Allahpundit @ Hot Air
I sure am. Nothing says “new, young, vibrant GOP” like nominating George W. Bush’s 60-something-year-old brother, who’ll have held no political office for nearly 10 years by election day 2016.
Try to wrap your mind around the fact that, if you had to give odds right this minute, the likeliest presidential match-up four years from now would be a second Bush/Clinton election. That’s what this country and its perverse tolerance of dynastic politics has come to. If that’s where we’re headed, I at least want some honesty from the candidates and the public about what we’re doing. Step one: Repeal the Title of Nobility Clause in Article I and make Jeb and Hillary a duke and duchess, respectively. That’ll help tidy things up for Chelsea and George P. Bush in preparation for the inevitable Bush/Clinton III contest in 2036. Step two: I want a Kennedy on the ticket as Hillary’s VP and maybe Ben Quayle or one of the Romney boys (take your pick) as Jeb’s number two. Let’s really own what we’re doing here. Simple proposition: From now on, no one is eligible to run for president unless he/she is related by blood or marriage to someone who already has.
When former President Bill Clinton rolled through here while campaigning for President Obama, he speculated about Mr. Bush’s intentions with Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist and friend of Mr. Bush. It was no idle topic for Mr. Clinton, given the possibility that his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, could seek the Democratic nomination.
When Senator Marco Rubio of Florida held a strategy session here to discuss his own political future last week, the question of Mr. Bush, a mentor, hung over the room; a decision by Mr. Bush, 59, to seek the Republican nomination would almost certainly halt any plans by Mr. Rubio, 41, to do so or abruptly set off a new intraparty feud.
Mr. Bush is said by friends to be weighing financial and family considerations — between so many years in office and the recession his wealth took a dip, they said, and he has been working hard to restore it — as well as the complicated place within the Republican Party of the Bush brand. Asked this week about whether his father would run, Jeb Bush Jr. told CNN, “I certainly hope so.”…
Still, calls for Jeb Bush to enter the arena in a bigger way represent vindication of a sort. His family’s longstanding advocacy for a more broad-based and “compassionate” Republican Party was largely ignored and eventually repudiated by the populist, small-government conservatives who held sway over the party after Mr. Obama’s election.
Enthusiasm for a Jeb candidacy boils down to two things, the belief that public dissatisfaction with Dubya will have faded by 2016 and the idea that Jeb, almost uniquely, can help win back Latinos to the GOP. On the first point, here’s a memorable data point from this year’s national exit poll: