Depending on who you ask, Jeb Bush either had a major campaign shake-up before his candidacy was even announced or he didn’t. Just a reallocation of current staff resources, nothing to see here.
As talented and well regarded as newly appointed Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz is, either way they need to ensure this isn’t just reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. The former Florida governor faces some fundamental challenges. Some, like his last name and family background, can’t really be changed.
But let’s look at one that needs to be changed if there is going to be a third President Bush come 2017. In many ways, Jeb has all the advantages of an establishment candidate: a successful fundraising operation, plenty of money, a quality campaign team, solid organization, high name recognition.
Notice one huge advantage that is missing from this list: superior electability. Even relatively weak establishment frontrunners like John McCain and Mitt Romney were more credible general election candidates than most, perhaps all, of the conservatives running against them.
You may have been the biggest Michele Bachmann fan on the planet. Even if you were, you probably couldn’t argue with a straight face that she really was more likely to make Barack Obama a one-term president than Romney.
At least three Republicans running to the right of Bush can make that argument because they have polls to back them up. In the latest CNN/ORC poll Bush trails likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton nationally by 8 percentage points. Scott Walker and Marco Rubio are behind by just 3 points, Rand Paul by 1.
The matchup against Bush is the only time Hillary breaks 50 percent against the top tier. An earlier Quinnipiac poll has Bush down by 10. Walker doesn’t do much better with an 8-point deficit. But Rubio and Paul are only 4 points behind Clinton.
Now, to be fair, not every poll consistently shows this. For example, a Fox News had a poll showing Bush up 1 against Clinton while Walker, Rubio and Paul all trailed. But Bush is faring worse than Rubio, Paul and even Mike Huckabee in the latest RealClearPolitics polling average.
Maybe those numbers will change. The early polling in 2011 didn’t necessarily reflect what happened when the voting started in 2012 (It’s been a rough time period for polls anyway). And it’s also possible that conservatives in Iowa and elsewhere will elevate conservatives like Ted Cruz and Ben Carson, who are not polling well against Clinton, over Rubio or Paul. That might let Bush look like the more credible candidate for November again.
But with the exception of George W. Bush’s 2000 contest with John McCain, in most recent primary campaigns the frontrunner has boasted a clear advantage in general election polling. At the very least, that’s not true here. Consider that all it took was one Rasmussen poll in 2010 showing Christine O’Donnell down just 2 points in the general to seal Mike Castle’s doom.
Jeb Bush isn’t Mike Castle. At the moment, he’s not unambiguously the candidate most likely to beat Hillary. Until that changes, the price for conservatives voting their conscience isn’t terribly high.
