He was supposed to win the GOP nomination easily and just six months ago, it appeared he would do just that. He had tens of millions of donor dollars at the ready, the approval of the GOP Establishment, and a successful stint as governor of one of the most important swing states in the country. Nothing went as planned.
Many blame the improbable rise of Donald Trump as being primarily responsible for Bush’s demise. That gives too much emphasis on Trump, and too little on Jeb Bush himself. While Trump has repeatedly exposed the seeming soft-spined weakness of Bush, it must be noted then that that weakness was there all along and most certainly would have been exposed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Viewers saw both the rage and the regret swirling in Jeb’s eyes at the most recent GOP debate. He turned on Trump, hoping to score much needed points and re-assert himself as a viable Republican choice for President of the United States. Despite hundreds of thousands of dollars in Internet ads following that debate in conjunction with carefully placed supportive Mainstream Media personalities emphasizing that effort, voters remain unconvinced.
A D.C. Whispers source painted the Bush campaign with the following colors:
“He just doesn’t have it and he’s not a good enough politician to fake it. He’s also suffering from eight years of Barack Obama faking it and voters getting wise. Most everyone sees the weakness, the phoniness, the sense of entitlement and that just won’t stand up to voter sentiment this election cycle. People are pissed. Ironically, so is Jeb Bush. He’s angry at everything and everyone right now. Despondent, depressed, and angry at the world. He is having a very difficult time grasping the reality of someone like Donald Trump at the top of the polls and seeing himself in single-digits. Jeb isn’t his brother. Jeb is a cry-baby and that part of his character is really coming through the last few months as he’s struggled to get anyone to pay attention to his version of things. People want tough and that’s something Jeb Bush has never been.”
Not only is Jeb Bush not tough, he is to this point spending by far the most among all GOP candidates and seeing the least benefit from it. The only ones enjoying the 2016 Bush campaign are the high-paid media consultants he’s surrounded himself with. For them, 2015 has been a very-very lucrative affair. To date the Bush campaign has spent nearly $33 MILLION in political ads, all of which has resulted in him trailing Donald Trump who has spent just $216,000. In fact, of the Mainstream Republican candidates, only Marco Rubio has managed to make a respectable showing the polls in relation to the millions he’s spent on similar styled, high-production political advertising.
