Undignified Death To A Campaign

Salon's Gary Legum says it's time for John Ellis Bush to throw in the towel or shuffle off to Buffalo (not a bad town, if you discount the snow and the wind) because his presidential ambitions "are off the twig, they have kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible." He notes

It’s possible that something unforeseen could happen, that Donald Trump and Ben Carson could implode and Bush will pick up enough of their supporters to make himself viable again. So he’ll keep going, out of stubbornness, delusion or both. But as the race stands now, there is nothing left for him to do but make his concession speech. Or, seeing as how he can’t open his mouth without gibberish pouring out of it, have someone else do it for him.

It is even bleaker for Bush because if Trump and Carson were to implode, Ted Cruz would be ready to pick up the pieces and challenge Marco Rubio.

It's over for Bush, and there should be no dry eyes.  Early this year, Michael Kruse talked to Michael Schiavo about the 1990 effort by then-Florida governor Bush to defy the courts and Terri Schiavo's wish for dignity in death,  He wrote

I hope George W. Bush is president some day,” former Republican Party chairman Rich Bond told the late Marjorie Williams, writing for Talk magazine in September 2000. “I know Jeb will be.”

“I want to be able to look my father in the eye and say, ‘I continued the legacy,’” he told the  Miami Herald in 1994.

John Ellis Bush wanted to be able to say he "continued the legacy" like you or your neighbor might hope to get down to Home Depot, Loews, Safeway, or the neighborhood  drugstore.   Not to keep America safe, help restore the middle class, do what he can for veterans, the disabled, or children who might grow up in poverty, but continue the legacy. The presidency of the United States was to be used to satisfy some inner need of the son. The behavioral psychologists can sort it all out.

There was to be no stopping the dynasty, and in fact we did get the calamitous presidency of John Ellis' older brother.  But Republican voters are not yearning for another Bush and no tears should be shed.   Kruse recognizes John Ellis' "unartful comments on a handful of subjects suggest a man either saddled with a patrician’s tin ear, or a guy trying on the persona of a hard-right Washington hater and failing miserably."

Maybe both - sometimes on the same issue, as convenience dictates (video from The Young Turks below).  Bush certainly possesses a patrician's tin ear. And as Kruse noted in his article, "he ran for governor of Florida— as an ultra-conservative, a 'head-banging conservative,' as he put it —and lost. In 1998, he ran again, sanding those hard-right edges— and won." Throughout his career, John Ellis Bush has alternately put on the cloak of hard-right conservative and sensible moderate.   Neither has worked because, in the end, he has his family's name, incomparable access to big money, and nothing else.













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