With Jeb Bush officially announcing his candidacy for the 2016 presidential race today, there is speculation that he will be the undisputed frontrunner. That notion is surprising considering how little Bush has impressed anyone in his party, reported Salon.
There is much stacked against Bush. The most well-known strike against Bush is his stance on foreign policy and his past involvement with the neoconservative think tank, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). PNAC is known as being the primary architectural group behind the Iraq War.
Bush realizes his obstacles and noted how difficult his journey will be.
“I know that I’m going to have to go earn this,” he said last week. “It’s a lot of work and I’m excited about the prospects of this. It’s a long haul. You start wherever you start, and you end a long way from where we are today, so I just urge everybody to be a little more patient about this.”
Patience is a tall order for someone like Bush. His past hawkishness has only earned him enemies on both sides of the aisles. Bush’s Republican presidential opponents don’t even view his as a viable threat. Salon noted how Bush is unpopular with the “most passionate” conservative voters and how the candidate’s only prowess is his namesake.
“I thought Jeb would take up all the oxygen,” said Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich. “He hasn’t.”
In this new, fringe-heavy Republican political climate, Bush seems to be yesterday’s candidate, a relic of the Establishment Republicans. Democratic voters will naturally recoil from Jeb Bush. Outside of obvious reasons for his potential flub of a campaign, his media readiness is severely lacking.
Bush struggled for an entire week during his now-infamous gaffe about going to war with Iraq. He answered a strong yes, then he said he misunderstood the question, the answered no. If he thinks the media, voters, and his Republican opponents are going to forget that, he’s mistaking.
In a Republican race that already has a dozen candidates, it’s difficult enough to ascertain a clear favorite for the GOP nomination. In fact, all of the candidates are either crazy, an idiot, a criminal (Rick Perry), or a boring war hawk. Any of these candidates winning the nomination would be a surprise, let alone becoming president.
