Totally unfair to Rubio. He’s actually a magical combination of Obama and John McCain.

I keep waiting for his campaign to put that on a bumper sticker, but oddly, they’ve held off.

In a PowerPoint presentation, delivered at a donor retreat in Houston, Bush advisers sought to calm concerns about his campaign by highlighting his advantages in money, endorsements and data over his GOP rivals…

In a slide titled “Experience Matters,” one bullet point reads:”Marco is a GOP Obama.”

Both ran for president as first-term senators, were lawyers and university lecturers, had served part time in state legislatures for eight years, and had “few legislative accomplishments,” the slide said…

Later Monday, Bush himself took a swipe at Rubio. In an on-stage conversation with his brother, former President George W. Bush, Jeb Bush boasted about how he “vetoed a couple of projects for one of the presidential candidates,” referring to when Rubio was in the Florida House of Representatives when Bush was the governor.

Finish this sentence: “If Rubio is the GOP Obama, Jeb Bush is the GOP ____________.” It’s got to be Hillary Clinton, right? They’re both dynasts and enjoy all the fundraising benefits thereof, both more ideological than they’re typically given credit for, both somehow managed to avoid most of the major political battles of the Obama years, and they’re both being foisted on party bases that are deeply suspicious of them. If that analogy is true, that Rubio is Obama and Bush is Hillary, it … doesn’t bode well for Jeb given how 2008 turned out for Clinton. The last time a national electorate was given a choice between a charismatic untested young pol who’s great in front of an audience and a more experienced pol whose main credential was her last name, with both in agreement on 99 percent of policy, they opted for the more dynamic candidate. Jeb’s theory is that Republicans, having learned a lesson from the Hopenchange disaster, will choose more wisely than Democrats did. But I don’t know. There are worse insults in politics than being compared to a guy who crushed the other party twice in winning the presidency. Frankly, I bet most Rubio fans are happy to embrace him as the “GOP Obama” on some level. He’s the guy who can win, and who’ll fundamentally un-transform the country in office. What’s so bad about that?

And why is Jeb Bush, who trails Rubio by two points in the RCP poll average and trails Trump by 20, worried about Marco Rubio right now anyway? Even other campaign pros can’t figure that out:

Some political insiders are baffled by the decisions made by the managers of Bush’s much-ballyhooed $100 million super PAC. Yes, the cash could come in handy in the distant future. But the situation is desperate now. Donald Trump is killing Bush. Why not use the money to kill Trump first, or at least try? Isn’t that what negative ads are for?

“He has a super PAC with $100 million in it that has just sat there while they watched their candidate get destroyed,” a veteran strategist not affiliated with any campaign said. “This is like if Travis at the Alamo had 10,000 soldiers he could call up and said no, we don’t need them. What are they going to do with the money — declare a dividend?”…

Trump is killing Bush. And Bush is fixating on Rubio. The Bush campaign has made an apparently irrevocable decision to focus on potential future threats instead of immediate, mortal danger. “They’re talking about winning Florida,” the unaffiliated strategist said. “They’re not going to be in the race.”

They’re not spending big money to attack Trump, I think, because they don’t trust their own candidate anymore. If Team Jeb thought he’d become the frontrunner if they nuked Trump, they’d nuke him tomorrow. They don’t think that. A more formidable challenger, either Rubio or Cruz, would take Trump’s place and then Team Bush, its war chest depleted, would need to figure out a way to nuke those two more talented candidates even though both are competitive with Jeb in fundraising. So they’re making a high-risk but sort of logical play: They’re betting that Jeb can hold on for a few more months and that Trump’s strength will persist into the winter, suffocating Cruz as anti-establishment undecideds start making up their minds. Meanwhile, the longer Trump goes with a lead, the more — in theory — all the anti-Trump voters in the party will start to swing behind Bush, however reluctantly, as the well-funded “electable” known commodity, unlike the neophyte Rubio. Once the race becomes a “Trump versus Anyone But Trump” contest, Jeb may have a shot, especially since his PAC will still have lots of dough earmarked for ads in the early states as voting begins. But as I say, this is all high-risk. If Trump’s strength persists too much, he might actually win the nomination. Cruz may be strong enough that he’s destined to rise no matter how Trump does, especially if it’s true that Trump fans and Cruz fans overlap less than anyone thinks. And Rubio may in fact end up as the “Anybody But Trump” candidate despite his status as a neophyte for the simple reason that he’s someone whom undecideds could potentially get excited about whereas Jeb really isn’t. All of which is to say, Team Jeb is holding back on Trump right now knowing that Jeb’s donors might desert him and force him out of the race at any moment because that’s actually the stronger of their two options. The other, cutting down Trump only to see Cruz and Rubio lead the “Anybody But Bush” charge, feels like certain doom.

In case you missed it a few weeks ago, here’s Jeb Bush sounding very enthusiastic indeed in 2012 about the prospect of the “GOP Obama” being a heartbeat away from the presidency. “Dynamic, joyful, disciplined and principled”: Sounds like a man we should nominate for president.