Come on, it's Jeb's turn.

The Examiner's Philip Klein:

Nominating Bush would neutralize one of Hillary Clinton's biggest liabilities (the idea that she, too, is a figure from the past trying to ride her last name to power). Instead of having the clear contrast that would be possible if Republicans were to name a fresh candidate, the 2016 election would devolve into a proxy battle over whether Americans want to restore the Bush or Clinton presidencies. Whether the GOP likes it or not, that isn't a matchup that favors Republicans.

Right, but who else have they got? Walker is a first-batter-up time bomb and Christie has already gone off; Paul, Perry, Cruz, Huckabee and Carson are pure fringe; Jindal is being sized for a straitjacket; Santorum, somewhere, is saying God-knows-what; Kasich is a (gasp) Medicaid-lover; Graham can't even rise to favorite-son status; Rubio is launching a colossally premature bid; Ryan is out and the party's best hope, Romney, was outmaneuvered by … Bush, clearly the frontrunner, as he scoops up the money and mops up the field, just as Romney did four years ago.

Republicans simply have no bench, except for Bush and the second-stringers. And it very much seems to be Jeb's turn, whether, as Klein writes, the GOP likes it or not.

 

Comments

[brave captain of industry]

You really think Romney wont ease back in the race a little closer to the line? Why sweat it now? He saw the handwriting, he knows that a year from now it will be much easier to "sadly" have to rejoin the fray.

[Peter G]

Seems about right. Republican practice is to eventually select their least awful candidate on the theory that such a candidate is the most salable to all other voters. The process itself is Darwinian with the least offensive candidate identified by the success of their mating dance with donors. So doth Citizens United bite them in the ass. You'd think these people would begin to grasp the idea that all that money isn't actually helping them to do anything but fuck each other up but...sadly not. Once again they will select the ideal loser out of their stable of contenders.

[shsavage]

So much of what passes for normal activity in today's GOP is simply old-fashioned hucksterism, with the goal of fleecing the sheep, that I wonder how long it can continue. Have you ever read James Ellroy's "The Cold 6,000"? A revelation.

[Peter G]

Haven't but I will.