Jeb Bush and the base: It's more about persona than immigration and Common Core

John McCain won the Republican nomination in 2008 by running as a “maverick.” In the years before his campaign, he co-sponsored an immigration reform bill and a plan to regulate carbon emissions. He bashed “extremists on the right” in a prior presidential race.

Four years later, Mitt Romney won the nomination even though he had enacted a health care plan that served as the model for Obamacare. He had supported a long list of liberal positions in his various runs for statewide office in Massachusetts. Heading into this year’s contest, Chris Christie, another rival for the support of mainline, establishment-friendly Republicans, has committed equal or perhaps graver blasphemies on gun control and immigration.

Mr. Bush may indeed struggle to win Iowa, which leads the Republican nomination process. But he could seriously compete there, unlike Mr. McCain in 2008. The Iowa caucuses are dominated by evangelical voters more than Tea Party voters. They select cultural conservatives, like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. Mr. Bush has solid credentials on cultural issues, so there’s no reason to dismiss his chances there at the outset, even if he’s unlikely to be the candidate of religious activists. Even Mr. Romney, a Mormon who once supported abortion rights, came within 35 votes of winning the Iowa caucuses in 2012.