Jeb Bush is much more conservative than the 1990s vision of a Republican moderate. And the 2016 field of reputed conservative alternatives to Bush is much more experienced and politically accomplished than the Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes, and Pat Buchanans ever were.

By all accounts, Jeb Bush ran Florida as a conservative governor. He liberalized gun laws, restricted abortion, lowered taxes, and cut the government workforce by about 13,000 even as the population of the state increased. He left his state government with a surplus and a top credit rating. Some of the fiscal and economic achievements do have an asterisk next to them, in the sense that Bush left office before the national housing bubble burst, with a particularly ugly gush in Florida. But this is far from the traditional governing record of Republican moderates in the 1990s, who tended to be pro-choice, fine with gun control, and suspicious of “trickle-down” economics and tax cuts.

Bush used to be denounced by moderate GOP legislators in Florida as a “Shiite Republican,” but he has since attracted the moderate label for two reasons. One, his rhetorical style is non-belligerent, and even conciliatory. Two, he supports Common Core educational standards and immigration reform that tilts more toward enduring large-scale immigration.

On the other side, the alternatives to Bush aren’t necessarily that much more conservative on the substance of governing.