WI George W. Bush AND Jeb Bush win in 1994?

Unknown

IOTL, George W. Bush and Jeb Bush ran for governor of Texas and Florida, respectively. George W. Bush won, while Jeb Bush lost by under 64,000 votes to Lawton Chiles, whose lieutenant governor, Buddy MacKay, would lose to Jeb Bush in 1998.

But, WI Jeb Bush ran a better campaign and won against Chiles in 1994? What are the ramifications for the 2000 GOP nomination?
 
True Grit

True Grit

I think Jeb's the frontrunner in 2000, he initially seemed to be the one the family was grooming for higher office, not Dubya. If so, I imagine the biggest initial butterfly is a simpler 2000 election: aside from his home state advantage presumably butterflying away the recount, he was less gaffe prone than his brother and likely maintains the larger lead that Dubya had during the summer.
 

Pseudo

True Grit said:
I think Jeb's the frontrunner in 2000, he initially seemed to be the one the family was grooming for higher office, not Dubya. If so, I imagine the biggest initial butterfly is a simpler 2000 election: aside from his home state advantage presumably butterflying away the recount, he was less gaffe prone than his brother and likely maintains the larger lead that Dubya had during the summer.
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That's true, but then Gore certainly takes Jeb a lot more seriously from the start than he did George.
 

David T

The 2000 GOP presidential nomination goes to the winner of the all-important "Poppy and Bar" primary...
 
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GuildedAgeNostalgia

Can Jeb really win the 2000 GOP primary? I don't think he has the same appeal to evangelical conservatives that Bush Jr. had and just based off Jeb's 2016 campaign I feel like John McCain would eat Jeb alive
 
True Grit

True Grit

GuildedAgeNostalgia said:
Can Jeb really win the 2000 GOP primary? I don't think he has the same appeal to evangelical conservatives that Bush Jr. had and just based off Jeb's 2016 campaign I feel like John McCain would eat Jeb alive
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2016 Jeb sucked, sure, but I don’t think it’s fair to compare that to how he might do in 2000. Aside from the fact that the baggage of his brother’s administration, one of his biggest problems IOTL, isn’t an issue here, there’s also the fact that by 2016 it had been 14 years since he last ran for office and he had zero experience campaigning in the digital era and, to a certain extent, the 24 hour news cycle era. For any candidate, let alone Jeb specifically, campaigning in 2000 was world’s away from campaigning in 2016.
 
dieg-ish

dieg-ish

Unknown said:
IOTL, George W. Bush and Jeb Bush ran for governor of Texas and Florida, respectively. George W. Bush won, while Jeb Bush lost by under 64,000 votes to Lawton Chiles, whose lieutenant governor, Buddy MacKay, would lose to Jeb Bush in 1998.

But, WI Jeb Bush ran a better campaign and won against Chiles in 1994? What are the ramifications for the 2000 GOP nomination?
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According to Wikipedia, George W. Bush launched his candidacy after being encourged by George Shultz to run. Shultz also introduced him to policy experts to talk about serious matters and see if he had presidential material. But if ITTL there's another popular Bush who just got re-elected as governor of Florida in 1998 (a state that Bill Clinton won in 1996), it's very likely that Shultz would have approached him instead of his brother (who actually had less political experience).

Let's assume that ITTL Jeb Bush somehow manages to defeat Sen. John McCain (I'm not so sure that he could've) and takes the Republican presidential nomination. What's next? It's very likely that he would've chosen Fmr. Sen. John Danforth (R-MO) as his running mate instead of Dick Cheney (IOTL, Cheney actually expected GWB to choose Danforth), and it's even more likely that Vice Pres. Gore would've beaten him in the presidential election. Why? Because he did an awful campaign in 2016, and I don't see why he would've done better in 2000.

That said, it's worth exploring the possibility that ITTL McCain could've defeated Jeb Bush in the Republican primary and possibly beaten Gore. However, that would've been a weird victory by OTL's standards because McCain could've won states like Connecticut, Michigan, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin (where he did very well in the primaries), while losing others like Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee and West Virginia. I'm not sure how well he'd have done with Latino voters (considering the fact that Bush did extremely well with Cuban and Mexican voters), but if ITTL he does worse than Bush with them, he could've lost Colorado, Nevada and Florida to Gore (the latter is specially in danger if we butterfly away the Elián González affair, in which case the Republicans would've been doomed in Florida). In any case, Gore has the upper hand because McCain was weak in the South and Sens. Lieberman or Kerry (depending on who he'd chosen as his running mate) would've helped him to protect some of the Northern states (and in the case of Lieberman, also Florida), blocking McCain's path to victory through those states. If you think about it, Dubya was actually the "best" candidate that the GOP could've put up in the 2000 election (regarding winning the election, not governing).
 
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GuildedAgeNostalgia

David T said:
That was Jeb Bush after people remembered eight years of his brother...
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George W. Bush isn't the reason Jeb said the words "please clap"

The man literally has no charisma (it could be argued he's the GOP version of Gore).

John McCain would plow through him in the debates just as bad as Trump did.
 

David T

GuildedAgeNostalgia said:
George W. Bush isn't the reason Jeb said the words "please clap"

The man literally has no charisma (it could be argued he's the GOP version of Gore).

John McCain would plow through him in the debates just as bad as Trump did.
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The Jeb Bush of 2016--who had not campaigned for office for fourteen years-- was not the Jeb Bush who had won two decisive victories as governor of Florida in 1998 and 2002. And one must remember that in the 2000 primaries McCain relied very heavily on independents. It wasn't enough--you can't win the Republican primaries without Republicans!--against GW Bush and I don't think it would be enough against Jeb, either.
 
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GuildedAgeNostalgia

David T said:
The Jeb Bush of 2016--who had not campaigned for office for fourteen years-- was not the Jeb Bush who had won two decisive victories as governor of Florida in 1998 and 2002. And one must remember that the 2000 primaries McCain relied very heavily on independents. It wasn't enough--you can't win the Republican primaries without Republicans!--against GW Bush and I don't think it would be enough against Jeb, either.
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He still has the charisma of a potato though, conservatives would have listened to him in the debates and wouldn't have been impressed. He'll, Jeb didn't even have a primary challenger when he ran for governor of Florida and got the nomination without having to campaign, and then won the general because of Florida voter fatigue towards Democrats and party loyalty. Jeb has never been a good campaigner.

W. Bush is a much more charismatic and a much better campaigner than his brother. Jeb looks like a nerd, acts far too moderate/technocratic and does not appeal to evangelical Republicans in the slightest bit (being able to portray himself further right than McCain was Bush Jr.'s best advantage in the otl primary).

Jeb is not George and McCain, even with all of his flaws, would be far more appealing. Either that or a different candidate altogether gets the evangelical vote and wins the primary.
 

Whanztastic

Yeah, there’s a lot of back projection in this thread. He wasn’t the figure of parody he became 16 years later. Jeb was the frankly the more competent Governor (for better or worse) and doesn’t have the same skeletons (DUI, drug use) that George has. Jeb certainly had social conservative appeal and had no problem getting into those debates (see Terri Schiavo). If there was an option between the two brothers, all of Papa Bush’s old friends would’ve backed Jeb, and pretty much all of them are on the record saying so.

Bush ran a hard right race in 1994 though and would need to moderate in 2000. George’s compassionate conservatism got major mainstream coverage. Jeb 1998 pivoted and I’m sure media at the time would cover his bilingual family favorably.
 
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David T

GuildedAgeNostalgia said:
He still has the charisma of a potato though, conservatives would have listened to him in the debates and wouldn't have been impressed. He'll, Jeb didn't even have a primary challenger when he ran for governor of Florida and got the nomination without having to campaign, and then won the general because of Florida voter fatigue towards Democrats and party loyalty. Jeb has never been a good campaigner.
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Florida was not a safe GOP state when Jeb won his two decisive victories for governor--it had gone for Bill Clinton in 1996 and as we all know was extremely close in 2000; indeed, without the then-popular Jeb https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-2000-08-08-0008080108-story.html as governor, Al Gore would probably have carried the state and been elected POTUS.

And if you think he couldn't appeal to Evangelicals, remember Terri Schiavo...
 

Deleted member 16736

I really wonder whether a Jeb! 2000 run would look the same as the W vs. McCain race we got iotl. W was buoyed in Iowa and South Carolina by his appeal to evangelicals. In large part this was due to the way he wore his born-again faith on his sleeve. His own story, that of the wayward Prince Hal who got sober and turned himself around, and the way he presented it to the public with an air of humility was a sales pitch to this crowd. The factual truth of the story is irrelevant in this regard because it speaks to the higher truth of being born-again and this attracted not only the run-of-the-mill evangelical voters but the bigwigs of the Christian Coalition like Ralph Reed. Of course this kind of appeal to religious voters also has its drawbacks, as it is likely to turn off secular and independent voters as the Republicans discovered in 1998, following the overzealous attempt to impeach Bill Clinton. Ultimately this was the schism that gave John McCain, with his talk of the "agents of intolerance," an opening against Bush in the early part of the primary calendar.

But Jeb wouldn't provide that kind of opening because he does not have the same appeal to Christian conservatives. That isn't to say that he's squishy on cultural issues - he's still solidly in the pro-life camp as @David T pointed out - but even as a conservative candidate he won't have the story that speaks to the born-again experience. Additionally, assuming he still converts to his wife's Catholic faith in 1995 like iotl, he will be viewed by this group with an immense amount of suspicion. Old prejudices run deep, after all, and Catholics are not necessarily seen as "Christian" among evangelicals regardless of what socially conservative policies they adopt. At the very least Jeb is going to struggled to win over the rank-and-file evangelical voters that W counted on to carry him to the nomination; at worst the religious right may end up finding its own candidate to challenge him.

So it's an interesting question whether Jeb wouldn't just try to take over the McCain lanes that George left open in his run and count on his fundraising to take care of the rest. He might, in that scenario, face an insurgent campaign from someone like Alan Keyes or Gary Bauer or a more prominent evangelical who didn't run iotl. Jeb could see a more difficult race than George if McCain still runs and nips into some of his support in New Hampshire. I think he would still be the favorite to win the nomination, but it's a lot less sure of a thing than W's attempt.

Another aspect I just thought of is how Jeb would recover from an early defeat. We know W, Rove, and company went scorched earth on McCain in South Carolina. ITTL Karl is still going to be working with George in Texas, possibly sidelining the GOP's most potent strategist. While I do not doubt that Jeb would be willing to go to the mattresses if his campaign looked like it was in trouble, I do not know that his staff could do it as ... let's say effectively as George and Karl did.
 

Amadeus

I personally think that Jeb could've won in 2000 had he ran, but the fact is that as the older brother George W would've been first in line to run for President. Yes, Jeb was seen as the more competent brother but I fail to see how George W would just stand aside to let his younger brother take the lead in 2000. IMO the only impact this has is George W might decisively win Florida in 2000 if his brother has been governor for almost six years instead of two.
 
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