Matt Bai: Jeb, get ahold of yourself
Politics
Matt Bai: Jeb, get ahold of yourself
Billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump isn’t really winning the GOP presidential contest so much as all the other candidates are losing it. And no one is losing it faster or with more determination than Jeb Bush, writes Yahoo News political columnist Matt Bai. First, Bush tried to out-Trump Trump on illegal immigration by decrying so-called anchor babies, but then tried to clean that up by saying that the whole problem really started with Asians. And all of this was playing out while Bush’s campaign admitted that some of its top staff members were already taking pay cuts in anticipation of a long slog through the winter, which is generally not a sign that things are going according to plan.
What surprises me about Bush isn’t that he’s a little out of practice. It’s more that he seems not to fully grasp what makes his campaign viable in the first place.
Matt Bai, Yahoo Politics columnist
If I were counseling Bush, Bai writes, I’d tell him to forget about Trump. His base, an unstable amalgam of celebrity worship and general contempt, represents a modest plurality of voters who were always going to go somewhere else. He should worry more about a guy like John Kasich, who didn’t waste time grandstanding at the Mexican border, and who isn’t afraid to disagree with some of the party’s reactionary elements if he comes away sounding more presidential as a result.
You’re a Bush. You’re supposed to be the candidate of the much-maligned, level-headed establishment. It’s time to start acting like it.
Matt Bai
