It’s time for a confession. I was one of the legions of writers who wrote off Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign in January. Exactly one month ago today, I wrote, “it’s hard to see how he can overtake Rubio, John Kasich or Chris Christie — the competition for the moderate vote — let alone catch Trump (who is at 32 percent) and make good on his vow to win the primary.” I also wrote that the only thing Bush’s massive ad campaign, which was estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars, aimed at sliming Marco Rubio, could accomplish would be, “to sabotage the one non-Trump or non-Cruz candidate other than Bush that has the resources and the campaign infrastructure to wage a national campaign after Iowa and New Hampshire are finished.”
I was wrong on both counts.
Bush didn’t overtake Kasich, who managed to finish a distant second to Donald Trump. But he did finish 1,078 votes ahead of his former protégé turned archrival Rubio as well as getting more than 10,000 votes than Christie.
I was also incorrect to speculate that Bush’s SuperPAC ad campaign trashing Rubio would take him down. Bush’s ads appeared to have no impact on Rubio, who seemed to surge in the days just before and after the Iowa caucuses. It was Rubio’s gaffe in the last debate responding to an attack from Christie that tanked his effort in New Hampshire and may well have damaged his campaign to the point where he may not be able to come back and contend for the nomination, not Bush’s ads.
Such are the perils of punditry, especially for those of us who write about the campaign on a daily basis. But now that I’ve eaten a little necessary crow, let’s take a moment to discuss the state of Bush’s effort.
Jeb was able to mock the media on Tuesday night after taking a bow for finishing fourth in New Hampshire. He’s right that his campaign isn’t dead. But given the enormous war chest of super PAC funds at his disposal, it wasn’t clear that he would have pulled out even if he had finished sixth like Christie did. Yet the Bush camp took enormous satisfaction in Rubio’s fall from grace and for finishing ahead of him.
That isn’t much to brag about, but it seemed to be enough to put the wind their sails heading to South Carolina where his brother, former President George W. Bush will reportedly campaign for him. So will South Carolina’s Senator Lindsey Graham. With all the money they can ask for as well as enough local infrastructure to produce a ground game worthy of the name, Bush is thought to be at least more competitive in the Palmetto State than he was in Iowa. Since it’s been weeks since polls were published about the race there, we have no idea whether Trump still has a huge lead but Jeb is as entitled as any other candidate to dream he can close the gap in the next week and a half.
But let’s be honest about what Bush has accomplished and what he has failed to do.
He began the presidential contest with the most money of any Republican candidate and has certainly spent more than any of his competitors, including the self-funded billionaire Trump. But all that has bought has been survival. Considering the mockery and bullying he has endured from Trump as well as the skepticism of an unsympathetic media, that’s not an inconsiderable achievement. But it’s not the same thing as still having an actual chance to win the presidential nomination.
Like Kasich, Rubio and the since departed Christie, Bush has assumed that there was a moderate/establishment lane in the GOP primaries that would, once the field was winnowed down, offer a clear path to victory. Bush still thinks he can outlast the faltering Rubio and Kasich, who hasn’t the money, the organization or the popularity outside of New Hampshire, to have a chance to follow up on his limited triumph earlier this week. Once that happens, he thinks that if he is matched up against Trump (the outsider vote) and Ted Cruz (the Christian conservative/Tea Party vote), he’ll eventually prevail.
That is still theoretically possible. But banking on the moderate lane now requires us to ignore what happened in New Hampshire where Trump’s sweep of virtually every demographic group was complete. It’s true that if you add up the total votes of the establishment quartet, they won nearly 45 percent of the total cast, which is more than Trump got. Yet assuming that everyone who voted for one of the moderates will turn out for Jeb in a matchup with Trump and Cruz is a leap of faith that perhaps only a member of the Bush clan would be inclined to make. In a year in which even a veteran politician and Washington insider like Kasich is trying to pose as an outsider, nominating a third Bush to be president, seems counter-intuitive. There’s a strong argument to be made to Republicans that they ought to nominate someone other than Trump or Cruz, but Jeb is poorly placed to do it.
Yet even if we were to assume that Bush’s good personal qualities and willingness to consistently challenge Trump — for which he deserves enormous credit — will count in his favor, it’s not clear that there really are enough moderate conservative votes out there to stop either of the two men at the top of the GOP polls. The fear for GOP centrists is not just that their choices aren’t as attractive as they hoped but also that the moderate lane may have collapsed.
A lot of us may have been wrong about Jeb’s ability to best Rubio, but winning bragging rights in that nasty feud won’t mean much if neither of them can do better than a distant third in South Carolina or avoid getting bulldozed in the Super Tuesday SEC primary states. At this point, the odds of both lasting until the March 15 Florida primary are even at best. And unless there is a massive change in voter sentiment, it doesn’t look as if either of them can beat Trump even in their home state, let alone anywhere else.
So while it’s probably wise to avoid writing any premature obits about any of these candidates until we hear about them suspending their campaigns, we do know that all the establishment quartet has managed to achieve so far is to cripple each other and ensure that Trump or possibly Cruz will have an easy path to the nomination. That remains something for which Bush may have to take responsibility for once his part in this debacle is done.
