Can Jeb Bush overcome his stances on immigration and Common Core?

Still, it is bracing that Bush might bring to nomination politics the spirit of another son of a president, John Quincy Adams, who said America’s leaders should not be “palsied by the will of our constituents.” Bush, 61, is the tax-cutting, fiscally austere, school-choice-promoting, gun-rights-protecting, socially conservative, Spanish-speaking former two-term governor of the most important swing state. But for some Republicans, his virtues and achievements are vitiated by his positions on immigration and the Common Core education standards.

Regarding the former, Bush’s critics should read “Immigration Wars,” the book he co-wrote with Clint Bolick of the intellectually impeccable Goldwater Institute, the gold standard of conservative think tanks. Bush and Bolick favor less immigration for family reunification (an idea opposed by many Hispanic activists), more for meeting workforce needs (high-skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants, as well as seasonal workers), and a path to legalization but not citizenship for those here illegally. If these ideas, put forward by persons with Bush’s and Bolick’s conservative pedigrees, are grounds for political excommunication, Republican presidential politics is going to be a sterile process of serial tantrums by veto groups.

Bush’s support of Common Core is much less nuanced and persuasive, and there seems to be condescension in his impatience with the burden he bears of taking seriously the most important reason for rejecting Common Core.