The overhyped rise and spectacular fall of Jeb Bush, in 19 devastating quotes

The Week ^ | 2/21/16 | Becca Stanek

[jimbo123]

Jeb Bush has finally put his presidential campaign out of its misery.

But it wasn't so long ago that Jeb was widely seen as the candidate to beat in the Republican presidential primary. Pundits predicted that Bush was almost as inevitable a nominee as Hillary Clinton was. Commentators cast Bush as the Republican Party's best chance at leaving Clinton shaking in her boots. Between his "rock star name" and the gusher of money he had flowing into his campaign before even announcing, Bush was thought to have the nomination nearly at his fingertips.

Then reality intervened. The former Florida governor has been a pitiable punch line for months.

[jimbo123]

[Red Badger]

Guess I gotta get a new tagline........

[IronJack]

The media and Democrats (but I repeat myself) are in mourning today.

[DouglasKC]

You can thank Donald J Trump for this. Almost since day one he knew who the REAL competition was supposed to be and he went after Jeb early and often. Trump knocked out the GOPe preferred monied candidate out of the race almost singlehandedly. After he wins the nomination it’s Hillarys turn. She’s already a joke. By the time Trump is done with her no self respecting lib is going to be able to muster up any amount of enthusiasm to vote for her.

[goldstategop]

Jeb made bad candidates look good.

He was an insult to bad candidates.

[AndyJackson]

Who knew that the American voters would wake up the perfidy of the House of Bush ibn Saud, and how they sold us down the river to crony capitalism and set us up for the Age of Obama.

It was a great trip, but coming down has been a bummer.

[Mr Ramsbotham]

By the time Trump is done with her no self respecting lib is going to be able to muster up any amount of enthusiasm to vote for her.

Now if he were only a conservative it would be even more fun.

[Liz]

A glaring omission on the campaign trail was the presence of Jebbie's Mexican wife. I guess Jebito did not want voters to hear his latino wife struggling w/ English...the language of America. And, clearly, Americans were not in the mood to be asked to vote for an American president in Spanish.

[4rcane]

So true, Kasich and Carson was better than Jeb and they’re bad candidates

[Eddie01]

Excellent observation.

[DouglasKC]

Now if he were only a conservative it would be even more fun.

In his campaign, now, he is absolutely espousing conservative values. In his personal life he doesn't drink or smoke and his children seem to be intelligent, productive and well mannered.

The knock against him is that he's "lying" about what he's espousing now. That goes against his character. In the business world and especially in real estate transactions involving millions or billions of dollars lying will get you sued or in jail. If everything's not air tight legal you're screwed. It's out of character for him to lie.

[Hiro Protaginast]

Is that true about her speaking english? I’ve never heard her speak, so don’t know. That really would have been devastating on the campaign trail.

[sphinx]

The Jeb-bashing is being overdone. Bush is a conventional, moderately conservative establishment figure. His name created some headwinds, which was unfair to Jeb but life is unfair. He might have been able to successfully deal with that. In retrospect, I suspect that his biggest problem is simply that he had been out of elective politics for too long and had lost touch. He did not realize until far too late that the base is in revolt. He instead took the base for granted and from day one focused on running to the center, as the non-threatening, moderately center right candidate who could reach across the aisle. The question in my mind is whether he had anyone in his inner circle who tied to tell him how profoundly he was misreading the electorate. If I were one of his consultants, I would strategically leave this race off my resume.

Of the Bush brothers, Jeb was always considered the more conservative of the two. Had he won his first gubernatorial race against Lawton Chiles, he would very possibly have been the Republican presidential nominee in 2000, and a fine president. He lost that race, unfortunately, because the Democrats ran a scare campaign in the closing days of the campaign, which Bush was leading, letting the elderly voters of Florida know that if elected Governor, Jeb was going to eliminate Social Security. And so history is made.

Hindsight is cheap, but Bush last year should have come out of the box swinging. He needed to confront the past squarely, with "I've been out of politics for some time. The world has changed. The issues have evolved. And I've had the opportunity to rethink some things. Here is where we are now. The country is in crisis. And this is what we need to do now." With that, he should have gone on the attack against Obama, Hillary, Bernie, et.al., and stayed on the offensive. This could have been done in a civil way. But Jeb seemed to think he was still in 2000, and that moderate managerialism was the ticket. He rode a false premise into the ditch. And poor John Kasich still hasn't figured it out.

[goldstategop]

Its well-deserved.

We don’t need a nerd for President. We need a leader.

Jeb is many things but being a leader ain’t one of them.

Poor Jeb he deserved with increasing derision until he was forced out of the race.

[KC_Conspirator]

He instead took the base for granted and from day one focused on running to the center, as the non-threatening, moderately center right candidate who could reach across the aisle. The question in my mind is whether he had anyone in his inner circle who tied to tell him how profoundly he was misreading the electorate. If I were one of his consultants, I would strategically leave this race off my resume.

How about the possibility that the consultants he hired echoed the same misdreadings that he had? In a sane world, would leave this off my resume too, but the same GOPe consultant failures keep hiring one another back.

[Ouderkirk]

Once Bush announced that he was going ot try and win the nomination without the “base”, he was done.

[mad_as_he$$]

He’ll be back. Mommy will see to that.

[Liz]

True....she struggles w/ Spanglish.

Jeb has said they speak Spanish at home.

[rbg81]

He was doomed when he called illegal immigration “an act of love”. It’s hard to imagine a man of his (supposed) intelligence making a more tone-deaf statement.

[mad_as_he$$]

Lot of assumptions in that post. Did you cover the cocaine use, my ADHD kick ed.