brother”, and that’s all it does. Well, sometimes you pull the string and it says “Jeb can fix it!”, which, as Dave Barry points out, is an appealing and optimistic sentiment if you’re a six-year-old boy.
Vast sums of money will easily bamboozle the voters, but you need a credible scam for it to work, fer chrissake! 
Trump has one, and he’s turned himself into a demagogue with it.
How many shakeups do you get in a campaign? How many slogan changes? You can repackage a turd as much as you want, but people still aren’t going to buy it. To have this much money, this many endorsements, a universally known name, and to be polling in the single digits this late in the year before the election is not a recipe for success. If the establishment types want to win the the nomination, they better pick one guy and have the rest drop out.
My early estimation that the high number of candidates was in reality a sign of the division among conservatives has hold up.
IMHO the influence of money now comes from keeping many candidates afloat that should had gone under a long time ago, that money can still deliver a “mainstream” republican candidate as the nominee; but thanks to money troglodytes like Cruz continue to poison the environment so much that if that mainstream candidate emerges the Republican nominee will already had consumed a lot of the poison that will had to be rid off in the general election. Romney claimed that he had, but many moderates did not believe it. It will be worse for the coming non-trump or the Trumpeter himself.
They have a plan, perhaps even somewhat grounded near reality. Trump? He’s gonna finally bust at some point, open his mouth too far, it’s gotta happen, it’s gonna happen, right, guys? Rubio? They got his mistress in the wings waiting for just the right moment to pounce. Cruz and Carson, no matter what the redistricting is, will divide the crazytown votes. Then it’s Jeb! all the way, baby…
Mr Trump is the front runner now, but like in any race he can be replaced. Money is nice and the truth is better.
Jeb Bush can beat Hillary Clinton without bashing women or her husband.
Someone has a secret hiding in a closet somewhere … Mr Trump can get dumped and it wouldn’t surprise me if the democrats do the dumping leaving the door open for honest Jeb to become the next POTUS.
What makes you think that?
Jeb? 
The reality is that it is the Republicans that will have to dump Trump, otherwise as much as Trump claims about having ways to attack Hillary I have seen enough to realize that Trump is just projecting. Trump will be a target rich environment in the general election.
Except that, at least according to what I have seen, Trump isn’t spending much of his own money, not on advertising anyway. He just drowns out everyone else by generating lots of buzz and getting free media attention.
That aside, voting starts in less than a month. Cruz is strong in Iowa, but elsewhere, how is someone like Jeb going to attract 30% of the primary vote to catch up to Trump? How would anyone catch up at this point?
Seriously, Rubio has a mistress who’s gonna be used against him?
Have you SEEN Rubio’s wife? Godamighty, if I was married to Rubio’s wife I wouldn’t be able to run for the presidency because I would be too busy at home fucking my wife. And Rubio’s got a mistress on to of that?
Which is brilliant on his part; someone else bears the costs and (if it works) Trump gets the rewards. That’s one of the things that worries me about him, that he’s in it for himself and the rest of us will be left holding the bill.
But it doesn’t change what I said. The problem with money in politics is that rich donors can have more access to, and influence on, politicians than those of us who don’t have the money to give them. Now Trump is cutting out the middleman; he doesn’t need to pay for access to the president to get what he wants, he’ll just be the president.
I’m visiting my dad, who has Fox News on, and there was a Jeb! ad on. Apparently he is the only candidate strong enough to take on Bully Trump AND ISIS. This message was kind of undercut by the clips of him talking, in which he sounded like some guy who showed up on stage by mistake.
If that ad were a horse you’d have to have it taken out back and shot. Same thing with his campaign.