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Jeb Bush Is Not the Answer For What Ails the GOP

George Will writes a strange column about Jeb Bush: Republicans cannot be too frequently reminded that their problem in presidential politics is the “blue wall” — the 18 states and the District of Columbia that have voted Democratic in at least six consecutive elections and have 242 electoral votes. So Republicans should welcome to their […]
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George Will writes a strange column about Jeb Bush:

Republicans cannot be too frequently reminded that their problem in presidential politics is the “blue wall” — the 18 states and the District of Columbia that have voted Democratic in at least six consecutive elections and have 242 electoral votes. So Republicans should welcome to their nomination competition any candidate who might remove from the blue wall such bricks as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Jeb Bush, burdened by a damaged family brand, might not be the best potential nominee on the deep Republican bench. He does, however, deserve a respectful hearing from the Republican nominating electorate.

Republicans should welcome candidates that have a reasonable chance of winning states that have voted for Democratic nominees for decades, but it’s not at all clear that they have any available. Do any of the likely 2016 candidates stand much of a chance of carrying Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin? No, they don’t. No Republican has carried any of these states since 1988, and the modern GOP is even less likely now to field a candidate that appeals to a majority in these states. Many of their would-be national leaders don’t even speak the same language as most voters in these states.

Jeb Bush will probably receive more than a respectful hearing inside the GOP over the next two years, and much of it will be based on the faulty assumption that he can win in traditionally Democratic states. This wasn’t true of his brother, and it wasn’t true of McCain or Romney, and it almost certainly won’t be true of him. Jeb Bush represents exactly the kind of Republicanism that makes the GOP uncompetitive in all of the states across the Northeast and Midwest that they need to be able to carry in order to win presidential elections. He is pro-corporate, pro-immigration, and pro-war, and all of these are political losers. A Republican Party that thinks Jeb Bush is the answer to its electoral woes is a party that is sure to keep losing one presidential election after another.

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