One common theme in all of the postmortems concerning the Republican Party after their poor showing in the November elections is how they must appeal to Hispanic voters to ever have a great election cycle again. If one thing was proven via Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” comments it is that the Republican Party has no idea how to correctly address immigration.
Then Bobby Jindal attempted (and is still trying) to become the new face of the Republican Party and in a thinly veiled appeal to independents, moderates, young people; he said “we can no longer be the stupid party”.
But as I highlighted earlier, when the Republican Party needs a bailout on any topic; they look towards the Bush family and the onus of the focus has been on former Florida Governor Jeb.
Jeb Bush may be George W. Bush’s brother but he does give off a different vibe. Married to a Hispanic woman, he was supposed to be the leading Republican voice on immigration reform. He also was supposed to be one of the main politicians to lead the Republican Party away from being the “stupid party” to the one with actual ideas.
Ever since November, Jeb Bush has kept a lower profile than fellow 2016 candidates such as Chris Christie and Marco Rubio but considering he’s not elected to any office; that is not very surprising.
But in touting a new book, Jeb Bush decided to address the need for immigration reform and he did it in a way that mirrors the “stupid party” belief system. As The Atlantic writer Beth Reinhard so accurately puts it:
But by recommending only legal residency and backing off his past support for citizenship, Bush is throwing cold water over a fledgling deal in the Senate, denting his own reputation as a bold policymaker and stoking speculation that he will run for president in 2016.
Jeb Bush, in an attempt to explain his reversal to traditional Republican orthodoxy, stated that the book was actually made last year and published this year which indicates he has felt like this for a grand total of six months or so (whenever Mitt Romney started tanking in the polls I assume).
This is the problem with the Republican Party, we are still three years away from any substantial primaries and probably around two years away from any candidate simply ANNOUNCING an exploratory committee. There is plenty of time to renege or backpedal on certain issues.
By picking his new stance on immigration now, Jeb Bush is using his status as the emeritus to immigration to begin paving the way to 2016. He knows very well that to beat the conservative flamethrowers that are sure to emerge, he needs to become one of them. Why else would you change your view regarding your bread and butter topic? It’s just like Mitt Romney running away from the individual mandate that he greatly touted in the run-up to the 2008 election. If Romney was to know one thing it would have been healthcare reform.
But the run away from it. That is politics, I admit that it’s not solely a Republican problem but a Washingtonian one, but there are no other feasible theories to why Jeb Bush would change his mind other than to preface a run for the Presidency to save the family name.
Hopefully America’s memory lasts longer than I expect otherwise, he might have a bit more success than we could imagine.
Make no mistake about it though, he’s looking at the Oval Office and the Oval Office only. He’s not wanting to be Governor again or apply for some Cabinet role in the next Republican White House, it’s President or bust.
