Jeb will never be Preznit. His chance is now, and he has no chance now, the name Bush is synonymous with incompetent fuckup for most people.
He might be able to wait 20 years until people forget about his brother, and the not just incompetent but criminal agenda he had. But by then, there won’t be a Republican Party.
True, but that ignores the fact that there are more than enough GOPers who, along with the Democratic Caucus, could easily vote for immigration reform without fear of losing their seat or who are already retiring. The votes are there and have been for a very long time. The issue isn’t whether GOPers would lose their seats if they voted in favor, the issue Boehner has with bringing the legislation for a vote is that he’s afraid it would fuel another Tea Party wave in which they’d nominate a slew of unelectables. He’s also worried about a revolt within the party and furthering the party’s internal civil war. It’s very short term and minimal gain in exchange for an extremely painful long term.
From a tactical perspective, this is truly delicious. From a strategic, long-term perspective, though, the country is far worse for not having a legitimate, intellectually honest second party to keep the Democratic Party in check.
I truly wish the Republicns could get their shit together. I would have thought that the Presidential trouncings would have given them reason to pause and step back into the warm light of reality, but instead they just keep stepping farther and farther into the darkness of insanity, doing real and lasting harm to the country all the while. Will they change after another slaughter at the voting booth? I don’t know. I just know that the sooner they can figure out that denying reality and science are a losing strategy the better off we all will be.
Tom Donohue: If the Republicans don’t do [pass immigration reform] they shouldn’t bother to run a candidate in 2016.
Given current demographic trends - plus conservative recalcitrance to broaden the GOP’s appeal to younger, female, or less white voters by changing their platform - there’s really no chance Republicans can win the 2016 presidential race anyway.
Sure, Republicans can still win elections at the state and local level, but since their base is stuck in a paradigm paralysis (c.f. Thomas Kuhn)of more conservative than thou purity spirals, there’s really no chance of shifting the current GOP paradigm until the majority of the present base, well, passes away.
And even then, I’m not sure how Republicans can change their platform, since the party’s appeal is pretty much only to people who are more of the same.
So, it could be a while before the GOP can realistically expect to win a national contest for the presidency - bar cheating and fraud, of course, at which they are admittedly quite expert.
Agreed. A common core loving, amnesty minded, moderate in an interracial marriage is not going to be the GOP candidate following the first black president no matter how much money the big money donors throw behind him. I also tend to think folks underestimate GOP anger at the Bush family. They blame HW for Clinton and GW for Obama. And Jeb would have the exact same problem Romney had…be the relatively moderate, establishment candidate and go the way of John Huntsman or be severely conservative enough to win the primary and lose the general election. I think Jeb is smart enough to realize that running in 2016 would only likely result in a defeat that would knock him out of politics for good. He’d be better served to sit out 2016. In 2020 he can come back and make the argument that the GOP must moderate if they want to win back the WH.
From your lips to God’s ears.
"Think about who the voters are," Chamber President and CEO Tom Donohue said.
The GOP has spent a lot of time thinking about who the voters are – and even more time thinking about how to keep them from voting.
Voter “protection” laws: Coming to a red state near you.
Scorpion, meet frog.
We need a responsible second party. But it seems that, for the next decade at least, we aren’t going to have one, and we’ll have to deal with the Republican Party we’ve got, not the one we wish we had. “A crisis much be reached, and passed”. It’s on the path to being reached. But the right isn’t going to back off now–support for parties in advanced economies is typically cyclical over a period of about a decade, give or take a term, and the right wing can argue convincingly that sooner or later the pendulum will swing in their direction. And they are quite justified in saying that neither McCain nor Romney were “movement conservatives”.