Dana Loesch, a conservative media personality with big influence within the Tea Party movement, isn’t excited about the news that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush officially is considering a run for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. The reason: He once shushed a chatty audience at one of the biggest political events of the year.
“It was a dinner at CPAC,” Loesch told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday, referring to the Conservative Political Action Conference, a massive yearly gathering of conservatives just outside the nation’s capital. Loesch said she was seated at the dinner, which took place in 2013, with her husband; conservative RedState blogger Ben Howe and his wife; and former Rep. Allen West and his wife.
“People at our table and around us were a bit shocked,” she said. “During dinner, people eat. They ask for you to pass the dressing in hushed tones. [Bush] seemed hostile, not at all likable, and really put off a lot of people and seemed to not care that he did so.”
Bush was actually the keynote speaker of that dinner event. After an introduction, Bush called on the chatty audience to quiet down. “Let’s close the bar off so everybody in the back can stop chattering,” he said. “That’s the best introduction I’ve gotten in a long while and I wish you had all heard it.”
Some people laughed. Others didn’t.
“Maybe he had a bad day, but public officials — or those who seek to be — aren’t afforded those any more, especially when you’re talking to a room of people whose support you seek,” Loesch said. She also tweeted that that incident led her to believe Bush would not be a good candidate in 2016.
Howe recalled feeling the same way. “I remember thinking he was probably upset for the guy introducing him and that that’s why he probably said it. But it wasn’t very tactful,” he said. Howe said, however, that he does not “hate” the idea of Bush running for president.
Though Loesch is just one voice in the conservative media that is hostile toward a Bush run, she’s not alone.
After Bush announced his consideration of a run Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh, the most popular talk radio host, mused on his show that “it could be a sacrificial run just to make sure that a conservative doesn’t get the nomination in 2016.”
Laura Ingraham, another big-name conservative radio host, said, “there must be one sound, strong, courageous alternative to the Bush family.”
In April, Glenn Beck, also very influential among grassroots conservatives and with his own megaphone on TheBlaze media network, said he’d “rather have [Republican Sen.] Rand Paul than Jeb Bush” in 2016.
