So I’ve found it a sad commentary on GOP rebuilding that there’s been so much talk this week about the likelihood and desirability of a Jeb Bush candidacy. And apparently one influential Republican, his mother, Barbara, agrees with me.

Continue Reading...

The former U.S. president has joined Twitter, though opted not to adopt the handle Colbert picked out for him two weeks ago. Colbert registered @PrezBillyJeff for Clinton and sent a tweet Clinton dictated to him.

That handle was a little too informal for Clinton, it seems, who eventually switched the handle to plain ol' @BillClinton and started tweeting Wednesday.

The account was quickly verified, and Clinton already has more than 288,000 followers. In his first few tweets, Clinton told Colbert he was ready to start his "Twitter lessons."

Colbert seemed pleased that Clinton decided to take the plunge, though appeared dismayed that the former president failed to turn up to his Game of Thrones party.

Continue Reading...

"He's by far the best qualified man, but no," she continued. "I really don't. I think it's a great country, there are a lot of great families, and it's not just four families or whatever. There are other people out there that are very qualified, and we've had enough Bushes."

Bush added that she doesn't think Jeb, the former governor of Florida, will run: "He's the most qualified, but I don't think he'll run."

Continue Reading...

After presidents are done being presidents, they get to build big museums about themselves, because a tradition that originally involved simply making the documents and papers and records of a president available to researchers and the public obviously became this giant, expensive, pseudo-regal tribute thing, because this is America and we're really weird about presidents.

Continue Reading...

Now, on the eve of the opening of his presidential library and an apparent Bush-rehabilitation tour, starting with a Diane Sawyer interview Wednesday night, Bush faces a kinder, gentler American public. According to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, Americans are now split on the former president, with 47 percent approving of his performance and 50 percent disapproving. He’s still underwater, as the pollsters say, but that’s not a bad jump in four years. He’s even climbed on the economy, with 43 percent now approving of the job he did, while 57 percent stayed tethered to the reality-based community, and still disapprove.

Continue Reading...

It’s a myth.

But expect to see plenty of it. It was a widely circulated myth during the last cycle, and the nomination of Mitt Romney will surely entrench the myth even more. But still, it’s a myth.

Of course it is true that parties – all parties – are most likely to nominate a candidate who enters the fight as the clear leader. But if “next in line” is more than just a trite statement that strong candidates usually do well, then it doesn’t help to predict anything.

Continue Reading...

Bush, capping a media-heavy week that sparked chatter about a presidential campaign for a third member of his family, tried to keep the conversation focused on his book "Immigration Wars." But as Bush wrapped up a conversation with NBC's David Gregory," he likened journalists and their questions about the 2016 campaign to drug addicts.

"Who's the hottest Florida politician right now? Is it you or Marco Rubio?" Gregory asked, referring to Rubio, a senator who is also a potential GOP contender. "Who are we more likely to see in the White House?"

"Man, you guys are crack addicts. You really are obsessed with all this politics," Bush replied.

The "Meet the Press" host interrupted, saying he'd been called a lot of things, but never a crack addict.

"OK, heroin addict. Is that better?" shot back Bush, the son of former President George H.W. Bush and brother of former President George W. Bush.

Continue Reading...

Jeb Bush

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush made a full-fledged assault on the Sunday shows today attempting to clarify his position on immigration. Last week he said there should not be a “path to citizenship” for undocumented immigrants, a view he expressed in his new book, “Immigration Wars,” which was written before Mitt Romney got thumped in November and the Republican Party immediately decided that its hard-line immigration stance was not going to fly given current demographic trends. On "Face the Nation," Bush calibrated his stance to bring it more in line with mainstream GOP opinion or what mainstream GOP opinion could become:

I haven't changed. The book was written to try to create a blueprint for conservatives that were reluctant to embrace comprehensive reform, to give them perhaps a set of views that they could embrace. I support a path to legalization or citizenship so long as the path for people that have been waiting patiently is easier and costs less, the legal entrance to our country, than illegal entrance.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Regardless of which names actually end up on the ballot in January 2016, there are two participants in a Florida primary happening right now: Jeb Bush and his ascendent former protégé, Marco Rubio. And it took on added intrigue this week with the flap over Bush’s book.

People who have worked in Florida politics say Rubio would be nowhere without the former governor. His initial election as a young state legislator; his meteoric rise in state House of Representatives to speaker after just five years; his improbable victory in the 2010 Republican Senate primary against establishment-backed Charlie Crist; his national visibility as a GOP rising star -- none of it would have happened without Bush’s imprimatur and guiding hand, they say.

Continue Reading...

Bush had been a longtime proponent of comprehensive immigration reform, so when he came out against a pathway to citizenship in his new book, there were questions.

“Jeb's immigration book roll-out reminds me of song: ‘How could something so right, go so wrong?’” tweeted Ana Navarro, a Bush ally who led Hispanic outreach for John McCain’s presidential campaign. “I'm confident Jeb will clarify.”

And this morning, clarify he did, if you can call it that. Within hours of the book’s official release Tuesday, Bush was already backtracking on the path to citizenship claim. “We wrote this book last year, not this year,” he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” noting that there has since been an emerging bipartisan consensus on reform.

“I don’t have a problem with a pathway to citizenship,” he explained, walking back the book’s contention. “I don't see how you do it, but I'm not smart enough to figure out every aspect of a really complex law.”

Continue Reading...

"It is absolutely vital to the integrity of our immigration system that actions have consequences -- in this case, that those who violated the law can remain but cannot obtain the cherished fruits of citizenship," Bush and lawyer Clint Bolick argue in a new book, "Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution." The former governor repeated this line on the "Today" show Monday, noting, "Our proposal is a proposal that looks forward. And if we want to create an immigration policy that's going to work, we can't continue to make illegal immigration an easier path than legal immigration."

Continue Reading...

-- Fox News' Brit Hume was disappointed by the 2012 election results: In a Nov. 9 email to Willard Heminway, a close friend of the elder bush, the Fox News analyst wrote: “Election outcome disappointing, but there are many silver linings."

-- The Bush kids have a strange relationship with Bill Clinton: George W. Bush apparently calls him "bubba" or "brother," given the closeness between his father and the Democratic former president. As his father lay in the hospital in late December, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush praised his father and “how kind he was with President Clinton." "[H]e helped restore his sordid reputation. A very tough thing to do but with kindness, dad probably helped Bill Clinton than anything he himself has done," he said of his father and Clinton.

Continue Reading...

I’m not talking about the illusion of an advantage that comes with winning consecutive elections. That might be the result of a streak in which the party is helped by favorable fundamentals, or it can be, as with Democratic majorities in the New Deal era, simply part of a national advantage. In either case, a party might win the same states every time, but -- as Republicans discovered in 1992 -- when those favorable conditions end, the apparent electoral “lock” disappears, too.

No, I’m talking about an Electoral College edge above and beyond the national vote. That’s not defined by which states went for which candidate; it’s found by looking at what would have happened in the Electoral College if an election had been tied in the national vote. To calculate it, assume uniform swing – that is, if swing state Ohio moves toward the Democrats, then liberal Vermont and conservative Utah will also move toward the Democrats by the same amount. In reality, the states don’t swing quite that equally, but they’re very close to it.

Continue Reading...

As Jonathan Bernstein pointed out recently, jockeying by would-be Democratic candidates actually began well before Election Day, and party leaders, activists and interest groups are already seeking to define the terms of the 2016 debate within the party. And now that Mitt Romney has gone down to defeat, thereby assuring that the GOP’s ’16 nomination will be open too, a similar process is playing out on the Republican side. These early days of a presidential election cycle are generally known as the “invisible primary,” although in today’s media landscape, it’s easier than ever to see who’s up to what.

In the modern era of presidential politics – that is, since the power to nominate candidates was taken away from convention power-brokers and given to primary voters – this process has tended to be more predictable on the Republican side, with a “next in line” candidate emerging from one election as the clear favorite for the next nomination and then going on to win it.

Continue Reading...

A rising star among Hispanic conservatives, George Prescott Bush is the grandson of one president and nephew of another. He made headlines last week by filing "appointment of a campaign treasurer" forms with the Texas Ethics Commission — the first step toward seeking statewide office.

The forms did not say which office Bush plans to seek. Political strategist Trey Newton would say only that Bush is mulling a run for land commissioner, attorney general or comptroller, most likely in 2014.

The letter from Bush's father, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, suggested he had settled on land commissioner, which is often a stepping stone to higher office in Texas.

"The office that George is considering running for is Land Commissioner which oversees the mineral rights, commercial real estate owned and sovereign submerged lands of the state of Texas, as well as veterans' affairs and historic archives," he wrote.

Continue Reading...

Tim Sorrells, general counsel for the Texas Ethics Commission, says George P. Bush filed a campaign treasurer appointment on Wednesday. Sorrells told The Associated Press on Thursday night the document is required for someone to become a candidate under campaign finance law.

Sorrells didn't have other details on the filing. Bush did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment.

The 36-year-old son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said in September his goal was to run for office. The younger Bush lives in Fort Worth, where he runs a consulting firm.

Continue Reading...

Video via Politico

Continue Reading...

This comes on the heels of Sen. Marco Rubio essentially endorsing President Obama's decision to halt deportations of young people brought to the U.S. by their parents illegally. Rubio continues to insist that it "feels weird" to deport young people who have grown up here and who consider themselves Americans, sounding like an Obama surrogate as he chides both parties for "politicizing" immigration.

Only two weeks before that, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush rebuked Romney on both taxes and immigration, telling reporters that neither Ronald Reagan nor his father could be nominated by today's Republican Party because of their record of bipartisan compromise and raising taxes. Bush also warned Romney to change his tone on immigration, saying, “Don’t just talk about Hispanics and say immediately we must have controlled borders. It’s kind of insulting when you think about it. Change the tone would be the first thing. Second, on immigration, I think we need to have a broader approach."

Continue Reading...

He's not the only Bush to figure prominently in the news. In fact, after a year-plus Republican primary season in which the name of the Republican president who ran the country for two-thirds of this millennium somehow went unspoken, all three of the major Bush boys are back. Former President George H. W. "Poppy" Bush, a committed Romney man, will babble aimlessly about his life and presidency in an HBO documentary set to debut tonight. And Jeb Bush, the long-rumored "smart" Bush child (he'd gut the welfare state for fun, but hey, he speaks Spanish), continues to find himself disparaged by the Republican base after suggesting, scandalously, that the American system of government requires compromise to function.

Continue Reading...