GOP Front Runners Put On Their Running Shoes for 2016

The GOP front runners are putting on their dancing shoes for 2016, but this is one year when the tortoise has it all over the hare. The idea of having a third Bush in the White House is gaining momentum for one simple reason: unlike most of his potential competitors for the Republican nomination, Jeb Bush is just downright electable. Unlike the polarizing extremists of the Republican Right, Jeb Bush is actually palatable for a wide-range of political tastes from the moderate Democrats to moderate Republicans. In other words, President Jeb Bush would be a middle of the road president, and that’s exactly what the United States needs at this juncture in its political history: a uniter rather than a divider. He makes the middle of the road look classy.

While Scott Walker alternatively embraces and violates Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment, “Thou shall not speak ill of thy fellow Republicans,” Jeb Bush persistently talks about issues rather than his potential adversaries in the Republican primaries and, when it comes to the final contest, Jeb Bush tests very well against the putative Democratic front runner, Hillary Clinton.

On the crucial question of how well the candidates reflect middle class values, Clinton rings in at 63 percent negative, while Bush checks in at 67 percent negative (meaning not very well or just somewhat well.)  Clinton beats out Bush on the positive ratings at 33 percent positive (reflecting middle class values very well or fairly well.) Bush only scores 14 percent positive.  Interestingly, in the “don’t know” vote (those who have not yet made up their minds), Clinton has only 4 percent, while Bush has 18 percent, which means that voters appear to think they know Hillary Clinton much better than they know Jeb Bush.

If you add the “don’t knows” to their positive rankings, Clinton tops off at 37 percent while Bush tops off at 33 percent, which leaves us with a four percent horse race. In fact, the best news for the Democrats about a Bush nomination is that Bush may not get the nomination in the first place.

The Overview

A fresh poll conducted by pollsters for Wall Street Journal and NBC News (and isn’t that a strange pair of bedfellows to begin with?) reports that 49 percent of likely Republican voters would vote for Bush, down 14 percent from the 63 percent who favored him in December. At 49 percent, Jeb Bush (one does have to use the candidate’s first name to differentiate him from the other Bushes) is tied with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), leaving Senator Ted Cruze (R-TX) far behind at 40 percent, not to mention the lackluster Republican Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, at barely 32 percent.

Those numbers, however, put Jeb Bush in the also-ran category behind front-runners Marco Rubio (56 percent), Scott Walker (53 percent) and, surprisingly, Mike Huckabee (52 percent). Being tied with an intellectual lightweight like Rand Paul will not do much to burnish Jeb’s electability prospects. Conspicuously missing from the candidate’s list (see insert) was Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WS) who, as Governor Mitt Romney’s running mate in 2012, should have been the putative standard-bearer for his party going into 2016, once Romney took himself out of the running for another run for the roses.

Marco Rubio

While a significant majority of likely Republican voters like Rubio, they probably will not get the chance to vote for him come November of 2016 because Rubio lacks the gravitas required for a presidential candidate. At 43, he looks and is too young to be taken seriously as a presidential candidate. As a first-term senator without a significant plurality behind him coming up for re-election in 2016, Rubio will have to choose between running as a first-term incumbent to keep his Senate seat, or running as a long-shot for president. Rubio only made it into the Senate by the skin of his teeth in 2010 with 48.9 percent of the vote, and won only because former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, running as a non-affiliated candidate, split the Democratic vote with Kendrick Meek, handing Rubio the senate seat on a platter

Presidential candidates need significant seasoning in international affairs to be taken seriously. Rubio lacks that, but his bigger problem is that he looks just right for a vice presidential candidate, especially behind someone with the kind of gravitas that Jeb Bush brings to the table. Of course, if Bush is the Republican presidential nominee, then Rubio’s chances at becoming the Republican’s VP choice dwindle into insignificance. The traditional wisdom in American politics is that the two candidates at the top of a presidential ticket cannot be from the same region, let alone the same state. Bottom line: Rubio won’t run and, if he does, he won’t get the nomination because he is not palatable enough for mainstream Republicans (a.k.a. not Tea Party) to tolerate, is too young, too inexperienced, too good-looking, and lives in Florida.

There’s always an exception that proves the rule and the exception to the rule about the presidents and vice-presidents not being from the same region was provided in 1992, when Bill Clinton (from Arkansas) chose Al Gore (from Tennessee) as his running mate and went on to beat the First Bush.  It would be amusing, therefore, for a Bush-Rubio ticket to beat Hillary Clinton and whomever the Democrats get to run with her, but that is not likely to happen.

Scott Walker

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been running for president since the day after his election in 2010. Tearing pages from the Koch Brothers play book, Walker’s campaign to hobble the collective bargaining powers of public employee unions led to a recall campaign in 2012. He survived the recall, was re-elected in 2014, and is the principal “I’m not running” candidate in this go-round. He won significant points among libertarian-minded Tea Party members by “standing up” to the labor unions. Thus, Walker has made himself into a “clear choice” polarizing alternative to the more moderate, consensus-seeking Jeb Bush, who harbors several positions that drive Koch Brother-Tea Party voters to anguish.

Unfortunately, by making himself the “polarizing” candidate, he may have gained a possible lock on the Republican nomination, but he has also made himself unelectable in the general election for the same reason. Labor unions and their affiliates will come out in force against Walker because, having seen what he has done in Wisconsin, the last thing they want is a Walker in the Oval Office and, while they may not have been successful in throwing him out of office in Wisconsin, they might very well have the numbers nationally to keep him out of the White House.

Walker has other negatives to contend with. He is another “domestic” president, a candidate focused on domestic, financial and lifestyle issues who remains largely ignorant of the larger landscape of the international arena. That’s not because he’s stupid or simply disinterested, but rather because that’s not his job….yet. Electing him would mean another four years of on-the-job training for a new president poorly versed in international affairs. He has the Koch money in his pocket, though, and he’s ready to rock and roll and, since there is little likelihood that he will win another term as governor, he has to take his shot in this go-round or remain an also ran. At 47, he is just barely old enough to be taken seriously by other world leaders but, unlike Rubio, he has the gravitas required for the presidency.

 Mike Huckabee

What is there left to say about Mike? Every four years he puts on his track shoes and runs the course, knowing he will not end up in the money, but he continues to run anyway. The most religiously forthcoming of the four front-runners, that is his primary calling card, a rally point for fundamentalist voters, a politician they can be proud to vote for, even though he always loses, and 2016 is not likely to be the exception that proves the rule. True to his unfortunate name, Huckabee is a huckster, pure and simple, according to a New York Times article published Sunday that details Huckaee’s post-political career as a broadcast pundit on Fox News and ABC Radio, and as a pitchman who promotes dubious treatments for diabetes and Alzheimer’s Disease, along with a secret cure for cancer gleaned from the Bible and Food4Patriots, a food hoarding program for “end of the worlders.”

Even dyed in the wool Republicans find Huckabee’s pitches hard to take. Erick Erickson, the influential founder of the Red State Blog, argues that conservative politicians are using their popularity among conservative voters to sell them quack nostrums that do more harm than good. In a word, Huckabee is damaged goods. He has no credibility left among reasonable Republicans, and it may be that the only reason he is throwing his hat into the ring again is to keep up his public images as a conservative spokesperson so that he can go back to selling quack nostrums after the election is over and he returns to the ranks of the also-ran. In a head to head match up with Jeb Bush, or any other Bush for that matter, Huckabee comes off as the class clown who has not even noticed that the party is over. The fact that he is the third-seed in this race raises questions about how much Republicans actually like their own candidates.

Jeb Bush

The first thing voters need to know about Jeb Bush is that he is not a Christian. No, really. He is a Catholic convert and, for those of you who are not aware of this, Catholics by and large tend to be more liberal than Christians. Being a Catholic, he has an automatic affinity base that cuts across the party lines where you find very few Democratic Large C Christians, but a great many Catholics.

At 62, he is the right age to face an aging American electorate who don’t really want a president young enough to be their grandchild. He has that ineffable but absolutely essential gravitas that makes a president presidential. Married to a Mexican woman he met while teaching English in Mexico, Bush has enhanced his appeal to the Hispanic community by championing immigration reform. His strong support for Israel gives him clout in the Jewish community that could pull Jewish voters away from a weak Democratic candidate. His unswerving support for the Common Core curriculum in the face of Right Wing Republican conspiracy fantasies illustrates his no-nonsense approach to decision-making: do what is right, not what is expedient.

Preliminary Conclusions (Subject to a Recount)

Once you discount Rubio as too young and too inexperienced, Walker as too tainted with anti-labor politics, and Huckabee as a huckster, Jeb Bush emerges as the real front-runner, the man to beat for the Republican nomination. In 2012, he was very definitive about not wanting to run against Barack Obama, probably because he knew that he couldn’t win. It was going to be a Democratic year, for sure. With no incumbent to run against in 2016, Bush III has been as definitive about running this time around as he was definitive about not running in 2012. Once the smoke has been dispelled and the mirrors have all been shattered, Jeb Bush stands the best chance of winning the general election against any Democratic opponent, if only he can win the nomination, where his belief that politicians should express their real beliefs rather than reflecting what they see in the polls may hurt him.

Poster Boy for the Also Ran: Chris Christie

Two-term New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is an abject lesson of what happens when charisma becomes hubris, as his brash, abrasive New Jersey personality has made him something of a laughing stock in private Republican meetings. Christie is at the dead-end of his career, largely because of a series of missteps surrounding the Bridgegate Scandal, in which the Christie administration was caught red-handed trying to shaft political opponents by jamming up the all-important traffic lanes on the Fort Lee side of the George Washington Bridge that links New York and New Jersey across the Hudson River.

Bridgegate broke in February of 2014, when Christie “unequivocally” stated that he did not know about the lane closings, did not order them, and did not approve them, but he has never been able to escape from the shadows of the Bridgegate uproar. On March 15, an MSNBC report by Steve Kornacki, catches Christie out in yet another lie, in which Christie denied having any contact with David Wildstein since “before the election” while records show numerous events that Christie and Wildstein attended together. (Wildstein was one of the key figures in the Bridgegate chronology.) Further developments are expected momentarily but it certainly appears that Christie’s goose has been well-cooked.

Christie already knows he will not be re-elected to anything in his home state, where his most recent popularity numbers have hit an all-time low. He also knows that his national ambitions were sunk by the acerbic manner in which he confronted reporters and citizens in public meetings, disclosing personality traits that no one wants anywhere near the Oval Office.

Being the 900 pound gorilla may work in New Jersey, but it doesn’t play well on the world stage where, as Republican President Theodore Roosevelt once said, one should “walk softly but carry a big stick.” His insistence about putting his name in the hat, and his hat in the ring, has more to do with his post-political career than it does about his contributions to the American conversation about governance. In the final analysis, a Christie run for the White House may be followed up by Christie as a spokesperson for weight loss products.

Meanwhile, Florida Democrats are starting a fundraising campaign to pay former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, whom they blame for putting Rubio in the Senate and renewing incumbent Florida Governor Rick Scott’s lease in Tallahassee, to move to another state. Any other state, but preferably New Jersey, which deserves an alternative to Chris Christie. Come on, who wouldn’t like to see a battle royal between these two has-beens:  Chris Christie vs. Charlie Crist. What could be better than that?

Photo credits: all photographs courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
Charts from The Wall Street Journal