Count House Speaker John Boehner as a fan of Jeb Bush for president. He also hasn’t spoken to Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz in two years.
The driving issue of the 2016 election will be “competence,” and if former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush runs, “he’s got a real shot” at winning, the Ohio Republican told the Cincinnati Enquirer on Tuesday.
Boehner applauded Bush’s ability to “talk about Republican issues better than most anybody that we’ve got out there,” approving of his “real record of reform” as Florida’s governor from 1999 to 2007.
He also called potential candidates Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman “great” ones.
“We’ve got a lot of good candidates,” Boehner said. “We’ll see who decides to throw their hat in the ring.”
Perhaps the most surprising nugget from the interview was Boehner admitting that he has not spoken to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz since he was elected in 2012 — probably due to Cruz’s encouragement of House conservatives to go against many of Boehner’s proposals.
