Larison: Why Jeb Bush Still Won't Be The Next Republican Nominee

link

It isn’t surprising that Bush’s hawkish rhetoric appealed to the Republican donor crowd that he was addressing, but I still don’t see how anyone with the baggage associated with the name Bush and weighed down by the failures of the last Bush administration is likely to win the party’s nomination or general election. We’re supposed to think that the voters won’t judge the next Bush according to the failures of the last one, but that overlooks how family dynasty politics works. We know how much undeserved credit George W. Bush received from the media and the public because he was the son of the former president, and because he surrounded himself with former members of his father’s administration. When a family dynasty has become tainted by massive failure as the Bushes have, that is bound to affect the way that people perceive other members of the same family.