Personally, I think Jeb Bush could be the Republican Party’s 2016 nominee for the same reason that Mitt Romney was their 2012 nominee. Basically, it’s because, “are you kidding me?”, no one else is remotely plausible and also acceptable to the Republican Establishment. There are people who could catch fire with the base but repel the monied folks, and there are people who would be acceptable to the monied folks but would appall the base. Jeb Bush comes the closest to being able to bridge the difference.
I hear mention of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, and he does offer a possible consensus choice, but he’s surrounded by people who have ethical and legal problems. People can raise all manner of objections to Jeb, but the same thing was true of Romney. The thing is, you can’t beat the Establishment with Rick Santorum, no matter how hard you try. If you want an insurgent campaign, you need star power and a way to finance it. Maybe some billionaire can carry the next Herman Cain or Newt Gingrich the next time around, but it didn’t work last time for the simple reason that everyone could see that all the alternatives to Romney were ludicrous.
To me, there are three possibilities.
1. The Republicans rally around a candidate that the base wants but who is fatally flawed either because they’re crazy or because they represent Louisiana or some other Deep South state.
2. The Republicans nominate someone with surface plausibility and credentials, but who can no more break away from unpopular conservative ideology than Mitt Romney was able to do.
3. The Republicans nominate Jeb Bush and he runs to the left of his brother.
None of these possibilities offer much promise, but the third one would at least put the GOP in position to win if some confluence of events conspires against the Democrats.
Could Jeb actually get the nomination?
Absolutely, because of the “are you kidding me?” factor. It’s the exact same reason that Romney won, and McCain, too, for that matter.
Does it matter what you or any ordinary (not wealthy, not powerful, non-elite) American thinks?
Hillary has been declared the Democratic nominee without a single vote cast and two year before any vote would have been cast. The wealthy elites just have to figure out if they want someone other than Hillary in the WH. If so, there’s no more impediment to making it happen than there was to getting the venal, has been Nixon to the WH in 1968.
And Hillary very comfortably fits into the DLC profile for overseeing the empire. She’s got the right genitals to pull in a majority of Dem women no matter what country she threatens to bomb into glowing glass sheets.
But like just about all national elections over the last fifty years, the plutocracy wins no matter who is elected.
(If the genitals comment seems a little harsh, read some of the current Facebook memes. There is a general assumption that Hillary, being a woman, will do the right thing no matter. She’s really a Cold Warrior. The same people on the Left who were afraid that Bush would get us into a war with Iran will be shouting, “You Go, Girl!”)
All too true.
If that was true she’d be president.
Try reading:
Clearly, she wasn’t the one they wanted in 2004, 2008, and 2012.
btw – “they” are much more skilled and wealthier than they were back in 1968.
Yeah, I read that. You asserted that “they” pick our presidents and we have nothing to do with it. But I’d be interested to know why and how “they” decided in 2008 that Barack Obama would better serve “their” interests than Hillary Clinton. If your argument is just that “they” must have picked him because he got elected, you can’t expect to be taken all that seriously.
Not a mind reader or privy to elite private pow-wows; so, don’t know why and how. Only when and by how much — by mid summer 2007 Wall St. big money started moving towards Obama when it had long been considered to be a FOB.
Marie, even the renaissance astrologers admitted that the stars don’t TOTALLY control our destinies. They just set up general situations, but that doesn’t cancel out free will. They deal a hand, but you play it. Obama ran a brilliant campaign and Hillary, to put it mildly, didn’t.
Same thing with Truman in 1948. Dewey was “supposed” to win. And JFK in 1960. Nixon was absolutely “supposed” to win. (The Bay of Pigs was Nixon’s baby.)
good points
I would have said exactly the same thing — until the week after the 2008 election when we began to see who was behind Obama’s curtain.
Obama was a marginally better candidate than Hillary in that even with his stutters he’s a better public speaker. And at the Presidential level, a not insignificant portion of the voting population recoils from legacy candidates. (GWB did lose at the polls — not that Gore was without some of the legacy advantage as well.) The democratic wing of the Democratic Party knew that they didn’t want more Clinton neo-liberal/neo-con policies. The more easily swayed among them believed Obama was different (and now feel betrayed and duped). The more astute understood that Obama was a crap-shoot, but one with at least one-upside in that it broke the white male hold on the presidency. We voted for Obama and got ClintonII anyway. But really what we’ve been getting is Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton-; the main thrust is the same and it’s just differences in the margins that ordinary voters spend way to much time and energy on.
I just don’t see it that way. My perception is that Obama was dealt a lousy hand and, despite making some mistakes, has played it masterfully for the most part. But it’s still a lousy hand. Hillary would have been much worse. Obama has accomplished a great deal, just not to the unrealistic expectations of the progressives.
And the Republican Party has not fared well.
Congress sucks, and everybody blames Obama.
Agreed. LBJ’s accomplishments – and there were many – stopped when he lost his huge margins in the midterms. He did some radical shit, and many of his legislative victories form the backbone of progressive programs today. Moving the needle like he did is rare. Inertia has many elements – the courts, the opposing party, financial institutions, and the public itself. When Obama entered office, the columns of the financial order were shaking, and he was cautious in some regards. But had he not been hamstrung by R’s and red state Dems, his record would be different today.
This, “just not to the unrealistic expectations of the progressives.” is nothing but a boring rationalization for embracing the status quo. What exactly is so damn unrealistic about UHC? The people in France, Germany, UK, Japan, Costa Rica, etc. all have UHC and it costs half as much per capita as spent in the US. That figure doesn’t even adjust for the fact that tens of millions in this country are locked out from any medical care at all. It also doesn’t adjust for the fact that most of those countries with UHC have a much larger senior population (you know the old folks everybody blames for the high health care costs i this country) than the US. btw — the general health outcome measures are better in those countries than the US.
The ACA will fatten the wallets and power of private health insurers and the other players in the private for profit medical industry. As if that’s not bad enough, it will further destroy the public hospitals; that means there will be no way to turn back to lower cost options when the full costs of the “reform” kick in.
You do recall that Democrats touted all of Bill Clinton’s accomplishments until it became obvious that most of it was really bad stuff. Now they just toast him for not having been convicted by the Senate.
From Gary Younge:
“What exactly is so damn unrealistic about UHC?”
American politics, that’s what. — And what we got is so much better than what we had before, and it’s what nobody else managed to get before. And it’s something that can and will be built on.
And for this “status quo”, the opposition was screaming bloody murder and insurrection every inch of the way. I think they may be quieting down a bit now, only because it’s a lost cause.
How will it destroy the public hospitals? I don’t get that.
I know you’ve heard this a million times, but apparently you don’t want to believe it.
That’s not true. Medicare and Medicaid were bigger and fundamentally game changing. Either or both could have been built upon. Instead — bit by bit a significant portion of the day-to-day management of both programs were out-sourced to private insurers. The PPACA puts that trend on a fast track.
Public hospitals began struggling when Medicaid was changed to permit greater use of private hospitals by beneficiaries. Public hospitals were partially compensated for the reduce revenues with the DSH grants — in recognition of the fact that they still had to care for those with no insurance and ineligible for Medicaid. Not coincidental that the private and university affiliated but not public hospitals went on a building boom at that time.
The PPACA cuts the DSH grants and all those new Medicaid beneficiaries will take their business to the those newer private hospitals. The thirty million or so remaining uninsured will continue to use the facilities that have even fewer dollars to operate and are beginning to close. (Private hospitals are gearing up to accept more of those Medicaid covered births, which are now almost half of all births, because the women will get their Medicaid before they show up for delivery and access Emergency Medicaid.)
Countries with UHC don’t have Taj Mahal medical complexes. And profiteers in every step of the supply chain. The PPACA does practically nothing about the real factors that make US health care so expensive. It accepts the current dysfunctional system and sold the ridiculous notion that almost universal health insurance will fix it. Ridiculous because we’ve seen that the universal Medicare program for seniors is the most expensive (and not such hot results) health insurance program on earth. And the out-of-pocket costs for most of the beneficiaries are very difficult for them to pay.
LBJ passed Medicare and Medicaid with huge majorities that he won in the wake of JFK’s assassination. These were programs that JFK had given up hope of getting. Good thing LBJ forced them through in his first two years because, after the midterms, he got squat. The ACA was not nearly as radical but passed the Senate during the brief period that Dems held 60 seats. Then the House had to accept the Senate bill as is because no changes would get past the filibuster. This is the political landscape that determined the outcome. Other countries that feature heavily regulated private insurance as a means of universal care also have price controls to limit expenses. That would be great here. What are the chances of that politically? Zero.
There was a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate when health care was put on the table. So, stuff your rationalizations for legislation that isn’t going to get us any closer to UHC (may make it even more difficult) and at a higher cost per capita and as a percentage of GDP. (Note BEFORE the ACA, US governments were spending as much on health care on both a per capita basis and percentage of GDP as many countries with UHC and more than some such as Japan. Plus the individual out-of-pocket costs for those with health insurance (including Medicare) cost more as well.
good points.
In further news, Eugene V. Debs is still dead….
Really, but is eight years enough for a majority of Americans to forget Dubya?
Here’s #4: A new Eisenhower. It could have been Petraeus before he got his hand stuck in the cookie jar, and if he had a personality it might be Robert Gates because who remembers about Iran-contra anymore? Gates would also provide someone who is completely compatible with the military-industrial complex. Obama’s been balky about some of the wars that Langley wants so that would be an improvement for them.
There might be another general out there who better fits the bill. Whatever, there could be a new flashpoint that could bring us to the edge of war with Russia (Ukraine?) which can reinflate Cold War fears. Those neural pathways are already formed in the body politic. And then our general steps onstage to protect us and lead us to victory. It would just be more organized than what’s going on in Kiev.
I don’t see any generals out there with the name recognition Petraeus has, and even Petraeus doesn’t have nearly the profile Ike had. Historically, a general doesn’t go straight to the White House unless he was the supreme commander in a big war (Ike, Grant).
It could have been Powell, but Cheney threw him away like used Kleenex.
Powell’s wife had earlier vetoed any run — fears for the physical safety of her husband, and she mentioned that explicitly.
Too bad for her lack of courage. She could have been the first black First Lady instead of Michelle Obama.
But my point was that Cheney made him unelectable when he put him on the air telling the American people (on Cheney’s assurances) that we knew where the WMD were.
There will never be another Eisenhower because there will never be another WW II. I don’t think most Americans are in a mood to be reminded of recent wars.
They can’t even be bullshitted about it the way they were in Reagan’s day.
agree;
Jeb last held office in 2007 and last ran in 2002. To his credit, he’s stayed out largely of the public eye since then. That’s a lot of time and cultural change under the bridge. If he had any other last name he wouldn’t be mentioned. Maybe he can catch up and appear current – he’d have the best advisors money can buy if he decides to make the attempt – but it’s going to be a reach.
I dunno. GWB had ‘are you kidding me?’ and he got sorta-elected twice. Ronald Reagan, the same.
Rick Perry can poke fun at himself for ‘oops’ and suddenly become entirely credible to the big corporate media. And Paul Ryan is credible to the people who matter, isn’t he?
“GWB had ‘are you kidding me?’ and he got sorta-elected twice. Ronald Reagan, the same.
“
I don’t know which “are you kiddin me?” you’re referring to, but it didn’t come from the plutocracy.They were establishment candidates all the way.
Why doesn’t Bill Frist ever get mentioned as a potential candidate? He’s been out of office for about as long as Jeb Bush, is about the same age, has the same appeal to the Establishment branch of the GOP, and doesn’t have a family albatross.
Less gravitas than even the hapless Rmoney? And even less charisma than the asset-stripping plutocrat, if such a thing is possible. Also a spectacular incompetent and fool as a politician, not that this would much matter to the GOoPers….
Frist made himself into a national punching bag, if you remember, during the whole Terry Schiavo mess.
If Jeb runs, he wins the nomination IMO. The Party of Cretins has no actual serious or qualified nominees outside of this stale Bushco retread. Everyone else is nuts or a Nixonian wannabe, and not even play acting.
Jeb will have to act partially insane, of course, but that’s no big deal with today’s electorate, the useless “independents” forget or forgive whatever rightwing extremism the Repub candidate engages in to wade his way thru the conserva-shitswamp.
I had thought that the GOoP’s insane teabasers would vote for one of their own to take on SocialistHitler Obammy, but the nomination of the inconceivably terrible and abysmally phony Rmoney was never really in doubt, so the establishment clearly still runs the braindead party on a national scale, and Jeb will be their boy.
So Bush III v. Clinton II. Oy. Back to the American War of the Roses… What’s Jeb’s rep in FL? “good riddance, has-been” or beloved ex-guv?
And that’s why God created Karl Rove, I suppose.
No.
Here’s the fourth:
4-The Republicans rally around a candidate that the base wants who turns out to have been crazy like a fox and hails from a border state.
He captures the high ground in the primaries with his previouisly proven hostility to the surveillance state (a surveillance state that is shaping up to the the biggest issue of all over the next two years), his willingness to go the isolationist route and his promise of an audit for the haughty (And very, very naughty as well. Bet on it.) Federal
Preserve…errr, ahhh, Federal Reserve. Then he beats Hillary Clinton by branding her as old and the candidate of the (equally old) Permanent Government…not a difficult task…and himself as the young gun who wants change after 50+ years of failure due to the PermaGov’s revolving door fixes.Oh.
I almost foprgt.
He also promises to appoint his father as Secretary of the Treasury.
HOO boy!!!
The American Spring!!!
Start prayin’, leftinesses.
It could happen.
Meanwhile, always try to remember…have fun in this perfect universe.
I am.
It all works out in the end.
Bet on that as well.
Later…
AG
I think you’re forgetting the “are you kidding me” factor, AG….crazy like a fox, great meme!
I haven’t forgotten it, euzoius. I think it could be used to his advantage. The “Are you kidding me” candidate kicking the asses of all the plutocrats.
The Little Tramp triumphant.
(He does have his Chaplinesque moments.)
Indeed he does…
AG
Not sure he can win his home state against Hillary ……..
lots of the locals don’t like him,
they didn’t know him that well in 2010 except for the fact he defied the “turtle” and won,
and he faced a milk-toast KY democrat,
who inspired no one.
I am not sure he can win re-election which is why he is working much harder at the getting in the white house then he is getting re-elected.
He sure don’t do much for the locals …..
especially the non millionaires ……
“He sure don’t do much for the locals…”
Neither does Obama, and he got re-elected.
For that matter, neither did Bush II. He also managed to get re-elected.
In fact…which preznit after FDR did “do much for the locals?”
Duh!!!
The truth of the matter? If Butch only had the brains to remember the way things really work and the honesty to say it out loud?
They are all in the business of fooling people.
Once, twice, three times, a thousand times.
Rand Paul?
Maybe he is, too. Time will tell. But he’s got a good shot at now. Will he fuck up? Maybe, but so far he hasn’t. He’s made all the right moves to brand himself as the only real reformer in a whole pack of lying hustlers. RatPubs and DemRats both.
Watch.
We shall see soon enough.
Can he break out of the pack despite the
bestworst efforts of the media? A lot of that is up to the present administration. A couple more gaffes like Obamacare and the NSA brouhaha and “reformer” is going to become very popular idea across the electoral board.Watch.
AG
Keep dreaming, or smokin what ever your smokin to come up with drivel like this.
Rand Paul ain’t doing too good in KY and the long knives of the corporate owned GOper machine aren’t behind him and will stab him in ways his poor ole daddy never saw comin …….
No smoke. No mirrors, either. It’s an outside chance, but that’s what makes horseraces, isn’t it? I’d love to see him make a good run, myself. Not necessarily for the results, ‘cuz who knows what’s going to work? The best laid plans of mice, men, DemRats and Ratpublicans aft go agley. I’d love to see it happen just for a change. Anything other than the same stale old UniParty/PermaGov fix shit that we’ve been handed since LBJ took over.
Anything.
AG
It’s an outside chance,
Translation: a delusional pipe dream of the “aqua budda” ……..
I’ll go with door #2. Conservatives don’t think their ideology needs abandonment – just better salesmen. With that in mind, my money’s on Scott Walker. He’s pushing state tax cuts that even some in his own party don’t welcome. Isn’t that the song that stirs the hearts of the faithful? The legal cloud surrounding him seems to be campaign irregularities that won’t, from what I can see, cause a big stir. If he wins reelection -if- then he can claim success as a conservative in a blue state.
If he can avoid actual indicment, he’s got a good shot.
His crab-bucket schtick — I don’t get a pension, you can’t have one, I can’t join a union, you can’t either, my job sucks, you don’t get a job at all — is tailor-made for the present-day economy.
The spite vote is powerful. People taken one by one might be lovely, but in the aggregate, they’re bastards.
Never bet against the party that aligns with the worst in people. They may not always win, but they’ll always cover the spread. When was the last time a Democrat won in a 60-40 blowout?
Two problems for Walker in the general election:
Which college did Palin graduate from? Moronia State or Bimbo U?
That would be “Morania State.” As I said, a low bar that was too high a hurdle for Walker.
Walker would be toast in a race for President even if someone half-way competent ran against him.
Tradition says Paul Ryan, maybe Santorum.
Which is why Ryan as Prez and Savanarola as Veep makes sense as the ticket.
How successful has that tradition been? Given the number of politicians that have attempted to turn being a losing VP candidate into a ticket to the WH, would think they might get a clue that it’s a bad move. Muskie, Dole, Mondale, Quayle, Lieberman, Edwards. (Palin?) The only starting point with worse odds than losing VP candidate (FDR was on the 1920 DEM ticket) is the House. Last one was Garfield.
One thing that I got a kick out of Season Two of House of Cards is that they created a character who is s synthesis of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio but looks like Jeb Bush.
I think there is a non-zero chance that Romney runs again and gets the nomination again. As I’ve said before, its only recently that people (the press mostly) acts like losing one presidential election means you can never run again. There are tons of precedents of men losing and getting the nomination again. Yes, the last one was all the way back in 1968 (Nixon), but if Reagan had knocked off Ford in the 1976 primary (and he came very close) and lost to Carter you can be sure he’d have been the likely nominee again in 1980.
Perhaps we got to thinking that the loser of the general can’t run again because of the streak of candidates who lost so badly that they really didn’t have another chance – Carter, Mondale and Dukakis. But losing close isn’t the same as losing badly. There was a very strong movement to draft Gore to run again after his 5-4 electoral defeat, and its reasonably to think the same might happen for Romney.
We’re already seeing lots of pro-Romney publicity. I suspect they are considering another run.
The odds that he’ll make another run for it have been improving of late. With the downfall of Christie and the anointing of Hillary, it’s looking not so bad for him. He won’t look so singularly old and rich in that contest.
I have to laugh. Well if that happens I suppose we can really get to the bottom of Benghazi.
I agree with you about this – the Rmoney movie, his recent appearances. imo they’re at least leaving the option open.
#2 and the candidate is Jeb Bush. Jeb will never run to the left of of W.
The first thing I think of in connection with a Jeb run is that Barbara Bush keeps putting her opposition to it on the record.
There are different ways to read her statements, of course, the first and most obvious being that she isn’t Jeb and doesn’t speak for him. But her argument, that the country has seen “enough Bushes and Clintons,” while pretty transparently is ultimately directed against a Hillary run, is constructed in such a way that it equally cuts against Jeb. It leaves the impression that Babs has inside information that Jeb is absolutely set against running in 2016, and she’s got no better option left than to make that into a sour grapes argument against HRC. If she’d wanted to say something crappy about HRC without including Jeb, she could have done so easily.
I’ve long held that Jeb would run, but between GWB’s fuckup presidency and Obama’s strong position in 2012, the right year hasn’t come up yet. But as we’ve seen, the American attention span and ability to learn from the mistakes of even recent history is at an all-time high, and GWB himself has managed to rehabilitate his image to a remarkable degree in record time.
2016 is Jeb’s year. If he doesn’t run then, it won’t happen. He’ll be the perfect age, he has the credentials, the gravitas (meaning he doesn’t sound like an idiot or a wackjob when he speaks), and a great deal of centrist appeal. He even stands a good chance of stealing a little bit from the Democratic right.
Jon Hunstman would be an at least equally formidable candidate in a general match-up, but his disdain for the rabid GOP base kills any chance he might have getting through the primaries. Jeb can handle the primaries, and he’ll have the establishment united solidly behind him all the way.
But I can’t get past Babs’ remarks. I may be reading way too much into it, or maybe it’s some kind of bizarre head-fake, but it really seems as though she’s convinced Jeb’s not going to run.
I think her comments are against Hillary only, but who knows. maybe she doesn’t want a failed campaign that will dredge up GWB’s failed presidency . He does seem to be their only viable candidate though
Absolutely, because of the “are you kidding me?” factor. It’s the exact same reason that Romney won, and McCain, too, for that matter.
Willard and The Old Gluehorse won because the clown car couldn’t figure out what one candidate to get behind. Look at ’12. Little Ricky and Newt split the RWNJ vote. In ’08 there was Huckabee and Fred Thompson and then you had Willard as a spoiler along with Ron Paul.
Good point. The fact that the establishment GOP doesn’t want them doesn’t mean they will automatically shut up and go home.
Florida’s Governor Bush appointed Secretary of State Katherine Harris to help his brother take the presidency, helped his other brother by pushing the state into purchasing “educational” goods from his company, and ordered a feeding tube re-inserted into Terri Schiavo after she had been off it for 3 days.
He also posed for photos handing jugs of water to hurricane victims. Obviously an awesome executive.
All this speculation is pretty pointless. Remember the Fred Thompson boomlet? Remember how Rudy Guiliani was in pole position for months? Remember how Rick Perry was the unstoppable force out of Texas? Rememeber Newt Gingrich getting a good run?