While he has now been elevated to our first tier, Rubio is still not on Bush or Walker’s level. With another Floridian in the field, many key Sunshine State supporters are going to back Bush over Rubio, and this is true more generally of the establishment nationally. And it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Bush crowd turn on Rubio with a vengeance, dealing out opposition research galore. Rubio’s connection to scandal-ridden ex-Rep. David Rivera might be a one-off case or it might be the tip of the iceberg. Still, more and more it looks like Rubio’s boldly going to eschew a Senate reelection run and go all in on the presidency, and his dynamism will make him a contender.
As for Bush, he remains at the top of our list, but questions abound. There is far more resistance to this Bush than his father or brother encountered in 1988 or 2000, respectively. Bush fatigue is very real, it’s intense in some quarters, and it goes way beyond immigration or Common Core. Bush has many things going for him: connections, money, talented staff, and substantive policy rhetoric, just to name a few. But he appears to be lacking something important, too: real popular appeal to grassroots voters, as opposed to the establishment. It’s obviously very early, but initial polling finds many Republicans lukewarm or openly hostile toward his candidacy.
Should Bush overcome intraparty opposition to win the nomination, the GOP may suffer from turnout problems with part of the base, even if the base likes the eventual vice presidential nominee. Moreover, Bush may be exactly the Republican the Clinton campaign desires. Her people are well rehearsed and they all say, “The candidate we’d least want to face is Jeb Bush.” In actuality, this suggests that the candidate the Clintonistas may really want to run against is Bush, knowing that most of the outsider candidates won’t be able to win the nomination and other serious contenders such as Walker or Rubio could make a strong future-versus-past argument. And with Bush, Hillary Clinton can run against two Bush recessions and two Bush Middle East wars, asking “do you want a third?”
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