Everyone already knows Jeb Bush’s financial backers have been nervous for some time about his campaign. I think it is effectively over after Wednesday night
It’s hard to see how Jeb Bush recovers from his self-inflected wound at Wednesday’s CNBC Republican debate in Boulder when he went after Marco Rubio just after the young senator had hit one out of the park. Rubio was defending himself from an editorial in the Sun Sentinel calling on Marco to stop “ripping off” the public and quit the Senate for non-attendance while campaigning. Rubio responded that John Kerry and Barack Obama had been even more truant while running for president and the paper had not only ignored that, but given these men their endorsement. It was an example of liberal media bias at its most obvious. The crowd erupted in its first ovation of the night. Advantage Rubio.
Clueless, Bush jumped in as if nothing had happened, taking the paper’s side and schoolmarmishly doubling down on Marco. He got his head handed to him by Rubio (politely) and the audience. It was so mishandled on Bush’s part, such an obvious case of self-sabotage, it left you wondering whether Jeb really wants to be president. You didn’t have to be a Freudian to think his unconscious had gotten the better of him — well, unconscious mixed with envy mixed with entitlement mixed with who knows. During the break you heard what Ross Perot famously called ”the giant sucking sound,” but this time it was of pledged Bush supporters calling their bundlers.
But that’s just, as we say in H-wood, the B-story. Everyone already knows Jeb Bush’s financial backers have been nervous for some time about his campaign. I think it is effectively over after Wednesday night, as are those of almost all the other candidates but four — Trump, Carson, Rubio and Cruz. Christie did a good job at the CNBC debate but I doubt it’s enough for a revival. And Fiorina, much as I admire her and have admired her, is fading. The rest are also-rans of also-rans. The human ego being what it is, it’s unlikely they will be absenting themselves any time soon. They will hang on at least until the Fox Business debate in Milwaukee on November 10. But the smart ones will do the graceful thing as Rick Perry did and bow out.
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