“Some have asked whether the Bush name is tarnished because of his brother but I don’t believe it is,” said Susan McManus, a University of South Florida professor who is an expert on Florida politics. “Jeb left office with one of the highest approval ratings and two years later, he’s still popular even though he’s taken a low profile since leaving office.”

If there is a degree of Bush blowback, Republicans interviewed for this story agreed, it’s likely to be fleeting…

The Republican optimism is in part driven by the notion, prevalent among Republicans but also acknowledged by some outside the party, that voters will make sharp distinctions between the two Bushes.

Their widely divergent responses to natural disasters that confronted their administrations are at the heart of this thinking. While the president is forever saddled with the ineptitude of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina, Jeb Bush is lauded for his hands-on role in confronting several highly destructive hurricanes.