Should Jeb Bush Go After Trump?
Right now, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush seems to be getting advised that he should take the gloves off with Donald Trump. (If “be yourself” is the advice a candidate hears most often when the news is good, “take the gloves off” is the most frequent counterpoint when news turns bad.)
.. Every campaign runs on money, but Jeb Bush’s more than most. He’s hoping through sheer staying power to impose his nomination on a recalcitrant party. The money buys the staying power. If the money dwindles, his fortunes fall hostage to the Republicans of the early states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, none of them a promising Jeb Bush firewall.
.. Bush’s most immediate problem is not that the base doesn’t trust him—it didn’t trust John McCain either, yet he nevertheless won the nomination—but that his donors enjoy too many plausible alternative choices. Bush needs to hustle the donor-acceptable alternatives out of the race as fast as possible, as Mitt Romney was able to do in 2012, leaving donors with a stark alternative: me or some sure-loser madman.
.. But if Bush can’t drive out the donor-acceptable alternatives, Trump can. Trump is doing just that to Scott Walker right now.
.. Jeb Bush is a candidate with many points of vulnerability: personal, familial, financial. Most of Jeb Bush’s Republican rivals will be reluctant to broach these issues in any but the most elliptical way.