Glad to hear it. If there’s one thing America stands for at this point in its history, it’s making sure the deepest ambitions of the Bush and Clinton families are fulfilled, repeatedly. I also appreciate Dubya’s phrasing. As WaPo notes, it’s interesting that he says Jeb wants to be president, not that he wants to run for president. I don’t blame him: Now that we’ve sunk this far towards dynastic politics, it seems almost impolite to demand that he compete for the nomination rather than inherit it.

Guys, help me figure out what this means:

For the past year, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has been wooing his longtime friend Jeb Bush to jump into the 2016 presidential race, even as he has shunned potential Tea Party rivals like Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky…

The Speaker’s preference for yet another Bush White House run is partly political, partly personal. He sees Bush as undeniably the strongest, most viable candidate who could pull the party together after a bruising primary and take on a formidable Hillary Clinton, sources said. And the two men are aligned politically, hailing from the same centrist strand of the GOP.

The guy named “Bush,” who supports amnesty and Common Core, whom most righties disdain as an even bigger RINO than the last two RINO-y nominees, is going to unite the party, huh? That was my gut reaction upon reading that — but upon reflection, isn’t Boehner right? For all the heavy breathing about tea partiers eventually going third-party, which wing of the GOP is most likely to balk in 2016 if it gets a nominee it doesn’t like? When push comes to shove, conservatives always trudge to the polls for a centrist because their fear of Democratic hegemony swamps their fear of rule by a RINO. I remember an exit poll from 2012 showing that white evangelicals, the party’s base and the cohort that was supposed to be most leery of Rommey because of his centrism and Mormonism, turned out at the same rate for him as they did for Bush in 2004. Base voters will always show up to beat the other party. If the GOP nominates a Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, though, how many centrist Republicans will cross the aisle for Hillary? John McCain and his closest advisors are already openly flirting with the idea if Rand is the pick. And it makes a certain sort of sense: If you’re an establishmentarian, someone who prefers center-right policies to center-left ones on balance but prefers the stability of the status quo above all else, why wouldn’t you opt for a known quantity like the Clintons instead of a potential loose cannon like Paul or Cruz? What Boehner’s saying here, whether he means to or not, is that a right-wing nominee will split the party more deeply than a centrist one because centrists will balk at the former whereas conservatives really won’t balk at the latter. Remember that the next time someone starts whining at you about tea partiers’ loyalties.

Exit question: Is this the answer to righties’ prayers? (Exit answer: No.)

https://twitter.com/woodruffbets/status/517706189250256896