Did Jeb Bush grasp the risk he took by answering Sean Hannity’s questions at CPAC in front of "a room full of untethered zoo animals”? Maybe not, snarked Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman in a Saturday post.
Longman’s major point was that Republican base voters routinely wind up hurting the party’s center-right presidential nominee because he feels he has to throw them one or more bones: “Poppy [George H. W. Bush] didn’t really need to promise no new taxes, but it was a broken promise that cost him dearly. [John] McCain overcompensated for his weakness with the base by giving us Sarah Palin. And, in his contorted efforts to speak to a base that had become completely unmoored from terrestrial reality, [Mitt] Romney set the land-speed record for lying by a human being.”
From Longman’s post (bolding added):
[T]he Republican base hasn’t had the candidate they wanted since Ronald Reagan ran for reelection in 1984. It isn’t necessarily a problem for a candidate seeking the Republican nomination that they are unloved by the base, even though the base theoretically has some influence on who will lead the party.
But, recent history suggests that the base is powerless to stop squishes like Poppy, Dole, McCain, and Romney from beating out their more conservative competitors. What the base is good at is freaking out their nominees and getting them to commit fatal errors. Poppy didn’t really need to promise no new taxes, but it was a broken promise that cost him dearly. McCain overcompensated for his weakness with the base by giving us Sarah Palin. And, in his contorted efforts to speak to a base that had become completely unmoored from terrestrial reality, Romney set the land-speed record for lying by a human being.
I don’t know if Jeb helped or hurt himself by speaking at CPAC. I really don’t.
I do know that when addressing a room full of untethered zoo animals, you’re lucky to emerge with your life. That Jeb felt the need to bus in some tame animals demonstrates that he doesn’t actually understand the nature of the threat.
