March 27, 2014: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a potential GOP presidential candidate in 2016, during a education panel discussion at Advanced Technologies Academy, in Las Vegas. Bush is the chairman of the Foundation for Excellence in Education, which promotes expanding charter schools and vouchers to allow students to attend private schools. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, Jeff Scheid)
A behind-the-scenes big donor push for a Jeb Bush 2016 presidential bid is now well underway, underscoring just how disconnected the party establishment is with their actual voter base. Driven by fears that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is too damaged by the media-obsessed Bridgegate affair, the “vast majority” of the top 100 donors to 2012 nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign have taken up the task to draft the former Florida governor.
“He’s the most desired candidate out there,” said another bundler, Brian Ballard, a member of both national finance committees for two past losers, Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008. “Everybody that I know is excited about it.”
Despite Kentucky Senator Rand Paul walking away with the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference and, his even more electorally significant win in the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference earlier this month, the know-it-all party donors believe his libertarian views on the National Security Agency and supposed weakness on foreign policy has made him an electoral liability. For Republican elites, the brother of two former presidents — one of which, had the most unpopular foreign policy platform in decades, while the other couldn’t win reelection based on his foreign policy successes — would be a much better choice.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served under an impeached Republican president, told The Post he would be “delighted” to see Jeb Bush 2016 signs. “He would be outstanding,” Kissinger said, even though he hasn’t thrown Christie under the bus as others seem to have done. “He is someone who is experienced, moderate and thoughtful.”
Though the party’s big donors seem to think another Bush is just what the Republican Party needs, Jeb Bush has never led in either individual polling or in the PPD average of 2016 Republican presidential nomination polls. whereas both Paul and Christie have. Currently, former Arkansas governor turned-Fox New host Mike Huckabee is still holding on to a slight lead. However, Paul is not only leading the GOP field in recent New Hampshire primary polling, but also slightly behind Huckabee in Iowa.
Yet, it is this big donor push that led Crystal Ball to recently and shockingly adjust their forecast. Now, Sabato and the guys at the University of Virginia Center for Politics placed Jeb Bush at the top of their list, pushing down both Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Senator Paul, two candidates that could actually excite the voter base.
But it isn’t just conservative Republican base voters who are having a hard time warming up to the idea of another Bush. A recent Washington Post-ABC News poll found that almost half of all Americans say they “definitely would not” vote for Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential election.
Apparently, Karl Rove is gearing up to waste billions of big donor dollars — again — pushing the idea that his former boss’s brother is more electable than Sen. Rand Paul or others. Unfortunately for the donors’ wallets and the direction of the country, the data just doesn’t bare that narrative out. But that isn’t even the worst aspect to this story, or the character of Karl Rove & Co.
Rove and the general Republican Establishment need base voters to win. After bitter primary elections they expect and take for granted these voters. But when their guys loses, they want to take their ball and go home.
Mark DeMoss, another former adviser to the failed Romney campaign, someone seen as influential with the evangelical voting bloc, said that he would only help Bush. If Bush doesn’t run, he says, then he will sit out the 2016 campaign.
“I think he is a talented, credible, thinking leader,” DeMoss said. “The question is, how much appetite is there in the Republican Party and in the general electorate for that?”
DeMoss, like so many Establishment Republicans, would apparently prefer Hillary Clinton to someone who is actually conservative.
