Let's get through the first part of this post while the shivers triggered by that pic slowly subside.
Jeb Bush, two-term former Florida Governor, son and brother of presidents, and Mitt Romney's direct "establishment" descendent, is still trying to prove his penis length (and existence) by using it to try and whack Donald Trump unconscious:
Again, this is a good ad, and it does a good, if not great, job of illustrating Trump's true ideological leanings right up to the present day. The problem is that the messenger is somebody that Trumpmaniacs - whose emotional, "almost mystical" attachment to their hero render them blind to his cavalcade of philosophical heresies anyway - detest so insanely that they're never going to hear a word he's saying about their guy, no matter how devastatingly true it is. Bush III is plainly and simply the wrong candidate to be trying to take Trump down from the right.
Which leads to this thought-provoking tweet from Amanda Carpenter:
Why is Jeb knocking Trump? Those aren't his voters. Shouldn't he be trying to pick off support from Walker, Rubio, Kasich...?
The answer is that pretty much the entire field (other, interestingly enough, than Ben Carson) is having their dwindling support harvested already - by Trump. Going after the rest is a classic case of trying to gather more and more from less and less. And meanwhile, it leaves Trump unfettered and unimpeded to cruise onwards towards the nomination. Jeb's position is no different than that of any of his rivals: You have to try and reel in and take down the frontrunner. The only thing that sets Jeb apart is that he never, ever expected to be in the position of eating anybody else's dust. His bulging "shock and awe" campaign warchest was supposed to have preemptively put him in the frontrunner position Trump has usurped with a rational Republican nominating electorate that Trump has roiled into the far reaches of mental irregularity. It's a political landscape so alien to so painfully conventional a GOP pol like Jeb that he really doesn't quite know what to do about it. The parallels to Hillary Clinton on the Democrat side are equivalently apt: Entitlement-mentalitied quasi-aristocrats who find themselves in predicaments they never saw coming and don't know how to get out of, so they are doing what comes naturally to them and what they do understand, even though it's unlikely to be very effective as a sufficient countermeasure.
At least Jeb had the presence of mind to leave any mention of immigration out of this spot.
But while his ad probably won't help him specifically, it can aid in eroding Trumpmania if other still-top tier candidates (like Scott Walker) who actually have the conservative/Tea Party cred Bush III lacks start piling on. Not every GOP "hopeful" is an "establishment RINO," after all.
However, there's another Jeb motivation at play here: what, back in his pappy's day was called the "wimp factor," and how it is causing the GOP "donor class" to start climbing into their Wayback Machines:
Though this election cycle was supposed to feature the most impressive field of Republican presidential candidates in decades, a handful of the party’s major donors and bundlers remain underwhelmed by their options. They are longing for the bad old days, and Mitt Romney is still their man. These holdouts continue to hope that the former Massachusetts governor, who said in January he would not run for a third time, will change his mind. They believe he could dispel the chaos that has reigned over the Republican field for months. Though they gave plenty of money to Romney’s presidential campaigns, this year they’re keeping their wallets shut, waiting for him to reenter the fray.
Mitt Romney, the two-time loser who got out-Alpha-maled by a spindley, Urkelesque pansy in mom jeans. The only guy who could possibly still jump in who would make Jeb look like a lumberjack. And whose fortune is dwarfed by The Donald's. If they thought Trump has had a field day exposing Jeb as a gelding, imagine the Rickels-esque insult comic possibilities he would have with the Mittster. The mind reels.
Seriously, Romney's old donors couldn't start pumping cash into Walk's campaign, the natural unifying bridge between "establishment" and Tea Partiers? This isn't about their not-so-adept political acumen, it's about their defeatism and what they consider to be "comfortable". And that'll get them where they deserve to wind up.
UPDATE: This didn't take long:
No more Clintons or Bushes!
We wrote about that here . Not that this is at all responsive to the facts in Jeb's ad against Trump. But then Trump really doesn't have to be, because his much greater ideological heresies are things his mezmorized supporters don't care about in the slightest, while Jeb's define him in their eyes, along with the long-time aristocratic chumminess between La Clinton Nostra and House Bush. Which just goes to show once again the conundrum Bush III is in: If he doesn't respond, he's a "wimp"; if he attacks Trump from the right, he's a hypocrite; if he attacks Trump from the left, he confirms everything about him that conservatives can't stand. And he can't raise anywhere near as much campaign cash as Trump can find by rummaging around in one of his office couches. Checkmate.
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