New Hampshire - dumbest Republicans in America

Polling in New Hampshire shows Jeb Bush with a late surge. Really New Hampshire?  Jeb BUSH? The name that can't win ever again?  And why the establish-candidate rush in that direction?  His debate performance was lackluster.  Chris Christie was the one with the effective attacks on Rubio, and you're even putting Kasich ahead of Christie. 

WHAT. THE.HELL?

What did Jeb Bush do to earn a surge? Not a thing.

The only redeeming thing about New Hampshire Republicans (the dumbest Republicans in America it seems) is that your opinion doesn't matter. South Carolina will not pick a Bush, or a Kasich.  Your New Hampshire opinions will die a muted death. Well, that and the fact that at least the best Bush can hope for is a distant second.

I really hope the poll is wrong.

Jeb Bush and "Please Clap"

There's validity in the notion that the Jeb Bush candidacy missed it's window. In 2012 maybe he could have outperformed Mitt Romney if he'd had the guts to run against an incumbent Obama. Maybe not.  A lot of people, unhappy with Obama, still had the taste of the previous Bush that they didn't like.  Two Bushes in and two faux conservatives, out of touch with blue collar America, out of touch with conservatism make a third Bush a pretty risky bet for both conservatives and the GOP.

I'm not unhappy to see this video, Jeb Bush asking an audience to 'please clap'. He's not the right choice for the GOP. But it does make me wonder - this looks like a SuperPAC ad but the watermarks on it say YahooNews and MSNBC. 

Jeb Bush, not a team player, but he is a jerk.

Most of the current crop of Republican nominees at one time or another during this cycle have said something to the effect of "any one of the people on this stage would be much better qualified to be president than Hillary Clinton".  They may not have not said those exact words, but even Donald Trump finally ruled out a third party run at the last Republican debate.  They all want to win, and most of them are team players  - not Jeb Bush.

Bush spoke in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation scheduled for broadcast on Sunday and taped in New Hampshire on the same day he told a town hall audience Trump was a “jerk”...

On Friday, through Twitter, Trump called Bush “dumb as a rock”. He returned to the offensive on Sunday morning.

“To a certain extent, it is a little liberating to be able to post up against a guy who is not qualified to be president,” Bush said in the CBS interview, which was excerpted by the website Politico.

“I’m trying to point out that he’s not a serious candidate.

And there you have it - if I can't win I'm going to torpedo the guy who looks like he might win the GOP nomination because I'd rather help the Democrats the the Republicans, if Republicans don't pick me. He can't pretend that those words won't hurt Trump if he winds up winning the nomination.

And while Trump is not the ideal candidate, he's doing well for a reason. Bush doesn't seem to get that, and it's alienating voters at a rate so quickly that his Super PAC money won't help him recover them. More importantly from a winning the White House perspective, if Bush is saying this about Trump, why wouldn't he say it about Cruz, Carson, Fiorina, Paul or even Rubio or Christie if they end up taking the lead?

Jerk.

Addendum: Yes, I realize that calling Jeb Bush a jerk is sort of doing the same thing as Bush is doing to Trump. Don't care.  I'm offending 3%-5% of Republican voters (less because my readership at best probably numbers in the hundreds most of the time), while Jeb Bush is offending 20%-40% of GOP voters depending on which poll you believe, and in fact more if every Hillary Clinton ad turns out to be quotes of Jeb Bush slagging the nominee Trump. Besides everyone on the right should feel free to slag Bush.  No one in that family is a true conservative, and there is no chance he'll end up the nominee.

Please, not another Bush

There's a myriad of reasons to not want another Bush in the White House.  They have a mixed record of conservatism at best.  I'd give the Bushes a combined rating of D- at best.  They did not embody conservatism, but rather establishment-ism. And if the GOP is not a conservative party, then why does it even exist?  We've already got a progressive liberal party, There's no need for a somewhat less progressive and less liberal party.  Furthermore, no name will stir the liberal base the way the name Bush will do.  

I doubt that conservative voters will rally around Jeb Bush the way the Republican establishment appears to be doing.  The problem with the counterweight on the actual conservative side is a split vote among many candidates.

In short, a successful Bush run, is yet another recipe for defeat.  Romney, McCain, Bush, Dole, Bush have been a list of elites with only 2 wins in 6 tries since 1992, and one win was without a popular vote win to boot.  In fact the other win was based on war time support.  The establishment appears to be running on fear of being losing and it proves to be the wrong strategy most every time.

Not only is an establishment, liberal Republican bad, another Bush is the worst possible name of the lot.  Truly, truly a bad idea.

Flat Bush

Republicans still seem to believe the path to victory is to ignore their base.  Obama should have strongly disabused them of the notion that catering to your grassroots will negate your chances of winning the White House.

By now the rumors abound about Jeb Bush running for president in 2016.  They almost are not even rumors anymore.  There are articles saying that if Jeb Bush`s last name was anything else, conservatives would be begging him to run.  I doubt that, but that`s neither here nor there.  Jeb Bush should not run.  Here`s why.

It simply comes down to this - his last name IS Bush.  He could be far more conservative than his brother or father.  It isn`t clear that he is mind you, but even if he were, it doesn`t matter.  He could stop making liberalesque decrees that accuse Republicans of being heartless on amnesty as of today.  It won`t matter.

A Jeb Bush nomination for president will ensure a Hillary Clinton presidency after the 2016 election.

Conservatives have had two Bush presidencies filled with domestic liberalism - tax increases, Medicare increases, suspect Supreme Court judicial nominations, softness on immigration and all sorts of other items. It`s true that W. still has a group of conservative supporters when it comes to national defense, but even in that there is no unanimity. Conservatives do not want another liberal Republican as their nominee.  Another Bush will be perceived as another H.W. Bush or a W.Bush or another McCain, Romney, Ford or Bob Dole.  Conservatives, particularly Tea Party conservatives will stay home in droves on election day.

Conversely, the far left are not huge fans of Hillary Clinton because for some reason she is perceived as mainstream by far too many people.  While they may not be too inclined to turn out and vote for her, the dynamic changes completely if she is running against a man with the name Bush, whom they will view as a member of a clan of evil Bush gnomes.  Bush hatred (aka Bush Derangement Syndrome) is not dead, only dormant.

It also should not be overlooked that a Bush win will also convey the message that the disconnect between

Republicans and conservative voters, has become an all out feud - an attempt to suppress the conservatives within the party in order to win in the center (which has already been redefined as far left of the original center by those on the left, and subsequently accepted as the center by the media).  Disenfranchising voters is not a recipe for GOP success.  Meanwhile, the GOP can not expect to win many new voters from the left of center who have been inundated with the message that Republicans are anti-human. 

In short another Bush nominee ensures lower Republican turnout and higher Democrat turnout.  That means not only does Hilary Clinton, a very liberal Democrat wins the presidency, but also a downstream impact in Senate, Congressional, and state offices will be negatively affected for Republicans. If Jeb Bush really wants to help his country, he won`t run in 2016.

Did not know that - John Hawkins speaks

One of my favorite right of center political blogs is Right Wing News.  I must confess that when I read it, I still filter through most of the posts by the other authors than the blogs creator John Hawkins, looking for his stuff.  It's not that there aren't great posts from the other authors there - there are some really good ones in fact.  Rather, I like John Hawkins' writing, his ideas and sensibilities on various topics.

What I stumbled upon recently, was the fact that John posts on youtube as well. That's a pleasant surprise. While he hasn't posted to youtube in a few months, here's one of his more recent posts that is still relevant today and will be for a couple of years: Not Jeb Bush.