Bush’s Befuddled Goodbye and the Risks of Trump Denialism

[tabasco]

Jeb Bush’s evaporation comes a week after he was praised, perhaps overpraised, for taking on Trump at the Republican debate in Greenville, South Carolina. He complained that Trump insulted people, particularly members of the Bush family. He responded to Trump’s blunt comments criticizing the Iraq War and noting that George W. Bush was President on September 11th with overwrought shock that was muddled by family loyalty. Bush also said, “I won the lottery when I was born sixty-three years ago and looked up and saw my mom”—a sentence not designed to reassure voters who saw him as a befuddled dynast. For anyone who had missed that point, Bush spent the next week surrounded by his family, as the campaign’s supporters talked about how beloved George W. Bush was in South Carolina, which might have been relevant if that Bush had been on the ballot. There is no tragedy of anachronistic niceness in Jeb Bush’s fall; his shortcomings as a candidate were visible before Trump even got into the race. Jeb Bush and the Super PAC supporting him spent more than a hundred million dollars on this campaign. He had the means to confront Trump on the level of ideas, rather than manners; he never really did.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/bushs-befuddled-goodbye-and-the-risks-of-trump-denialism

Another great article from The New Yorker. They have some terrific writers.

[tularetom]

1. Trump sensed the weakness within and deftly exploited it

If you despise the Bushes, it was a thing of beauty to watch the whole thing unfold. And it was done with a surgical precision which Ben Carson should envy. With each debate, each public pronouncement, each self pitying speech, Jeb! deflated a little more until at the end, he ran crying to his mommy.

Is there any doubt that he would do the same thing to Hillary Clinton? If anything, there's even more there for him to attack. If it wasn't for the fact that it would lead to President Trump it would be fun to watch.

[PSPS]

2. Your conclusion is nonsense

When you're playing to what is now the GOP "base," Trump's silly antics are surely a winner. But in a general election, where you're "performing" before more than the 20% of the population that comprises this GOP "base," it won't go over well at all. Trump would be roundly crushed in a general election against either Clinton or Sanders.

[tularetom]

3. In case you hadn't noticed the mainstream media is now treating Trump like a serious candidate

And this is America, where perception is reality.

Regardless of what you or I may think about Trump, he beats Clinton in almost every matchup poll I have seen. And though he may be an utter buffoon, he is the only politician who had the balls to place the blame for the Iraq war and the rise of ISIS precisely where it belongs, at the feet of GW Bush.

Actually, your conclusion that my conclusion is nonsense, is nonsense.

[FlatBaroque]

4. I am puzzled why it is not more obvious to observers that

this Bush presidential run was only to rehabilitate the Bush brand, to cleanse America's palate of Bush, leaving the soil prepared for the next generation that is already in politics.