Althouse: "[H]e is Chris Christie without the bombasts, Paul Ryan with the executive experience..."

September 7, 2011

"[H]e is Chris Christie without the bombasts, Paul Ryan with the executive experience..."

"... Rudy Giuliani without the operatic drama, Mitch Daniels with charm and Haley Barbour without the accent."

But he can't be the GOP nominee, because... that name.

39 comments:

Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Remind me again what was it that Bush did that Obama has done much better?

WV - reeper - lol; 9/7/11, 5:06 PM
Geoff Matthews said...: Why didn't she compare him to Romney?

And I'll be skeptical of Jeb being all that. He only looks good because no one is looking for dirt.; 9/7/11, 5:10 PM
Gabriel Hanna said...: That's Kool and the Gang. I'm not a Bush hater, nor a Clinton hater. And I feel the same about Jeb Bush that I feel about Hillary Clinton: there are 300 million people in this country and there has to be a qualified candidate who is NOT named Bush or Clinton. Would Jeb Bush, or Hillary Clinton, be better than the alternatives we have now? It can be argued. But that's just too bad.; 9/7/11, 5:11 PM
MadisonMan said...: He only looks good because no one is looking for dirt.

No, he looks good because he's on the other side of the fence, where the grass is greener. The fence that divides those who have decided to run and those who have not.; 9/7/11, 5:13 PM
X said...: he looks good because the preObama era looks like a golden age now.; 9/7/11, 5:19 PM
FleetUSA said...: It would be fun to see anyway. B0 vs. Jeb.; 9/7/11, 5:29 PM
d-day said...: Is the name perhaps the reason he can be all things to all people? He's learnt at the knee of generations of political family members and comes to the national political stage carefully free of sharp edges.

I tend to believe that government works best when those in government are more like the people than they are like to each other.

For all of our political agreement, Jeb Bush has more in common with a Biden or a McCain or a Kennedy than with me. So even without having any obvious "flaws," I prefer the bombastic, the dramatic, and the charmless.; 9/7/11, 5:32 PM
gadfly said...: Jen Rubin is getting the wrong kind of influence at her new DC digs.

John Ellis Bush is a mushy moderate who talks like his brother and thinks like his dad.

Jeb thinks that we should abandon the Reagan nostalgia for "lets get along" with the Democraps and La Raza.

Sorry, but this kind of illogical stuff won't fly with the Tea Party.; 9/7/11, 5:33 PM
Fred4Pres said...: Jen Rubin loves her some pragmatic establishment rebublican manmeat.; 9/7/11, 5:37 PM
Automatic_Wing said...: He's Warren G. Harding without the extramarital affairs, Grover Cleveland without the unfortunate eating disorder, US.Grant with better hair.; 9/7/11, 5:39 PM
Fred4Pres said...: What I never quite got was Ann Coulter being a Chris Christie chubby chaser. But she is.

I would bring up that famous notorious blog post about Ann Coulter at the L.A. Farmer's Market...but that would be rude.; 9/7/11, 5:39 PM
Fred4Pres said...: He is Teddy Roosevelt without the charisma or courage.; 9/7/11, 5:40 PM
edutcher said...: Jeb Bush is the Joe Kennedy of the Bushes.

The Shoulda Been.

Sorry, but I want a President who's going to fight back when the media and the Democrats start lying about him and that isn't in the Bush DNA.; 9/7/11, 5:42 PM
garage mahal said...: Doesn't hate liberals nearly enough. *gag*

Speaks Spanish, that pretty much rules him out in my book.; 9/7/11, 5:45 PM
Cedarford said...: I think Jeb Bush would have been a better President than Obama, but he is cursed now as the "next in the Bush dynasty".

He would not be the right pick for VP. But he is a very capable exec that can bring a lot to the country if he is willing to serve again.
Like as Secretary of State.

A post he is qualified for, starting with him having a fine working past on Latin American matters and international commerce as Florida Gov. On the biographical side, he is fluent in Spanish, married to a Mexican born woman.

Secretary of Commerce? Also a good fit.; 9/7/11, 5:45 PM
Bob_R said...: Always said we got the second smartest of the Bush brothers. (It's a shame the Godfather analogy doesn't really work. I can't see W. as either Sonny or Fredo.); 9/7/11, 5:56 PM
GulfofMexico said...: Jeb Bush is to the left of Rick Perry, somewhere nearer to Ms. Rubin. Bushies: Big government Republicans all.; 9/7/11, 5:57 PM
sorepaw said...: You get enough of dynastic politics, you start scratching names off your list...; 9/7/11, 6:07 PM
Anonymous said...: I remain unconvinced that "bombast" is a countable noun but I agree that Christie would be better off without it (or them).; 9/7/11, 6:08 PM
Joe Schmoe said...: I don't like this cult-of-personality type stuff. Leave that to the libs.; 9/7/11, 6:16 PM
Anonymous said...: He's Warren G. Harding without the extramarital affairs, Grover Cleveland without the unfortunate eating disorder, US.Grant with better hair.

I would take Harding in a New York minute. If enough people knew more about him, he would rank high in the list of presidents by accomplishment. You could call him the 1920 Jack Kennedy except he did more in less time that turned out well.; 9/7/11, 6:16 PM
Carol_Herman said...: Nope. He's not coming back!

Rudy Guiliani didn't even try racing for governor of New York State!

Oh, yeah. And, Pataki thought he'd square up and "run" ... but he didn't even make the splash of a pebble into the water.

Chris Christie also couldn't get Californian's to vote for Meg Whitman!

Chris Christie isn't your answer, either.; 9/7/11, 6:29 PM
Michael said...: The name is a plus since any Rebublican is going to be called Bush III or something like that. Rest assured that Bush will be reviled into eternity by the left and his name will be the ne plus ultra insult; 9/7/11, 6:32 PM
viator said...: And he could keep treating the Carlyle Group in the manner to which it is accustomed.; 9/7/11, 6:47 PM
Milwaukee said...: Sorry, that fair haired boy can go elsewhere. I want a real conservative and have had enough of the Bushes. In particular, I was offended at Barbara's comments about Palin. Is that unfair, maybe. Had Jeb not been in that family, maybe he would be alright. But he wouldn't have gotten where he is today with having been in that family. The thought of him as the Republican nominee is enough to make me weep in deep and profound sorrow.

Christie is only conservative in contrast to the rest of his state. He is no champion of 2nd Amendment rights.; 9/7/11, 6:48 PM
Trooper York said...: I think the Republican Party should have the same motto as Chaz Bono:

"Bush Free Since 2008."; 9/7/11, 6:54 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Tim Geitner, sure, had some Turbo Tax problems. He's just an American!!!!

He can't figure out no darn tax code.

But, he is the ONLY man to lead us through this crisis. You ask the people who know, the people who konw to ask for 1 trillion would be wasting trillions more that could be had, and they will tell you, Democrat, Republican, Moderate:

We need Tim Geitner.

He's the man.

So his tax issues don't matter.

And Jeb Bush is the ONLY man who can lead us through this much. The only man who can stop the corporations from being bad, and increase jobs with good corporations doing good things.

Jeb can leave America as Obama left Illinois.; 9/7/11, 7:01 PM
Big Mike said...: I've been telling you folks for months now.

Jeb in 2012. You can't do much better, and in 2010 both parties did a lot worse.; 9/7/11, 7:10 PM
Milwaukee said...: The Bush family exemplifies who is profiting from affirmative action in this country: in competents born into families with money. Meanwhile, those who suffer the most are competent White males born into families without money. The rich aren't giving up their seats in universities and places of power for minorities and women. Had more competent White males not been suppressed by affirmative action, George W. Bush and his brothers wouldn't have gone as far as they did. As long as we're out supporting the Bush Brothers, why not mention the one who stole all that money during the savings and loan crisis?

Did anyone ever thoroughly investigate H.W.'s plane going down in WWII? He too got a pass, being a person born in the right family. We don't need more of them. G.W.B. got an easy deal from the press in 2000 because the press hated the Clintons, and didn't care to promote Gore.; 9/7/11, 7:12 PM
Automatic_Wing said...: Did anyone ever thoroughly investigate H.W.'s plane going down in WWII? He too got a pass, being a person born in the right family.

Dude, thousands of planes went down in WWII, many of them from pilot error. The military had a real war to fight back then, they didn't have time to conduct a goddamn 12 week safety investigation on every TBF Avenger that went down in the Pacific.; 9/7/11, 7:19 PM
Blue@9 said...: "Did anyone ever thoroughly investigate H.W.'s plane going down in WWII?"

Yeah, let's pull up the satellite pics and radio transcripts. Maybe we can dig up the black box and GPS transceiver too.

As for Jeb Bush, he may be a great guy, maybe even a great leader, but we've had two Bushes in the WH already. It sucks to be him, but I'm not one for political dynasties, whether they be Bushes or Kennedys.; 9/7/11, 7:19 PM
bagoh20 said...: Haven't we seen this coming for about 8 years. It's a bit sad in that the American style [and it's a good thing] precludes any hint of dynasty thus robbing the country of a quality leader, but also that we have so little talent available that we need to keep going to the same family. This seems to me to show a weakness and decay in the American body.

I like Jeb Bush, but I think the GOP has plenty of other talent to beat the worst President ever. The electorate just needs to prove that they deserve better, because we certainly deserve what we get.; 9/7/11, 7:31 PM
bagoh20 said...: That's damned good Trooper. It's so beautiful, so elegant that it nearly brought me to tears. My fingers were inspired to Google it to see where such a gem came from. Amazingly that quote does not exist anywhere else. Consequently, I will name my first child (male or female) "Trooper". Well done!

Yankees suck!; 9/7/11, 7:59 PM
Revenant said...: He says "Chris Christie without the bombast" like that's a GOOD thing.; 9/7/11, 8:30 PM
Robert Cook said...: Damn!

With that build up and placement among that crowd of, ahem, luminaries, I was sure it was gonna be Good Ole' Charlie Manson!; 9/7/11, 8:49 PM
William said...: That's what drives me up the wall about Democrats. All that fuss about swiftboating, but they made sure everone in America knew the insinuations about the Bush crash. Dude, within a week of crashing in shark infested waters, he was up flying again. Those who try to portray him as a coward convict themselves of the worst kind partisan bias.; 9/7/11, 10:12 PM
MadisonMan said...: Dude, thousands of planes went down in WWII, many of them from pilot error.

When Dad was in training at McDill, he says the motto was A plane a day in Tampa Bay; 9/7/11, 11:28 PM
Peter Hoh said...: Today I got an oversized postcard in the mail featuring a large photo of Jeb Bush. It looks just like the kind of mailing that candidates do to promote themselves.

I did a double-take. Seriously, was this guy running? And I didn't hear about it already?

And then I started reading. Seems he's the headliner at the "2011 Fall Briefing," put on by the Center of the American Experiment.

If 12 of us pony up $5,000, we can be seated in the "Educational Freedom Row." We'd get a photo opportunity and printed recognition in the program.; 9/7/11, 11:47 PM
Blue@9 said...: "If 12 of us pony up $5,000, we can be seated in the "Educational Freedom Row."

There are likely cheaper ways to see bush.; 9/8/11, 12:33 PM