Jeb Bush 2008

What if..and now I say what if Jeb Bush decided to run in 2008?
How far could he had gotten and could he had been a major force?

The floor is open for speculations!
 
After 8 years of George W Bush, there is no way anyone from the Bush family could have a chance of winning in 2008.

Torqumada
 
Considering that his brother was so unpopular in 2008, it would have been a non-starter. Even if Dubya wasn't, a brother handing over to a brother would have been a bit much, even for America.
 
Yeah that is true but lets talk about the primaries, could he had been competitive there? G.W:s approval rating among Republican voters in 2007-2008 were in the 70:s.
 
Yeah that is true but lets talk about the primaries, could he had been competitive there? G.W:s approval rating among Republican voters in 2007-2008 were in the 70:s.

For Jeb Bush to run in 2008 it would require some kind of personality-altering trauma. It just wasn't going to be his year.
 
2008 OTL was NOT going to elect Jeb under any circumstances as his brother's approval ratings at the time were as bad as Nixon's during Watergate. McCain was the only Republican who had a shot at winning that year and even his chances were slim to none.

If you want a Jeb Bush candidacy for 2008, the best way to do it is to have Gore win in 2000 and get re elected in 2004. Another way you could do it is have Kerry win in 2004, and have Jeb somehow beat Romney and McCain in the primary, and even this scenario is a bit unlikely.
 
I think Jeb would divide the McCain-Giuliani vote, helping Romney and Huckabee.

I don't think he would've. If anything I think he would've hurt them more because except on Immigration Reform, Jeb was/is to the right of Romney (for that matter, Jeb is also to the right of his brother.) On economic issues Jeb is also to the right of Huckabee.

However, if for whatever reason it did help Romney and Huckabee, Obama would do even better against either one of them than he did against McCain. Huckabee is practically a zealot socially and a vulture capitalist like Romney couldn't win in the wake of the economic crisis.
 
Yeah that is true but lets talk about the primaries, could he had been competitive there? G.W:s approval rating among Republican voters in 2007-2008 were in the 70:s.

By April 2008, Bush's job approval ratings even among Republicans were down to 66 percent. http://www.gallup.com/poll/106426/bush-job-approval-28-lowest-administration.aspx That may sound high enough but is very bad given the partisan polarization of the United States, and the reluctance of many partisans to say they disapprove of a president of their own party for fear that this will help the opposite party. Undoubtedly even many of those 66 percent realized the hopelessness of any candidate named Bush in 2008
 
By April 2008, Bush's job approval ratings even among Republicans were down to 66 percent. http://www.gallup.com/poll/106426/bush-job-approval-28-lowest-administration.aspx That may sound high enough but is very bad given the partisan polarization of the United States, and the reluctance of many partisans to say they disapprove of a president of their own party for fear that this will help the opposite party. Undoubtedly even many of those 66 percent realized the hopelessness of any candidate named Bush in 2008

Bush's number were so high (66% is pretty damn good, at least within your own party) because of his Karl Rove strategy of feed-the-base, feed-the-base, feed-the-base. His administration was run on a constant "re-election mode" never before seen in American history. Which is why he crashed and burned after the 2006 mid-terms.

With "no more worlds to conquer", he flat out didn't know what to do. He no longer trusted the two people who essentially ran his administration the previous six years, Rove and Cheney. Rove, because of his disastrously bad 2006 election predictions, Cheney because his metaphysical certitude about WMDs in Iraq was so metaphysically wrong.:rolleyes: And he never was a true executive type, much happy he was at campaigning than making decisions, or God Forbid, making peaceful overtures to Al-Qaeda-uh, I mean, the Democrats.:rolleyes:

It would have been madness for Republicans to be upset with W in 2008. For 6 years he, and congressional Republicans, had spent like drunken sailors on Republican pet projects, while giving the polite finger to Independents and pretending the Democratic Party didn't even exist. No wonder he spent so much time in Crawford after the second mid-terms. If he couldn't dictate policy, and there were no more elections to campaign for, then he couldn't be bothered to actually run a government.:mad:

IIRC, there were polls at the time (2008) putting W's numbers among Independents in the high teens, among Democrats in the high to mid-single digits, and among Black Democrats <1%, putting them within the margin of error to 0%!:eek::p
 
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Let's say that the Sun and stars and planets all align for Jeb. McCain's tour bus goes off the road and into a ravine, killing him, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman in a giant ball of hot air. Huckabee has a heart attack, Giuliani smirks himself to death and the Romney Unit's hardware can't take another software update, resulting in him being found face down in the gutter smoke pouring from every orifice. Oh, and Fred Thompson falls asleep in his Laz-e-boy and gets taken away by the garbage collectors, later to be found embedded in landfill in New Jersey. Jeb steps in and much to the satisfaction of Poppy Bush gets the nomination. Now the problems start.
Dubya is toxic by 2008, with even the GOP convention looking to minimise his involvement as much as possible. The very name 'Bush' is a liability. All the Obama campaign has to do is run adverts with pictures of Jeb and Dubya together, with the caption 'Four more years?' underneath. Jeb would be handicapped from the start and by the time the financial crisis really gets going it's the kiss of death. Plus there's the family angle - inheriting the presidency is going to be very unpopular, giving Obama yet another card to play. I can't see Jeb winning. In fact I can see him doing significantly worse. Looking at some of the figures from the election I can easily see Obama picking up Missouri (which went for McCain 49%-50% OTL), Georgia (47%-52%) and Montana (47%-50%). Hell, if things really got bad then I can see close calls in Texas (44%-55%), Arizona (45%-54%), South Carolina (45%-54%) and North and South Dakota (both 45%-53%).
Whereupon the head of Karl Rove would explode. :D
 
Bush's number were so high (66% is pretty damn good, at least within your own party)

No, 66% within your party is *not* good. By comparison, Obama's ratings among Democrats (using Gallup weekly averages) have *never* been lower than 75 percent (and have never been lower than 81 during 2015).
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx In his entire second term (in fact, from July 1996 on) Bill Clinton never got under 80 percent job approval ratings from Democrats; from February 1995 on, Clinton never got less than 72 percent among Democrats. Only in a couple of polls in June 1993 did Clinton get under 66 percent among Democrats. http://www.gallup.com/poll/116584/presidential-approval-ratings-bill-clinton.aspx

There is incidentally an obvious but sometimes neglected reason why we should expect a president's approval rating to be high among those who identify with the president's party. It is that party identification is not an almost-unchangeable characteristic the way race or sex are. People can and do change their party ID's fairly frequently. Some people who would describe themselves as Republicans when they admire a Republican president's job performance might instead call themselves Independents when they disapprove if it; and the same goes for Democrats with a Democratic president.
 
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