For a few months now, Jeb Bush's campaign has been insisting that the Jeb! Comeback is on, and that the media should get in on the ground floor of this amazing narrative. When will his antagonists learn? Perhaps today! Here's how the comeback is going.
As we've documented, much of Jeb Bush's time on the Comeback has been spent battling one of his lower-tier rivals, Florida Senator Marco Rubio. In fact, the Bush campaign has expended so much capital attacking Rubio that GOP elites have felt the need to ask, "Hey, you know that your presidential campaign needs to be more than just this, right?" Well, good news, folks: Jeb is finally taking aim at other targets.
As Bloomberg's Michael Bender reports, "Bush’s path back to the top of the polls depends almost exclusively on New Hampshire." There, Jeb is mired in a pack of candidates struggling to match Donald Trump's polling heights. And he's going in front of audiences who come armed with general skepticism and specific concern over four issues that Bender ably identifies: Bush's support for Common Core, his passion for immigration reform, the hangover from his brother's presidency and Trump's own crafty, crowd-pleasing zingers.
But as Bender goes on to relate, Bush came to an event in Hampstead, New Hampshire, armed with unsparing criticisms of his own:
By now, Bush knows the list by heart, and even saw fit at the Hampstead rally to volunteer a fifth obstacle to his comeback bid: that he's widely considered a key member of the Republican establishment at at time when the party's voters are seeking change.
What? No, no, no, dude, you're not supposed to remind voters of that! What are you --
Pause. Deep breath. You know, the Comeback wasn't built in a day, and look, Jeb realizes that it's time to start bringing the heat to Trump. And here's a happy accident: Sarah Palin's endorsement of the reality teevee mogul has come right when he needed a turn of the tide. As Bender's colleague Kendall Breitman reports, Jeb was game to lower the boom:
“If someone is looking for a committed conservative, consistently so, that's acted on their core beliefs across the spectrum of conservative policy, I'm their guy,” Bush told Bloomberg's With All Due Respect on Wednesday. “Donald Trump isn't. He's not a conservative. That's laughable. I mean, really?”
Good! Nice. I wouldn't have necessary ended it pleading for validation like that, but this is promising. Just stay planted, Jeb. Don't equivocate further. Don't row it back by saying something... Jeb? Jeb! Why are you reaching for that oar, dude?
“I admire her commitment to the disabled. I love her passion for -- love for her family and the fact that she's been actively involved in that. I love her pro-life stance,” Bush said.
Sigh. Well. That's that, then. You got anything else? Per Jesse Bynes of The Hill:
Jeb Bush slams Donald Trump as a "junkyard dog" in a new interview, casting his Republican presidential rival as not conservative.
Oy, let's just leave bad, bad Leroy Brown out of this.
This has been the Jeb! Comeback Watch for Jan. 20, 2016. Jeb Bush is currently in fifth place in Iowa (4.2 percent), sixth place in New Hampshire (7.9 percent) and fifth place nationally (5.3 percent).