Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has been bashed verbally on the stump in Iowa and elsewhere and in what some say are say over-the-line ads to the extent that prominent Republican strategist Steve Schmidt said Trump is “emasculating” Bush. So now Bush is hitting back with his own ad. It’s aim: convince conservative Republicans that Donald Trump is really not one of them:
The clips aren’t new, but they demonstrate the Bush team’s line of attack that conservative voters can’t trust Trump’s party bonafides. Conventional wisdom pegged Bush as the establishment front-runner, so most experts believed earlier in the campaign that Bush’s best strategy to deal with Trump’s brash rhetoric was to ignore it and hope that he faded.
But Trump hasn’t gone away — his poll numbers have only increased, and he’s now on top in the three earliest nominating states as well as nationally.
So Bush’s team recently stepped up his criticism on Trump, as those skyrocketing poll numbers are paired with Bush’s lagging numbers.
The opening salvo came in response to Trump‘s immigration plan, which Bush panned as not grounded in conservative values.
That prompted Trump to target Bush on the trail, hosting dueling events in New Hampshire where he panned the former governor as unelectable and “low-energy.”
The pair opened this week sparring over immigration and crime. Trump posted a short video on Instagram bashing Bush for referring to illegal immigration in 2014 as “an act of love.” The video pairs Bush’s comments with photos of undocumented immigrants accused of murder.
Bush’s team hit back Monday afternoon with a statement slamming Trump as soft on crime, noting his past support for Democratic politicians and his backing of legalizing certain drugs.
“That little [Trump] ad was just a complete mischaracterization of my thinking, it’s almost as though Donald Trump is acting like a Washington politician. That’s what they do,” Bush said Tuesday on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”
The conventional wisdom has been that no matter how strong he is in the polls, Trump is the Flavor of the Month and in the end one of the more traditional politicos is likely to be the GOP nomination nod — with Jeb! having one of the biggest non-Trump bankrolls.
But remember that Baskin Robbins still sells some onetime flavors of the month.
And the conventional wisdom on Trump is quickly melting.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.