Kit's Thoughts: Why Jeb Bush is Not Wooing the "Base"

by Kit

Conservative writers John Nolte and Jonah Goldberg recently bemoaned, rather understandably, on twitter that while Mitt Romney at least tried to appeal to the conservative “base” Jeb Bush seems to show little to no desire to do so.

The better question would be, “Why would Jeb Bush want to appeal to the base?”

Like with Romney in the 2012 primaries, the base has already decided they hated him. Throughout the spring they attacked Governor Romney with an almost unparalleled sanguinolent fury. Anyone who lacked their required level of hatred for Romney was attacked for being an establishment, Rockefeller-Republican RINO already in the tank (and maybe on the dole!) for Romney. One example was Jonah Goldberg, who, though critic of Romney, failed to blast the candidate in every column as the death of conservatism and the Republican Party and was therefore branded as a RINO squish. An idiotic accusation considering this was the man who wrote Liberal Fascism and had attacked Bush’s spending binges… in 2003.

They only calmed down (somewhat) in the summer when Santorum and Gingrich dropped out, making Romney the definite nominee. They weren’t going to support Ron Paul even if hell froze over. So they (begrudgingly) gave their (reluctant) backing to Romney as he turned his sights towards Obama, though he still had to deal with attacks from the Ron Paul-wing of the GOP and the base still snipping at his heels, making sure he stayed within the dogma of the Talk-Radio Orthodoxy. The Party put out a platform bending over backwards to appeal to the Religious Right. For example, it called for a legal crackdowns on pornography (not child, adult). All while some, especially in the Religious Right, defended brain-dead quacks like Todd Akin.

And when he lost? Despite Romney’s gyrations and prostrations they attacked him for abandoning conservatism and failing to stick to conservative principles and running as a moderate. Romney was never pure enough for them and nothing he did would appease them, short of handing the nomination over to someone like Rick Santorum. They only warmed to him when he was seen as the anti-Jeb bush.

So, with this in mind, why would Jeb Bush want to appeal to a group of people who, as he well knows, already hate his guts, will never be satisfied by any level of contrition on his part, and might even undermine his general election campaign?

Heck, as Rick Perry learned, being a “conservative” candidate is no protection as they might still tear into your background looking for some spit of evidence that you are secretly a RINO squish. They were starting to do this to Scott Walker until the left started ragging him about his lack of a Bachelor’s Degree.

So, in their zeal to ensure that only the most pure of purest candidates is elected we have an election season where the most likely candidate knows that in order to win he must aim for the center and hope the crushing weight of inevitability and his army of donors carries him across the finish line. After all of the talk radio set’s inquisitorial vetting of any candidate they may now have created first candidate to run in the Rockefeller Republican mold in 40 years.

Congratulations.