Tuesday Reads: Jeb! Is Running for President, and Other News

Good Morning!!

Jeb Bush is Running for President

Yesterday Jeb Bush announced that he’s really going to run for president, as if we didn’t know already. From Channel 6 South Florida: Jeb Bush Announces Republican Presidential Bid for 2016.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush entered the 2016 presidential campaign on Monday with a rally and speech at Miami Dade College, joining 10 other Republicans already in the race for the party’s nomination.

“I’m a candidate for President of the United States of America,” Bush told a spirited crowd at the college’s Kendall campus. “I am ready to lead.”

Six months after he got the 2016 campaign started by saying he was considering a bid, the 62-year-old former Florida governor formally entered the race at the college, an institution selected because it serves a large and diverse student body symbolic of the nation he seeks to lead.

Bush, whose wife is Mexican-born, addressed the packed college arena in English and Spanish, an unusual twist for a political speech aimed at a national audience.

Columba and Jeb Bush

I guess he’s going to exploit his wife’s ethnicity for all it’s worth.

“In any language,” Bush said, “my message will be an optimistic one because I am certain that we can make the decades just ahead in America the greatest time ever to be alive in this world.”

In his kickoff speech, he said Democrats are responsible for “the slowest economic recovery ever, the biggest debt increases ever, a massive tax increase on the middle class, the relentless buildup of the regulatory state, and the swift, mindless drawdown of a military that was generations in the making.”

Bush didn’t mention why the economy crashed in the first place–his brother George’s trickle down economic policies and his pointless wars.

Some reactions:

The Guardian is getting a bit ahead of itself, assuming that Bush and Clinton will each win the nomination of their respective parties.

Clinton v Bush: America is getting the dynastic matchup it said it didn’t want, by Dan Roberts.

The first salvos in the war for the White House were fired in Miami on Monday with the two families most heavily backed by pollsters, bookies and donors officially beginning a dynastic battle unprecedented in American history.

The Clinton “dynasty”: two people unrelated by blood.

OK, Hillary’s husband was president, but that’s not a dynasty. A dynasty is by definition a group of leaders from a family bloodline. The Bush family is a true dynasty–going back generations in politics, with a father and son who have each held the White House. Not the same thing. But nitpicking aside, they are not facing each other yet, and I seriously doubt that Jeb will get the GOP nod.

Dana Millbank at The Washington Post: Jeb Bush runs away from his family name.

If Jeb Bush is going to run for president as something other than a Bush, it will take a transformation worthy of Rachel Dolezal.

And yet the former Florida governor, who once accidentally checked “Hispanic” on a voter registration form, is doing everything but change his appearance to de-emphasize his inheritance. His presidential campaign logo, introduced over the weekend, is a simple exclamation: “Jeb!” His brother, the 43rd president, and his father, the 41st president, were not in attendance forhis presidential announcement speech in Miami on Monday. He didn’t even mention them until nearly the end.

“In this country of ours, the most improbable things can happen,” he said. “Take that from a guy who met his first president on the day he was born and his second on the day he was brought home from the hospital.”

And then the punch line: “The person who handled both introductions is here today. . . . Please say hello to my mom, Barbara Bush.”

Har har har . . . . get it? But he’s just a regular guy anyway just plain old “Jeb.”

The adoration of the 90-year-old family matriarch was disrupted by demonstrators who wore T-shirts spelling out “Legal status is not enough.” The candidate, taken off script, made a remark about immigration reform, then tried to pick up where he left off.

“So back to my family, just for a second.”

Ugh.

The Bush Dyasty:
Father, son, and two grandsons, related by blood.

About those demonstrators, Betsy Woodruff writes at The Daily Beast: ‘Amnesty Hecklers’ Moment Will Haunt Jeb Bush on the Trail.

Jeb Bush is getting used to hecklers real quick. He was officially a presidential candidate for about 20 minutes before a coordinated heckling campaign hijacked his announcement and pushed him into unplanned territory.

It felt like inverted déjà vu; just a few months ago, Bush joined Sean Hannity for a Q&A session on the main stage of CPAC, and a cadre of Tea Party activists and Rand Paul supporters made a dramatic exit in the middle of the former Florida governor’s speech. Led by a hirsute gentleman sporting a tricorn hat and a Gadsden flag, they marched out and then congregated in the hallway to tell reporters how unacceptable it was that Bush supports comprehensive immigration reform and isn’t Rand Paul.

Monday afternoon’s party-crashers made a ruckus on a similar scale, but for ideologically opposite reasons. They sported day-glo green T-shirts and stood up in a row in the middle of the candidate’s speech. Letters on their shirts together spelled “LEGAL STATUS IS NOT ENOUGH!”

Bush didn’t want to have to talk about immigration. A transcript of his remarks released to media as he began to deliver his speech didn’t include any references to the contentious issue. Bush’s stance on immigration reform is probably more detailed than any other contender’s, Republican or Democrat. Still, his hesitance to talk about it on the announcement stage makes sense, given that it’s a highly polarizing issue for much of the Republican base.

But if the former governor thought he’d get through his announcement without addressing the issue, he was dead wrong.

Read more details at the link.

From Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight: Pols And Polls Say The Same Thing: Jeb Bush Is A Weak Front-Runner.

Money isn’t everything, and it certainly isn’t the only thing in presidential campaigns. Still, as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush officially enters the 2016 presidential campaign today, there’s going to be a lot of talk about whether his super PAC can hit its $100 million fundraising “goal” by the end of the month. You should mostly ignore those stories; money matters, but Bush will clearly have plenty of cash. Pay more attention to whether GOP officials — governors, senators and House members, in particular — are backing Bush.

Late last week, Bush unveiled a raft of endorsements from Florida pols, including 11 of the 17 Republicans in the state’s U.S. House delegation. Normally, home-state endorsements are pro forma, but with a fellow Floridian, Sen. Marco Rubio, in the race, these endorsements are a bit more meaningful.

Bush now has more endorsements, 13, from current House members, governors and senators than anyone else in the 2016Republican field. He’s also the only candidate besides Sen. Rand Paul to pick up at least two endorsements from members of Congress who are not from his home state.

The endorsement race echoes the polling (Bush leads national polls by a speck and New Hampshire polls by a bit, and is running in the second tier in Iowa): Bush is a weak front-runner.

When we weight these endorsements by position (10 points for each governor, 5 points for each senator and 1 point for each representative), Bush’s 13 points account for 28 percent of all endorsement points so far. That’s OK, but not great. And most Republican bigwigs haven’t made a choice at all.

Lots more interesting data at the link.

Jeb in Germany

And finally, McCay Coppins at Buzzfeed News: Jeb Bush Embarks On Least Joyful Campaign Ever.

From the beginning, Bush has insisted his decision about whether to undertake a presidential run in 2016 would depend on his answer to one question: “Can I do it joyfully?” But now, as he officially launches his campaign at a Monday afternoon rally in Miami, Bush’s pursuit of the presidency seems destined to be a grinding, grumpy ordeal — permeated with disdain for the trivial demands of campaign pageantry, and rooted in a sense of duty to save the GOP from a field of candidates he seems to regard as unprepared or unserious.

Joylessness wafts off Bush wherever he goes, from the photo ops on his just-completed tour of Europe to the grip-and-grins on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

He responds with impatient sarcasm when he is forced to field questions about political strategy — or his brother’s polarizing record — instead of public policy. “Anybody have some questions about Germany?” he deadpanned in Berlin, by way of announcing he was through talking about campaign personnel.

His strict adherence to the trendy, low-carb Paleo diet — with its onslaught of grilled chicken and raw almonds — has left him trimmer, crankier, and frequently complaining that he is hungry.

He has been told he needs to make an effort to smile more.

LOL! Read much more funny stuff at Buzzfeed.

The Rest of the News, Links Only

NAACP: NAACP STATEMENT ON THE RESIGNATION OF RACHEL DOLEZAL.

NBC News: Rachel Dolezal breaks her silence on TODAY: ‘I identify as black.’

The New Yorker: Black Like Her.

The Smoking Gun: NAACP Imposter Sued School Over Race Claims.

The New York Gossip Sheet Times: Why It Matters That Hillary Clinton Wore Ralph Lauren.

Business Insider: Chris Christie’s local newspaper says he’ll start World War III if he’s president.

I wonder what Rick Santorum et al. will have to say about this:

The Guardian: Pope Francis warns of destruction of Earth’s ecosystem in leaked encyclical.

The Washington Post: Pope Francis blasts global warming deniers in leaked draft of encyclical.

New York Daily News: Joyce Mitchell had sexual relationships with both escaped N.Y. inmates, sources say.