Jeb Bush is running for president. Despite all the build-up to Monday’s formal announcement, that’s no surprise. But did anybody think Bush was going to skip the Republican primaries and proceed straight to the general election against Hillary Clinton?
All but one of the warm-up speakers at Bush’s event, a GOP state senator considering a run for a Republican-held House seat, gave talks geared to demographics. Republicans need to appeal to in November but who don’t necessarily need to be wooed in the primaries.
Former Florida Lt. Gov. Toni Jennings, for example, spoke about Bush’s record on domestic violence. Nothing in her remarks would particularly bother a Republican primary voter, but they seemed more geared toward pushing back against the ‘War on Women’ narrative — something deployed in the fall campaign, not the primaries — than the base.
The heavy use of Spanish in Bush’s announcement may comfort Republicans who worry about the party’s dismal share of the Hispanic vote in 2012 and most other elections. But outside of Florida and to a much lesser extent Texas, it’s not something that’s going to reach many Republican voters. And the promise on immigration extracted by pro-amnesty hecklers, something that was not included in the prepared text of Bush’s speech, will alienate some Republican voters.
This would all make more sense if Bush were the heavy favorite to win the nomination. Instead he is barely the frontrunner. In a national poll released the same day the former Florida governor tossed his hat into the ring, Bush actually trailed retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
Yes, the field is huge and everyone is struggling to carve out their slice of the primary electorate pie. But we are at the point in the race when Bush’s advantages in name identification should count for the most and he is struggling to separate himself from a field dominated by people hovering around 10 percent of the vote.
His brother, George W. Bush, was polling as high as 50 percent at this point in 1999, not because of the size or stature of the field — his opponent’s included a Cabinet officer who was also the previous GOP nominee’s wife, a former vice president of the United States, the defending champion of the New Hampshire primary, a former governor and Cabinet secretary who had been a top-tier candidate in 1996 and a flat-tax pitchman who once led in the national polls.
Jeb Bush, on the other hand, can’t convincingly beat Ben Carson.
Moreover, as I’ve noted before, Bush isn’t consistently the strongest match-up against Hillary Clinton in general election polls. Until he can reliably poll better against Hillary than Rand Paul or Marco Rubio, Republicans might be reluctant to give him a shortcut to the general.
Bush’s opening bid left the impression he would be a capable 2016 opponent for Clinton. But to get that opportunity, he’s going to need to win the nomination first. You don’t really get to lose the primary to win the general.
