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politics and politicians Title: How Jeb and the GOP Got Trumped Jeb Bush, the man who would be frontrunner, was as surprised as anybody when Donald Trump jumped into the 2016 presidential race in June. His instinctive first reaction was to hold his tongue, and his advisers agreed the best option was to keep his distance from an interloper who wanted to drag him into a reality-show shouting match. Bush stayed strategically silent even when Trump delivered his infamous crack that some Mexican immigrants were “rapists.” It wasn’t easy, considering Bush speaks nearly flawless Spanish, backs comprehensive immigration reform and is married to the former Columba Garnica de Gallo of Leon, Mexico. Like everyone else, Bush soon found Trump impossible to ignore. When Trump reposted a nasty tweet a couple of weeks after his contentious announcement speech— “Bush has to like Mexican illegals because of his wife”—the former Florida governor was forced to respond. “You can love your Mexican-American wife,” he told one interviewer before telling another that Trump was “preying on people’s fears.” The half-dozen conservative senators and governors who had planned to run before Bush brought out his shock-and-awe fundraising campaign, had to laugh: They viewed Bush himself as an intruder, a political semi-retiree who sat on the sidelines for eight years while they fought Barack Obama. Now it was Bush’s turn to rage at an outsider. “Seriously, what’s this guy’s problem?” he asked one party donor he ran into recently, according to accounts provided by several sources close to Bush—and he went on to describe the publicity-seeking real estate developer now surging in public polls far ahead of Bush and all the 15 others in the Republican field as “a buffoon,” “clown” and “asshole.” *** Whatever Bush wants to call Trump, the most accurate appellation heading into Thursday night’s first big Republican debate of the chaotic 2016 contest in Cleveland is the label that should have been Bush’s: “frontrunner.” Bush may yet emerge as the party’s nominee, the third member of his family to claim the mantle, and his aides now claim Trump’s bloviating presence in a record-shattering field of 17 could be a blessing, allowing Bush to fly under the radar. But Trump’s rise has coincided with Bush’s awkward return to the national stage, and he has proven to be gaffe-prone on the trail (Just this week he had to quickly walk back a statement that he wanted to de-fund “women’s health” programs, when he meant to say abortion services). The party’s conservative primary voters remain lukewarm and as importantly, he hasn’t scared rivals out of the race despite a massive $100 million-plus fundraising haul during his first few months in the race. As much as anything, this is the story of 2016 so far. The proliferation of 17 candidates—a mob so big it needed to be subdivided into two separate debates—is a symptom of a deeper dynamic—the absence of a true frontrunner capable of uniting the party. “The plan isn’t working,” conservative writer James Tobin wrote in Commentary magazine of Bush’s de facto entrance into the race in January. “[O]ther Republicans appear to be insufficiently shocked and awed.” Trump is besting Bush so far, but it’s hardly a lock that this is anything more than summer fling. So far, The Donald has been immune from the backlash that typically kills mouth-driven campaigns—which is a good thing given his flip-flopping, amateur-hour staffing decisions, and relentless you’re-a-loser negativity, and the bad hair hidden under worse hats. But he shares a characteristic with all those lesser-known candidates who have also flooded into the 2016 race: He sees a vacuum at the top. “You know, I thought about running in the past,” former New York Gov. George Pataki, the 8th candidate to announce his intention to run, told us. “I came close in 2012, but to be perfectly honest, Mitt Romney had been running for 6 years … it was pretty obvious that he had, if not a lock, a very, very strong hold on the Republican nomination.” Jeb Bush? Not so much. “This time, I believe that, when I look at the field, that I have the ability to win this election,” added Pataki—and this is a man struggling to capture a single percentage point in recent polls. “There’s no clear frontrunner,” says former House Newt Gingrich, a 2012 contender who briefly considered becoming Candidate 18 this spring before deciding the financial challenges were too great. “There’s a vacuum in the party, and no one is filling it,” adds a veteran Republican operative who is backing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another candidate who sees Bush’s vulnerabilities but like the others has so far failed to capitalize on them. “That’s a recipe for chaos. Let’s see if anyone decides to flip the script Thursday and really go for it. I doubt it.” In fact, Bush is still the best-funded candidate with the best organization and a focused, center-right message that seems best suited for a general election fight against the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. His showing in the polls is weaker than Mitt Romney’s four years ago (he’s in the 15 percent range in recent surveys at a time when Romney was touching 20 percent) but he has been inching higher recently, passing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to claim second place behind Trump. Moreover, it’s hard to see what any candidate—even the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan—might have done to stem the fever to compete that has infected Republicans this year, given the party’s deep ideological divisions and the proliferation of rich party donors willing to bankroll the long-shot hopes of second- and even third-tier candidates. The difference between 2016 and previous years, in the words of another single-digit candidate who requested anonymity, is that the threshold question has gone from “Why should I run” to “Why the hell shouldn’t I” run? Democrats, enjoying the spectacle are pushing the idea that the overcrowded GOP field has become a “clown car” with Trump at the wheel. The 40-odd Republican operatives, donors and campaign officials we interviewed for this assessment of where the race stands at this official kickoff point disagreed—but mostly about the metaphor, characterizing the contest instead as more of a runaway train, with a crowd of wannabes wrestling for control. “The media narrative you guys are spinning isn’t specific enough—we have exactly one clown in the car,” says a top Republican official, referring to Trump. “So why did it explode?” the official added. “Because we have something in the Republican Party that the Democrats don’t have to deal with: a multibillion-dollar business in TV, political punditry and books and talk radio—we built up a ton of personalities, people that you guys in the media think are off the radar have been quietly gaining power. A whole slew of folks think they can, and should, run the party.” It’s an important point that came through in nearly all our interviews: 2016 isn’t so much about Trump or Bush as it is about a crisis in the Republican Party, which hasn’t had powerful political leadership since the George W. Bush-Karl Rove machine crashed after dispatching John Kerry in 2004. Even Republican control of both houses of Congress since last year’s midterm elections hasn’t tamed the party’s internal feuding—Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker John Boehner can hardly control their own caucuses never mind impose a code of conduct on unruly presidential hopefuls. Behind the scenes Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus, a canny operative from Wisconsin, and party elders like his predecessor Haley Barbour have tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep the crowded field from turning into a Trump-incited mob. After Trump’s people leaked news of the chairman’s gentle request that the “Apprentice” star play nicer with fellow Republicans, Priebus tried another tack, advising several other campaigns to ignore Trump’s more outrageous statements and to “not engage him” insult-for-insult, according to a Republican operative close to several campaigns. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 1. Now it was Bush’s turn to rage at an outsider. You just know that Bush wants to jump on Trump. But his handlers have no doubt coached him to avoid it unless Trump attacks directly or steps on a landmine so that Bush can jump on him easily. I think the big hoedown tonight may turn out to be a colossal bore.
Replies to Comment # 1. #2. To: TooConservative, cranky (#1) It’s an important point that came through in nearly all our interviews: 2016 isn’t so much about Trump or Bush as it is about a crisis in the Republican Party, which hasn’t had powerful political leadership since the George W. Bush-Karl Rove machine crashed after dispatching John Kerry in 2004. Even Republican control of both houses of Congress since last year’s midterm elections hasn’t tamed the party’s internal feuding—Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker John Boehner can hardly control their own caucuses never mind impose a code of conduct on unruly presidential hopefuls. Seems politico, in a round about way, is hinting at JB as the solution to the 'unity' problem. Caught them quoting campaign money and invoking 'control' of the GOP congressional caucus. They could have framed this article that the GOP bench is deep as opposed to the Dem heir apparent.
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