Jeb Bush’s Solipsistic Campaign

It’s worth taking a step back and examining the bigger picture, to ask: what exactly is Team Bush up to?

Politico had the scoop in early December:

Taking to Twitter, Murphy denied this, but as Hayes pointed out, Murphy explicitly told Bloomberg in October that, “I’d love a two-way race with Trump at the end.” And anyway, it is sort of hard to deny that this is the strategy, after spending $20 million in negative ads against Rubio, who seems to be standing in Bush’s way.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump—a true danger to the prospects of the Republican party and the conservative movement—has hardly been the target of Bush’s vast war chest. Though Right to Rise ran some ads against Trump in late December, as of January 20 it had not dedicated any resources to anti-Trump television advertisements (though it did put up a billboard in Iowa). And the Bush campaign itself has aired some ads that contrast Bush and Trump. On Sunday, Bush protested on ABC that he’s, “the only guy taking Trump on.” This is not true, and it elides the fact that Team Bush’s spending against Trump is a tiny fraction of what it has spent against other candidates.

In sum, the Bush campaign and Right to Rise have directed its resources largely the way Politico suggested in December.

Why is this objectionable? It’s just politics, after all! Isn’t this just the semi-final round of the “Establishment Bracket”—between Bush, Rubio, Chris Christie, and John Kasich—with the winner to take on Trump or Cruz in the finals? In any case, none of these candidates has dedicated much to stopping Trump. Only Cruz has, and that was just a recent commitment.

Viewed out of context, the Bush strategy is perfectly fine, if more than a little graceless and nasty in its execution. But here’s the context: Bush is enormously, fantastically unpopular in the Republican party. The recent NBC/WSJ poll found just 42 percent of Republican voters could see themselves supporting Bush, while 55 percent could not. And in New Hampshire—where Bush has concentrated his efforts—the Monmouth poll found him with a 39 percent favorable rating to 47 percent unfavorable, among Republicans.

Bush and Right to Rise have spent tens of millions trying to build up Bush’s popularity, but it has been an abject failure. The rivals he is trying to blow up, especially Rubio, are still substantially better positioned to take on Trump down the line, despite the negative advertising blitzes against them from Team Bush.

That is what makes the play so objectionable: the Bush campaign is trying to set up a race against Trump that the Bush campaign has no good reason to think Bush can win. And the odds are that all the Bush campaign will achieve is making more likely the calamitous nomination of Donald Trump. Yet Bush is determined to try to force a final showdown between him and Trump by dumping $20 million (so far) in negative ads against manifestly superior candidates.

There is, of course, a chance the Bush strategy could work. I’d say it is no better than 50/50 that he beats Trump in a head-to-head; in fact I’d favor Trump if I had to pick one or another. But those odds are apparently good enough for Bush. He wants to be president so badly that he is willing to risk the good name and electoral prospects of the Republican party for the sake of his long shot campaign.

In truth, there is another path for Bush. He likes to tell us that he has the experience and shown the good judgment to be a responsible steward of the national interest. For the sake of that interest, he could show some leadership now by dropping out, recognizing that he has no clear path to the nomination, and endorse one of the other, non-Trump candidates.

That would be good for the party, good for the country, but would mean giving up on Bush’s very slim chance to be president. But that seems to be all that matters to Bush. So don’t hold your breath.

Jay Cost is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and the author of A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption.