Jeb Bush’s Donald Trump Distraction

National Journal

By Josh Kraushaar

September 2, 2015

Jeb Bush’s Donald Trump Distraction 

Jeb Bush’s half-hearted de­cision this week to con­front Don­ald Trump is shap­ing up to be an early polit­ic­al blun­der that changes the tra­ject­ory of the GOP nom­in­a­tion fight. His de­cision to dir­ectly go after the bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man runs against the Bush cam­paign’s stated strategy of risk­ing a loss in the primary to win the gen­er­al. It’s at odds with his plans to lock up es­tab­lish­ment sup­port and carry that through the pro­cess. It un­der­scores that Bush is no longer the “joy­ful tor­toise” in the race, as he called him­self at a home-state event in Ju­ly, but the dis­trac­ted hare, swat­ting at the an­noy­ing fly that won’t stop buzz­ing around him.

Per­haps the con­front­a­tion was in­ev­it­able. Trump has been at­tack­ing Bush over his per­son­al­ity (“a low-en­ergy guy,” is the fa­vor­ite at­tack line), his policies (“he’ll now find out it’s not an act of love,” Trump jibed Bush over em­bra­cing im­mig­ra­tion re­form), and even his wife (“Jeb Bush has to like the Mex­ic­an Il­leg­als be­cause of his wife,” Trump tweeted). Bush’s al­lies de­fend the Trump en­gage­ment by ar­guing: How will people see him as a tough com­mand­er in chief if he doesn’t get up­set at the guy hit­ting him so per­son­ally? “There’s no path for suc­cess in cower­ing in­to a corner and hop­ing for the best,” Bush spokes­man Tim Miller said. 

But so far, Bush has been spar­ring with Trump joy­lessly, un­der­scor­ing his dis­taste for polit­ic­al theat­er. As Na­tion­al Re­view ed­it­or-in-chief Rich Lowry put it, Bush at­tack­ing Trump is “like watch­ing a WWE wrest­ler get a stern talk­ing to from Ned Flanders.”

A slow-and-steady dis­cip­lined strategy from Bush­world has morph­ed in­to anxi­ety over Trump’s stay­ing power. And it’s all be­ing done in the name of a stra­tegic mis­take: Bush’s biggest mis­cal­cu­la­tion is that Trump is his biggest rival; the as­sump­tion that he’s best-po­si­tioned to be the fi­nal Re­pub­lic­an stand­ing against the busi­ness­man. The real­ity is that the es­tab­lish­ment lane that Bush wanted to claim for him­self is get­ting aw­fully crowded, and the former Flor­ida gov­ernor is hardly as­sured of a spot in the GOP fi­nals. And by get­ting dis­trac­ted by the ele­phant in the room—against his own cam­paign’s ori­gin­al con­sid­er­a­tions—Bush risks be­com­ing an early cas­u­alty to a Trump cam­paign that, like a good real­ity show, needs en­emies for its polit­ic­al oxy­gen.

What’s iron­ic is that Bush’s “lose the primary to win the gen­er­al” strategy has been co-op­ted by his es­tab­lish­ment-ori­ented Re­pub­lic­an rivals, while Bush has been re­luct­antly drawn in­to the fray with Trump. Trump has mostly ig­nored Sen. Marco Ru­bio of Flor­ida, whose cam­paign is con­tent to stay on the side­lines un­scathed, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who is quickly gain­ing mo­mentum in New Hamp­shire and is rack­ing up the type of es­tab­lish­ment en­dorse­ments that once seemed like good bets to be in Bush’s corner.

There’s also good reas­on to be­lieve that Trump’s sup­port will dip as vot­ing gets closer. He’s been get­ting near wall-to-wall cov­er­age on all the cable news net­works and Sunday shows. There’s plenty of pre­ced­ent for bet­ter-known can­did­ates to be lead­ing the sum­mer be­fore the primar­ies, only to see things change dra­mat­ic­ally as vot­ing ap­proaches. Few oth­er can­did­ates have ac­tu­ally gone up with paid tele­vi­sion ad­vert­ising, still the lifeblood of cam­paigns. (To wit: Kasich’s $4 mil­lion-plus in New Hamp­shire TV ads pro­pelled him in­to second place in the state; Trump’s got­ten ex­po­nen­tially more “earned me­dia” cov­er­age than that.) In in­ter­pret­ing polls, pun­dits are trans­pos­ing their own ex­pect­a­tions that voters are fol­low­ing the de­tails of the primar­ies against the real­ity that most voters are on va­ca­tion and have been merely en­ter­tained by the Trump show. That was the find­ing of a re­cent Bloomberg fo­cus group fea­tur­ing 10 Trump ad­mirers—even though only two said they would ser­i­ously con­sider vot­ing for him. The fact that his sup­port in polls ap­pears to be broad-based with sup­port from dif­fer­ing demo­graph­ic groups un­der­scores his rise is as much a func­tion of name iden­ti­fic­a­tion as deep-seated sup­port. 

Most cam­paigns have cal­cu­lated that go­ing after Trump at this stage is a no-win pro­pos­i­tion. As the George Bern­ard Shaw aph­or­ism goes, “Nev­er wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” The can­did­ates that have taken on Trump—from Rick Perry to Lind­sey Gra­ham to Rand Paul—have seen their stand­ing col­lapse. But someone has to fire the first shot. The fear from GOP strategists is that the first ser­i­ous can­did­ate to blast Trump will be like a kami­kaze pi­lot, tak­ing out the en­emy but crash­ing his cam­paign while do­ing it. 

That’s why Bush’s at­tacks against Trump have been so tame and are un­likely to be ac­com­pan­ied by any ag­gress­ive ad blitz against the bil­lion­aire busi­ness­man. But in its place, he hardly has a bet­ter situ­ation—wimpy re­sponses to Trump’s taunts, while get­ting dis­trac­ted from the main task at hand. It would’ve been smarter for Bush to ig­nore Trump, and start throw­ing red meat at Hil­lary Clin­ton to prove his ag­gress­ive­ness.

Bush shouldn’t feel threatened by Trump. His biggest con­cern should be that the es­tab­lish­ment lane he wanted to claim for him­self is get­ting crowded. He’s at risk of los­ing es­tab­lish­ment sup­port to Kasich, Ru­bio, per­haps even Carly Fior­ina. Kasich is now tied with Bush in the all-im­port­ant Gran­ite State. Ru­bio’s fa­vor­ab­il­ity rat­ings are sig­ni­fic­antly bet­ter than Bush’s, and he runs more com­pet­it­ively than Bush against Hil­lary Clin­ton. Fior­ina, with peer­less es­tab­lish­ment cre­den­tials as a For­tune 100 CEO, ad­viser to John Mc­Cain, and fun­draiser for the Na­tion­al Re­pub­lic­an Sen­at­ori­al Com­mit­tee, is also po­si­tioned to pick off some of that cen­ter-right sup­port. 

New Hamp­shire, the most mod­er­ate state in the early con­tests, is look­ing like a make-or-break test for Jeb Bush. (“You need to be suc­cess­ful in Feb­ru­ary for suc­cess in the later states. We have no il­lu­sions about that. For us that means do­ing well in New Hamp­shire,” said Bush spokes­man Miller.) Even though Trump leads statewide polling, Bush’s real battle is against Kasich and Ru­bio to be­come the es­tab­lish­ment fa­vor­ite. The Bush cam­paign is acutely aware of Kasich’s threat to them in the Gran­ite State, as well as of Ru­bio’s po­ten­tial to later trans­late his strong fa­vor­ab­il­ity num­bers in­to tan­gible sup­port. If the best-fun­ded can­did­ate can’t get past one of his true com­pet­it­ors in a state re­cept­ive to his mes­sage, Trump—wheth­er he’s flamed out or not—will be the least of Bush’s wor­ries.

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