As the Republican primary is about to begin Mitt Romney has not gotten any traction and Republicans have bounced from one buffoonish not-Romney to another.  I few weeks ago the talk of a brokered convention made an appearence.  Initially I discounted such  like most of the “serious people”.  Now I’m not so sure.

As Charles Pierce points out none other that Jeb Bush had an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this weekend that could have been written by Ayn Rand herself – some real conservative red meat.

Charles Pierce:

Make no mistake. You don’t write an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal at this point in the Republican primary process unless somebody, somewhere wants to make people think you’re an legitimate option. You certainly don’t write one as stuffed full of free-market banana-oil as this one unless somebody, somewhere wants to raise enough money to make the world think you’re a legitimate option. There was enough Jeb (!) buzz over the weekend that it’s becoming plain that some very important someone’s have looked over the current Republican field and decided that, by god, it’s just bad enough that there’s room in there to bring back the most discredited surname in American politics. The slogan writes itself:

“Jeb! This time, let’s try the smart one.”

I think it’s too late for anyone not already in to win the primary race.  But what if nobody wins?  Brokered convention?  So why not get some names out there – like Jeb.

Of course there is a little problem.  Jeb may be the smart one but is the country really ready for another Bush only 4 years after the moronic one destroyed this country and a few others?  Better than Romney, better than Bachmann, better than Gingrich, better than Perry.  Probably, but is the country really ready for another Bush?

Especially when people are reminded of this:

And he’s the smart one. Remember that.

But the part that’s truly hilarious, especially if you remember Governor Jeb (!), is this part,

As Florida’s governor for eight years, I was asked to “do something” almost every day. Many times I resisted through vetoes but many times I succumbed.

I remember one time you “succumbed,” foof. Two words.

Terri Schiavo.

Jeb (!) played right along when wingnut fanatics took a personal family issue and turned it into an international media circus. He brought unconscionable pressure down on people at a hospice who’d never done anything to him. He put an unforgivable amount of pressure on a great, brave woman named Annie Santa Maria, whom I would like to lock in a room with him one day and see who comes out alive. (My money’s on Annie, by the way.) He came dangerously close to initiating hostilities between the local authorities in Pinellas Park and the Florida state patrol. On October 21, 2003, he issued an order for Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, which had been disconnected by order of a court six days earlier. He did this by ramming an ad hoc bill through his pet legislature that allowed him to “overrule” a court’s decision in this regard. (And people think Newt Gingrich is the only authoriarian yahoo in the race. He may yet have some competition there.) He made life a living hell for Michael Schiavo, and for the judges who ultimately had to deal with this mess. He allied himself with the worst elements of the lunatic Right, some of whom were threatening Michael and some of whom were threatening the judges.

And when the cruel hash he helped make out of events finally came to an end, and when an autopsy showed that Terri Schiavo had been every bit as actually dead as her husband had been saying all along, Jeb (!) still wasn’t satisfied. He demanded — and got — a state investigation into possible “crimes” committed in the case of this poor woman — including, most foully, whether or not Michael had been responsible for her condition in the first place — and that didn’t end until the Florida attorney general finally told him to shut up about it.

That’s our Jeb (!) Bankers should be free to steal your pension, but husbands should not be free to decide end-of-life care for their wives.

Good luck with that one!  Even a majority of evangelicals were opposed to the Schiavo intervention and it was one of the things that caused George W’s popularity to tumble.

Update: Rush is on-board.

Cross posted at Newshoggers.