Jeb Bush headed out for his Iowa debut Friday, and took a few slabs of red meat with him to toss to the wolves in the conservative base.
This tweet was interesting:
Gee, where have we heard that before? Sounds like something Rudy Giuliani said not too long ago, with a little less harsh and a little more spin on it. Has he hired Mary Matalin as a campaign advisor?
Like every Republican candidate on the planet, Jeb is pandering like a big lumbering bear, but it doesn't seem to be having much impact on the voters, at least, not yet.
"It's hard to reconcile his membership in the Republican Party as anything more than a multigenerational family tradition," Cary Gordon, a Christian conservative pastor at a Sioux City church, told The Des Moines Register this week. "He appears to be a Republican in name, but not necessarily a Republican in heart and head."
[...]
Bush is the last contender on the current 2016 roster of major Democratic and Republican presidential aspirants to make his debut trip to Iowa. A narrative has already begun to sink in here that conservatives should be skeptical of him, partly because he embraces academic standards for student achievement and is disinterested in deporting every immigrant living in the country illegally.
Suspicions also percolate that Bush harbors positive feelings about same-sex marriage, although Bush, a Catholic, has repeatedly said he supports traditional marriage.
Asked if he's worried that it might already be getting too late to change some Iowa conservatives' negative opinions about him, Bush told the Register in a telephone interview: "No."
He chuckled.
"Look, if I actually go beyond the consideration of running to actually running, then I'll do it with lots of energy. I'll do it with lots of passion, and I'll do it honestly, telling my story about how conservative principles applied the right way through principles-centered leadership made a difference here in Florida. I'd put my record up against anybody's, to be honest with you. That's a solid conservative record."
Meh. These days a "solid conservative record" will buy you a fast track to nowhere with the batsh*t crazy contingent. Good luck with that, Jeb.
Also, maybe Jeb shouldn't pretend he's got a clue about technology.
During his conversation with Radio Iowa this morning, Bush also commented on the controversy surrounding the private computer server Hillary Clinton used for her email when she was secretary of state. Bush, as Florida’s governor, used a private email account and personal server. He still encourages people to send messages to that jeb@jeb.org address, but Bush indicated that, if he’s elected president, he would not use a private email account.
“For security purposes, you need to be behind a firewall that recognizes the world for what it is and it’s a dangerous world and security would mean that you couldn’t have a private server,” Bush said. “It’s a little baffling, to be honest with you, that didn’t come up in Secretary Clinton’s thought process.”
Using government servers doesn't guarantee the firewall will keep out intruders. Just have a look at Wikileaks to see all the Department of State cables and email out there for the world to see. So maybe Jeb should just leave that one alone, since he did exactly what Hillary did. (Not that anyone is making nearly the noise about it that they might want to.)
Jebbie has an interesting dilemma, since he's not a favorite with the hardcore primary voter base, has the last name of Bush, and is rounding up all of the money. Can he survive the primaries, or will he crash and burn right out of the gate?
