Jeb Bush might just turn out to be the best Democrat candidate for 2016. Speaking to an audience in Florida, Bush expressed admiration for the architect of the Great Society and the Vietnam War.

He vowed to approach the presidency as “master of the Senate,” as biographer Robert Caro described Johnson.

“He went and he cajoled, he begged, he threatened, he loved, he hugged, he did what leaders do, which is they personally get engaged to make something happen,’’ Bush said of Johnson. Bush cited Caro’s latest book about Johnson, The Passage of Power, which covers the first part of Johnson’s presidency.

The wheeling and dealing Johnson loved and relished is what will be needed to pass bills such as immigration regulations. That process is also how government gets expanded and cronyism thrives, as Peter Schweizer’s nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute and directer Stephen K. Bannon documented in “Boomtown.”

Bush also admitted that he’s absolutely clueless as to why Americans don’t want to import millions of units of cheap foreign labor when there are tens of millions of Americans out of work and middle-class wages have been declining.

“For the life of me I have a hard time understanding why people are fearful of our own heritage, our own history,” Bush reportedly said. “The rules are you come to this country, you pursue your dreams, you create value for yourself and your families and others and great things happens to you and to our country. Why would we ignore that at time when we need to restart and rejuvenate our economy? It makes no sense to me.”

Bush seems to believe that American workers don’t want to take care of their families, don’t want to pursue their dreams, and don’t want to participate in the economy.

The Political Consultant is, of course, a.) a rabid Democrat b.) who is supporting Hillary and c.) has a long list of failed campaigns including working for Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004.

But aside from that, everyone should take Bob Shrum at his word that Bush 3.0 is just the ticket for Republicans in 2016.

Update:  Another Bob… Bob Dole … talks smack about Ted Cruz.

“A number of the younger members, first-termers like Rand Paul, Rubio and that extreme-right-wing guy, Ted Cruz — all running for president now. I don’t think they’ve got enough experience yet,” Dole said.

…

Dole said Cruz is “way out there” on the extremes of the party and defended his own record.

His own “record” being that of losing to a Democrat in the worst electoral blow-out of a Republican in the last 40 years.

I can think of few things as sure to fail as a Jeb Bush presidential campaign in 2016. I suspect Jeb Bush knows this. Not even his own mother wants him to run.  In that light, I kind of suspect that his recent comments on illegal immigration (“Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony; it’s an act of love”) are a form of trolling; injecting asinine commentary into a debate just to stir the pot. But his remarks on immigration and Common Core do help reveal the mindset of the Republican Aristocracy.

[I refuse to call them elites; "elite" implies a meritocracy. Aristocracy implies a group of people united by blood ties, privilege, and inherited wealth hat's a better description of the Bushes and the rest of the Republican gentry.]

The reason Jeb Bush (and the rest of the Aristocracy) can be so cavalier about illegal immigration is because an influx of millions of illegal immigrants is not going to affect his wealth, status, or comfort. It just means the Country Club pays less for lawn maintenance, and the multinationals in his portfolio can lower labor costs and maximize dividends. No one in the Bush family works as a carpenter, or a roofer, or any other occupation where an illegal will take their job. They don’t attend public schools where resources have been stretched to accommodate a flood of non-English speakers. They are unlikely to have to wait in an emergency room or a welfare office crowded with illegals.

His attitude toward ‘Common Core’ is similarly aligned with the views of an Aristocrat.

“I want to hear their solutions for the hodgepodge of dumbed-down state standards that have created group mediocrity in our schools.”

Get it? Jeb Bush simply believes that he and his class know what’s best for everybody; and those dumb hicks running the states are just too dumb to know what’s best for the children in their states. And if he and the Federal Aristocracy don’t crack the whip, the states will be teaching kids to eat lead paint chips and reading materials will consist of back issues of Hustler and TV Guide. The idea that states, freed of the micromanagement of the Federal bureaucracy, might actually educate their kids better is a foreign concept to a man steeped in privilege.

Both of our parties are run by people long, long out of touch with the concerns, challenges, and capabilities of ordinary working people; which is why, at the end of the day, they both end up supporting the same failed policy formulations; based on the belief that any problem can be managed if enough money is thrown at it, and enough “good people” are put in charge of it.

The idea that the “little people,” left alone and given enough freedom, might be able to work things out on their own without the gilded leadership of the Ivy League aristocracy is an absolutely alien concept to them.

The Establishment GOP is really going out of its way to grind my gears this week.

“I’m going to say this and it will be on tape, and so be it. The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally, they come to our country because their family’s dad who loves their children was worried that their children didn’t have food on the table, and they wanted to make sure their family was intact. And they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. it’s kind of — it’s a — it’s an act of love.”

Yeah, well what about 30 Million unemployed Americans who would like to feed and take care of their families but can’t because your illegal amigos are listening to raps and shooting all the jobs?

I just hope to God Bush closed a bridge and caused a traffic jam at some point in his governorship. It’s too much to hope he donated money to an anti-marriage group.

Earlier this morning, caught a good piece from Byron York on why winning the Hispanic vote would not be enough to secure a GOP presidential victory.  Here’s the crucial paragraph:

But here is the real solution. Romney lost because he did not appeal to the millions of Americans who have seen their standard of living decline over the past decades. They’re nervous about the future. When Romney did not address their concerns, they either voted for Obama or didn’t vote at all. If the next Republican candidate can address their concerns effectively, he will win. And, amazingly enough, he’ll win a lot more Hispanic votes in the process. A lot from other groups, too.

Read the whole thing.  Did recall reading something about a year ago on Mitt Romney’s failure to appeal to working class votes disaffected from the incumbent administration.  York is right; the next Republican candidate needs to effectively address their concerns.

Part of the answer, ironically enough (given the premise of York’s piece), lies in a piece Jill Lawrence published last week in the National Journal, a piece on Republicans’ challenges with Hispanic voters.  Lawrence cited a focus group whose participants . . .

liked what they heard about Medicaid, immigration, economics, and education in clips from speeches by some prominent party figures. But the people they listened to—New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush—are unusual in how they talk about these issues and seemed like anomalies to the focus-group participants. (more…)

Readers of this blog know that I have long been a fan of Jeb Bush, having favored the accomplished former Florida Governor as my candidate for 2012 at least since November 2010.

And while it is still too early to start planning for 2016, when you google that good man’s name, look at what comes up:

Our reader Kyle alerted me to an article that shows that Jeb understands an aspect of modern American conservatism that Mitt Romney failed to articulate.  “Jeb Bush,” writes Mark Silva . . .

. . . the former Florida governor who based a political career on school reform, today called for a “restoration” of lost American values and economic mobility based on educational accountability.

With the gap between the impoverished and privileged in the U.S. widening, the solution lies in a regime of school and teacher evaluation, national standards and more “school choice” in alternatives such as charter schools, he said.

“We have these huge gaps in income,” Bush said at the start of a two-day Washington conference sponsored by his Foundation for Excellence in Education, “with people born into poverty who will stay in poverty.” He said: “This ideal of who we are as a nation — it’s going away, it’s leaving us,” adding: “There is one path that can change this course.”

Emphasis added.  Economic mobility, his belief that people born in poverty, reared in dependency, don’t have to stay in that condition and can rise about their circumstances.

It frustrated many Reagan-Kemp conservatives when, right after the Florida primary, Mitt Romney said because of the “safety net,” he wasn’t concerned about the very poor.

Reagan conservatives, however, have long been concerned about the poor because that safety net sometimes traps them in a cycle of dependency.   And we want to create the opportunities that will help them find the means to move up into a better economic situation. (more…)