Because he needs the votes of the current tea party nativists.
Yep, like I thought he looks more like Romney than the new Romney: run to the right for the primaries and hope that minorities will forget about in in the general election.
Not likely.
Shakes your hand Glad to meet you I’m Nobody and you are?
I know my views aren’t common but … Bush is what I consider to be the best President we’ve elected in my lifetime (starting with Nixon). Clinton was the best Democrat in my mind. So strangely the two legacy names both have quite a bit of positive connotation in my mind. I also don’t seem to attach much if any positive effect to someone with the same name. The runt of the Bush litter was part of the ballot where I most wanted to sell my soul to the devil in order to get two new choices. My evaluation of HW didn’t help W.
Again that view isn’t common, including ignoring the dynasty effect. I see three possible effects of dynasty on the population at large - “not another Bush/Clinton”, name recognition aiding fundraising/coverage, and being stereotyped by the voters with preconceptions that they’ll be like their family members. I think the first two, with reasonably effective campaigns works out to be a slight positive for both especially early. Two Bushes to one Clinton makes the first effect stronger for Bush though. His net gain is likely smaller and he might lose a half step to Hillary head to head. The third I think varies between the primaries and the general election.
For the primaries I see a slight negative for Hillary of being associated with Bill’s legacy. She’s more centrist than much of her base and Bill’s legacy reinforces that. In the general election I think that centrist and positive association is a plus. She gains in the middle but doesn’t lose the more extreme parts of the base who won’t vote for a Republican in any realistic numbers unless actual physical torture is involved. Of course that assumes the less centrist Democrats don’t stay home in disgust.
Bush has the polarizing legacy of his brother. It won’t hurt him in the primaries where they tend to think relatively positively about the legacy. It probably has some negative impact come general election time with the center of the electorate. I ignore Dad’s legacy because I think that effect is much smaller. In 2016 the absolute youngest voter that saw HWs name on a ballot is 42. He’s a childhood memory, at best, for a good chunk of the electorate. Us older folks tend to forget that.
I like to hope both effects are small and don’t swing the race. My faith in the voters though… *sigh
Well, Children that got a hold of MAD magazines then (usually the cool kids) sure have Bush the lesser in their memories.
Bush 41 has definitely improved his standing over the years. He was a solid President who just had the bad luck of presiding over a relatively mild recession, and who just wasn’t talented enough a politician to overcome the fact that Republicans had held the White House for 12 years.
GWB though, while his standing seems to have improved substantially over the last seven years, he’ll never be considered a good President. Just too much incompetence, too many political games, the politicization of 9/11 and the terrorist threat, a disastrous elective war, a financial meltdown… But he may have improved enough in public standing that it won’t hurt Jeb too much. Maybe.
I was a mere tot when HW was president, so all I know of him is what I’ve learned via studying history and politics, and I have a fairly high opinion of him as president. I think he’s certainly the only decent republican president we’ve had since Eisenhower.
In my mind, George W Bush was a disaster for his first 6 or 7 years of his presidency, and then in the end he pulled it together and stopped listening to Cheney and became sort of decent. He didn’t let the economy completely collapse under his watch. He did a lot of good things to fight AIDS in Africa. He tried, what I consider to be, a noble experiment in improving education, even though it was pretty much a failure (NCLB). I also think liberals heap too much blame on Bush for the economic disaster. It was really a combination of Reagan, Clinton, and Bush policies that all culminated in it.
Anyhow, point being, 2004 was the first year I was legally eligible to vote. I don’t have any immediate dislike for Jeb Bush just because of his family’s legacy. I sincerely doubt I will vote for him, since republicans these days are pretty much against everything I am for, but I don’t think he’d be a huge disaster for the country just because the family baggage.
I’d be much more scared of a Romney, Palin, Bachman, Perry, or pretty much anyone other than Huntsman presidency.
If he survives long enough you might like Kasich. I grew up in Ohio and still have family there. He’s a Republican that on first blush doesn’t scare me and has broken with strict partisan doctrine on issues affecting the state. I say that as a registered Republican who’s response to too many of the prospective candidates is fear they might actually win.
An interesting tidbit courtesy of Politifact: The GOP has not won a presidential election without a Bush or Nixon on the ticket since 1928. That blows me away.
They don’t look back on Clinton fondly, they look back on the years where computers, Internet, etc…created some prosperity, and Gingrich’s handling, etc…
Republicans don’t overly love Clinton, and calling that time ‘the Clinton years’ does not mean that Clinton is the reason for that affection.
ETA: That is, the Republicans who were around then.
handsomeharry fact: There has never been a Bush or Nixon on the ticket before 1952.
That link was a bunch of shit. I thought it would be something interesting.
Was just reading this CNN article on Bush, and it seems he isn’t doing or saying the right things to conservatives. The implications in the article is that Bush really has no chance in the primary if he continues to go against ‘conservative mainstream thought’.
Jeb’s views on immigration will also be a hard sell to GOP stalwarts: http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/04/politics/bush-immigration-conservatives-detroit/index.html
Ooops, sorry, I see that’s the same article XT linked to.
Could Jeb neutralise the dynasty issue by saying something along the lines of, “I am not my brother; I am my own man.”?
I guarantee he’ll say that. A lot. I don’t think it’ll neutralize much though.
I don’t think the issue with Americans is the dynasty aspect (we did love our Van Burens, after all). It’s just that we gave the Bush’s a shot at being a dynasty and they fucking blew it.
From the quoted article:
Yes, he would want to say that, wouldn’t he.
I’m a conservative - libertarian type who will almost certainly be voting R in the next election.
Jeb Bush seems to be a capable politician. He’s conservative. He’s a Governor, which is a plus. On paper he’d be a great candidate for the nomination.
But I’ll almost certainly be voting for anybody else. The dynasty issue really bothers me. Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton.
If this continues much longer than we should just have a generic ballot for president with R or D on it and whichever Bush or Clinton is up next can take the POTUS when they are old enough.
Does anyone reading this have any doubt in their mind that at some point we’ll see a Chelsea candidacy? It’s inevitable.
I blame campaign finance limitations for this mess. Only a sadist would subject themselves to the 1,000 rubber chicken dinners required to raise enough money to run at this point. We’ve created a situation where fundraising and name recognition make it difficult for the Scott Walkers and Kelly Ayotes of the word to be considered. The only shot people like this seem to have is to run for VP first.
I hope I’m wrong about this, since I like those two.
I don’t see why. Walker, at least, is nationally known and has been getting a lot of financial-political support from out-of-state conservatives for years now.
I saw an interview with Barbara Bush and her granddaughters and they were talking about Jeb running in 2016 and his mom said she does not think her son should run that we had enough Bush in the White House . Her grandkids where shocked but I loved it b/c I don’t want another Bush or Clinton in the WH ! Laura Bush was there too.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/25/barbara-bush-on-jeb-in-2016-weve-had-enough-bushes/
I foresee a killer ad, either in the GOP primaries or in the general, with footage and stats of the Bush recessions of both 1992 and 2008, and ending with, “Ready for another President Bush?”
i remember watching an interview with Bill and he went on about “Chelsea has great experience in the private sector, blah blah blah.”
Yep, McKinsey and a hedge fund(Avenue Capital Group) hired her based solely on merit.
I don’t want to disparage Chelsea since I don’t know what she was like at work. But she obviously wasn’t hired solely on her personal merits.
That kind of 5 years in the private sector is the most dangerous kind as she might actually believe she got a real experience and knows her shit.