It’s been reported today that Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign is implementing budgetary and staffing cutbacks, mostly in response to his donors’ increasingly urgent concerns about Jeb’s poor showing at the polls. Jeb’s donors are rightly concerned; no amount of advertising seems to yield any lift in his standings amongst the Republican candidates.
But that doesn’t stop the spin doctors from launching into high gear. One unnamed Bush advisor spoke to Bloomberg News, making the ridiculous “position of strength” comment, only to continue the inanity with the following: “This is about winning the race…we’re doing it now and making the shifts with confidence. We expect to win.”
Well, every campaign HOPES to win, but EXPECTING to win may be a problem for Jeb,
especially when he and his campaign advisors misdiagnose Jeb’s campaign ills. They believe it is because voters simply don’t want another Bush in the White House. Okay. I can see that being a hurdle in the first few weeks of a campaign, but I don’t believe that Jeb’s position in the polls right now has anything to do with his last name being Bush and everything to do with his being a sub-par, unexciting, GOPe candidate in an exceptionally large field. Some of those other candidates far surpass Jeb in electability and are decidedly not part of the Establishment. By any poll you check, voters believe at least four of them are preferred over Jeb, and they overwhelmingly want someone not part of the Establishment.
That is the problem—not the name, but the candidate.
Going forward, the stated plan is to just double down and do a lot more advertising in critical states like New Hampshire. (Yay for us Granite Staters!) I’m hoping they add a Madonna-like twist to correct that pesky last name issue—just use Jeb’s first name and never say the last. In every single ad. In every single commercial break. At some point, the voters are bound to forget that he is a Bush, right? (’cause we’re that stoopid.)
Unfortunately for Jeb, the GOPe-ness of both himself and his campaign advisors won’t allow them to acknowledge that their grand plan just isn’t working. It must be frustrating for them to realize that they are unable to foist their hand-picked golden sop on the electorate this time around.
When their “position of strength” gets so weak that they cannot deny it any longer, do the GOPes have another golden sop to foist?
photo credit: inquisitr.com