Josh Green is high on Jeb Bush's chances to be the GOP nominee in 2012. I like this idea. I like it a lot.
Jeb has stuff going for him that the usual suspects don't. He was a rather successful, two-term governor of Florida. Yes, there was the Terry Schiavo madness. True, he relied on testing more than adequate funding to improve Florida's schools, but at a distance, he seems to have run a populous state effectively, and he earned the right to do so with no small amount of Democratic votes. Plus, he's not a race-baiter. What prominent Republican can you say that about these days!
In terms of a resume, only Mitt Romney can compare to Jeb, but a shameless chameleon like Romney doesn't deserve the nation's highest office. Jeb is smarter than his brother, and while that's not setting the bar too high, it's a bar too high for Sarah Palin to get over. And Palin governed a state whose entire population doesn't equal one of Florida's biggest cities. And for just two years.
The others? Haley Barbour? I loved O Brother Where Art Thou, but I wouldn't want to live in a republic governed by Pappy O'Daniel. Although I'm sure Barbour's would be "a well-run campaign." Newt Gingrich is a bomb-thrower, a revolutionary, not a statesman. Bobby Jindal? Which Bobby Jindal, the Kenneth from 30 Rock Jindal, or the Jindal who thinks government's too big, or the Jindal who thinks the government's response to the Deepwater Horizon blowout isn't big enough? Mike Huckabee would make a great Chairman of Bass Pro Shops, but not a great President.
Jeb would be hard to beat. So as a Democrat I shouldn't want him to win the nomination, right? Wrong. Democrats are crazy to want the most beatable (i.e. extreme) Republican to win the nomination, because what if he/she manages to win? I don't want to see Sarah Palin's fingernails anywhere near the nuclear button. If Palin runs, I hope the rest of the field beats her like a drum in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
I can't foresee any circumstances that would lead me to vote Republican in 2012, but if it must be a Republican, I would hope that it would be the most intelligent and least temperamental of their candidates. This far out, that looks like Jeb Bush to me.
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