Let’s face it: if you blunder into Republican political territory, you’ll find yourself tripping over third- and fourth-rate candidates. As of today, The Hill reports, the crowd is growing to almost twenty. Oh, wait a minute… more!

“You’ve got to prevent it from becoming a ‘WWE SmackDown’ event on national television,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell. “You don’t want to bump everybody off the stage, but you have to realize your overarching goal is protecting the eventual nominee.”

“I would think that Reince Priebus has been thinking about exactly this issue, and also about how to ensure that the debates don’t turn into the ideological bloodfest that we saw in 2012, which pushed the whole ticket to the right,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

Already declared candidates — including Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.) — are sure bets to get slots, as are former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, both of whom are expected to get in shortly. All are polling well in early surveys.

But with the GOP field still growing, where is the cutoff? By The Hill’s count there are around 22 candidates who have declared candidacies or may do so. …TheHill

In a neighboring column, The Hill’s A.B. Stoddard notes that Big Jeb Bush — wasn’t he a frontrunner? — is taking a dive.

Four months into the 2016 presidential campaign, Jeb Bush has all the money and none of the mojo.

Despite the financial juggernaut the former Florida governor has built — Bush said this week he had raised more than anyone else has at this point in a presidential campaign in history — he is failing to excite crowds, dominate polls or scare away competitors.

Bush comes in second or third in most polls, and when he has ranked first it hasn’t been by much. There is considerable enthusiasm for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as well as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who many had believed would forgo the race if Bush were to make a White House bid. Bush has doubled down on his positions on education and immigration that are unpopular with conservatives, and as each young Republican contender labels Hillary Clinton “old news,” it only makes Bush seem more stale.With an official announcement expected soon, Bush’s performance thus far is worrying his supporters more than his rivals… Stoddard,TheHill

“Stale” seems to be the most apt description of the 2016 campaign. The idea of a future with more Mitch McConnell, a resuscitation of (say) Mike Huckabee or anyone named “Bush” is a pretty appalling prospect. And the mere mention of Scott Walker is worse than stepping in dog-do.

Cross posted from Prairie Weather

Roelant Savery [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

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