I’ve met a lot of people in my life, and I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who would be happy to wake up tomorrow and learn that they’d been infected with a sexually-transmitted disease. Yet, if you ask conservative Iowa voters, they would have a slight preference for the STD diagnosis over another Bush presidency. Chlamydia is polling just below Ben Carson and a bit ahead of Jeb Bush.
I think I speak figuratively here, but they should go ahead and explicitly ask the question just so we can be sure. Quinnipiac finds the Jebster polling in seventh place in the first-in-the-nation Hawkeye State with the support of about one in twenty likely caucus-goers. That’s the big news this morning, along with the fact that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is not only leading the poll but has a little daylight between himself (21%) and his nearest competitors (Rubio and Paul, at 13% each).
If you’re having a bout of empathy for the Bush family, please consider how Rick Santorum (2%), Carly Fiorina (2%), and Bobby Jindal (1%) are feeling today.
I have a suspicion that Team Walker is a bit unnerved by this good news. I remember when John McCain crushed George W. Bush in New Hampshire and looked like the dog who had caught the car. He never intended to actually win, what was he supposed to do now?
Likewise, the folks around Walker know that their candidate is nowhere near ready for primetime, but if he can just not screw things up he has a great chance to win the Iowa Caucuses and roll into New Hampshire with some serious momentum.
Meanwhile, Jeb needs to figure out where he’s going to actually win a caucus or primary because the Republican base in Iowa seems more inclined to treat his presence with penicillin than to actually vote for him.
Bush, the former Florida governor, comes in seventh — with just 5 percent responding that they would vote for him. Only 39 percent said they viewed him favorably, compared with 45 percent who said they did not…
…“More of those surveyed view Bush unfavorably than favorably, compared to Walker’s 5-1 positive ratio. And 45 percent say Bush is not conservative enough. It’s among the GOP conservative base that Bush finds himself trailing Sen. Ted Cruz, former Gov. Mike Huckabee and Sen. Rand Paul,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll.
In one sense, this shouldn’t be a problem. Jeb Bush isn’t seeking to out-crazy Ted Cruz, out-Jesus Mike Huckabee, or out-Paul Rand Paul. He must have a plan for getting the most delegates that doesn’t involve doing the impossible. If Iowa isn’t his state, then it’s not his state.
But this hostility to a Bush restoration isn’t confined to Iowa. And Scott Walker could be a bit like Barack Obama in this narrow sense. The biggest knock on him is that he doesn’t have the experience and chops, but most of that goes away if he wins the first contest.
Of course, Iowa also presented a racial test for Obama. In proving he could win the majority of votes in an overwhelmingly white state, he convinced blacks in places like South Carolina that he was a serious contender worthy of their support, and they shifted overnight into his camp. This caused Bill Clinton to lose his mind and dismiss the result in South Carolina by comparing Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson. I don’t see these kind of dynamics repeating themselves in the Republican contest.
Nonetheless, Jeb isn’t a natural fit for the Republican base in the Deep South and they will probably prefer either a native son who isn’t from Florida and is not named Bush or they’ll get excited about Walker and support him.
Jeb will need to stage a major comeback in Iowa or win in New Hampshire. If he doesn’t, it’s hard to figure out when or where he will actually come out on top.
Take a look at the primary schedule and tell me what you think.
