As the dog days of summer reach their apex, the race for the GOP nomination has become nothing short of an epic bore, with former Gov. Mitt Romney and Rep. Michele Bachmann topping most polls of GOP primary voters. But that’s all about to change, as a series of events seems to be developing that could knock both Mr. Romney and Mrs. Bachmann from their respective perches, making way for a race between incoming candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and the last, best hope of the GOP establishment, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Indeed, Jeb’s walkback from his previous Shermanesque statements with regard to 2012 — the former governor now claims that he doesn’t “anticipate” running — may be a sign of the Bush Establishment’s fears of a Texas-sized juggernaut entering the race later in the summer and taking the field by storm. Rick Perry, a longtime Bush foe, seems all but certain to run, and will probably have the support of such notable Republicans as Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin, both of whom have long been Perry allies, and the latter of whom continues to make no moves in preparation for a run. With polls suggesting that Perry has already surged into second place in the Republican horse race, and with Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann continuing to make Republican base voters uncomfortable, for very different reasons, the Perry boomlet has managed to get the attention of the smart money on Intrade, where Perry, not Mitt, is now viewed as the most likely Republican nominee.
Should Perry enter the race and skyrocket to the top of the field, the GOP establishmentarians who see the Texan as a personal or political threat will have two options. They can either throw everything behind Romney, helping Mitt to prevent the Perry insurgency, or they can get behind the candidate that they’ve really wanted all along, Jeb Bush. A Romney push is probably more likely than a Jeb late entry, though it is not outside of the realm of possibility that Romney will simply collapse once a fully operational Perry campaign unites all of the disparate groups waiting for another Reagan to ride in on a white horse and save the day. In that event, the establishment will either have to make peace with Perry or go for broke with a Jeb run.
Oh God no. GO AWAY JEB. Piss off! We don’t need or want your kind again.
jed put your imptrint here to sttay , we must tell the real story,
President Daddy was a progressive, President brother was a progressive, so I think we can pretty much expect Jeb would be a progressive.
…Actually, come to think of it, the more progressive Republicans running, the better to take primary votes away from Romney.
Go ahead and run Jeb!!!