Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) may have unintentionally aided his archnemesis former President Donald Trump, who is trying to hold off Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in the fight for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Bush appeared to endorse DeSantis and, realizing the error, walked it back.
Trump has been trying to turn DeSantis, who has yet to announce a presidential campaign, into the second coming of Jeb Bush.
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Bush was a respected conservative governor of Florida 16 years ago, as DeSantis is today. But in the last decade, perceptions of Bush have shifted. He is now seen as a prototypical establishment Republican.
Trump used Bush as his foil in 2015-16, a symbol of the weakness and political ineptitude of the GOP establishment. He would like to cast DeSantis as an establishment Trojan horse trying to hijack the MAGA movement for the donors’ and consultant class’s interests.
He has also attempted to link DeSantis to Bush family political adviser Karl Rove, former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), and other leaders in the pre-Trump GOP.
The attacks on DeSantis have had difficulty landing. The pugilistic Florida governor is not viewed by the base as at all similar to his Bush family predecessor. DeSantis has also not allowed Trump to outflank him on populism and nationalism, sounding a skeptical note about President Joe Biden’s approach to the war in Ukraine and sounding the alarm on China.
Then Jeb! weighed in on Ron!
“He’s been a really effective governor. He’s young. I think we’re on the verge of a generational change in our politics — kind of hope so. I think it’s time for a more forward-leaning, future-oriented conversation, our politics, as well,” Bush said in an interview, referring to DeSantis.
Bush hailed DeSantis as a national model for the GOP when asked if his successor should run for president. “Who better to do it than someone who’s been outside of Washington, who’s governed effectively, who I think has shown that Florida can be a model for the future of our country?” the son and brother of presidents said.
For Trump, who is trying to recapture the magic of a populist platform skewering the Bush-era GOP’s positions on trade, immigration, and foreign policy, this praise amplifies the argument he is trying to make.
In this telling, DeSantis is a Trump imitator boosted by all the people in the Republican Party who hate Trump. That should give rank-and-file MAGA Republicans pause, the former president contends.
A once highly coveted Bush endorsement is now a seal of disapproval. Jeb recognized his new Typhoid Mary status with portions of the base and pivoted quickly.
“I was praising, not endorsing,” Bush clarified.
Trump, by contrast, wants to make Bush DeSantis’s running mate.
With the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War, waged under former President George W. Bush, fast approaching, there will be new opportunities to present that era as one of Republican failure and loserdom.
It comes as Trump’s GOP critics point to the 45th president’s role in a disappointing midterm election, endorsing candidates who went on to lose key Senate races and allow Democrats to expand their razor-thin majority.
Biden and other Democrats campaigned as if Trump was on the ballot, using “MAGA Republican” as an epithet that could apply to DeSantis as well.
But DeSantis defied the midterm trend and won reelection in Florida by a Ronald Reagan-sized landslide, taking just under 60% of the vote in an erstwhile battleground state while running on a conservative platform against a former governor.
In interviews promoting his new book, DeSantis has spoken of his vigor and the prospects of a generational change in leadership. At 44, he is decades younger than Trump and Biden.
Trump would like to puncture the perception that DeSantis is a winner by tying him to vintage Republican losers.
Jeb may have given Trump ammunition that DeSantis himself never supplied.
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