Jeb Bush? Seriously media villagers?

For months now we have been treated to a pre-pre-announcement that Jeb Bush will run for president in 2016. It’s all that Bush fluffers in the Beltway media want to talk about. Today, “Jebby” Bush titillated the Beltway media villagers with this Tweet:

I am excited to announce I will actively explore the possibility of running for President of the United States: https://t.co/….
— @JebBush

It just amazes me how the Beltway media can compartmentalize and demonstrate such cognitive dissonance. For the past week the media has been discussing the illegal torture and war crimes of unindicted war criminal George W. Bush.  At the same time the media villagers talk about “Jebby” Bush as if he represents a restoration of a Bush royal dynasty. WTF is wrong with media villagers?

Charles Pierce at Esquire nailed it back in October in Jebmentum!:

On the heels of The New York Times front-pager that, up until only a few years ago, would have been considered an illegal sex act in several states, we find ourselves confronted with the possibility that Jeb Bush may well take out for a spin a family name that ought to be considered an obscenity in any respectable dictionary of American democracy.

Just six years ago, at the end of the last tumultuous Bush presidency, this would have been all but unthinkable. But President Obama’s troubles, the internal divisions of the Republican Party, a newfound nostalgia for the first Bush presidency and a modest softening of views about the second have changed the dynamics enough to make plausible another Bush candidacy. And while Jeb Bush wants to run as his own man, invariably this is a family with something to prove.

Please to be giving me a fking break. If they want to redeem themselves for the catastrophes that C-Plus Augustus wrought upon the country, and for Poppy’s inexcusable skating away from Iran-Contra, let the whole lot of them go clean bedpans at Walter Reed. The idea that we would let any member of the Bush family — to say nothing of the family’s “vast constellation of friends, advisers, strategists, pollsters, fund-raisers, donors and supporters assembled over several generations in public life” — anywhere near our policies in the Middle East again is rather like hiring the late Jeffrey Dahmer as the White House chef.

Pierce concluded his post with “This is a family that believes itself entitled to power, whatever The New York Times thinks, and it will do anything it thinks is necessary to gain that power. They are the American Borgias, and we may never be rid of them.” Truer words were never spoken.

Jeb’s momma got it exactly right in April of 2013, in an interview on NBC’s Today show. Barbara Bush on Jeb run: ‘We’ve had enough Bushes’:

Amid the celebration surrounding the opening of son George W. Bush‘s presidential library Thursday, former first lady Barbara Bush brushed aside talk of a Jeb Bush run for the White House in 2016.

Appearing in an interview from Dallas on NBC’s “Today” show, Mrs.
Bush was asked if she thought that Jeb, the former governor of Florida,
should seek the presidency.

“He’s by far the best qualified man,” Mrs. Bush said, “but no.”

“We’ve had enough Bushes,” she said, saying “it’s not just four families, or whatever.”

Damn straight! David Letterman did a funny bit about this back in October. “Busherin,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOQlSCg7Ark.

Jeb Bush recently has been following the example of vulture capitalist and offshore tax haven evader Willard “Mittens” Romney. Ed Kilgore writes at the Political Animal blog,  Jeb’s Portfolio Flirts With Political Disaster:

Jeb Bush’s obdurately base-dissing positions on immigration and Common Core, and the toxic associations of his family’s “brand,” aren’t the only reason observers are wondering if he’ll wind up taking a pass on a sixth Bush presidential candidacy.

At Bloomberg Politics today, Miles Weiss and Joshua Green report that the former Florida governor has been undertaking some recent business associations that are going to be a real problem for someone entering the maximum glare of the presidential arena. They call it Bush’s “Mitt Romney Problem,” and it could be pretty serious. Some excerpts:

Documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Nov. 27 list Bush as chairman and manager of a new offshore private equity fund, BH Global Aviation, which raised $61 million in September, largely from foreign investors. In November the fund incorporated in the United Kingdom and Wales—a structure, several independent finance lawyers say, that operates like a tax haven by allowing overseas investors to avoid U.S. taxes and regulations.

BH Global Aviation is one of at least three such funds Bush has launched in less than two years through his Coral Gables, Fla., company, Britton Hill Holdings. He’s also chairman of a $26 million fund, BH Logistics, established in April with backing from a Chinese conglomerate, and a $40 million fund involved in shale oil exploration, according to documents filed in June and first reported on by Bloomberg News.

Hmmm. Brokering corporate inversions. Opening doors for Chinese investments in fossil fuel companies. These are indeed Mitt-ish business dealings, by a guy with an earlier taint from a gig with Lehman Brothers right before its collapse triggered the financial crisis of 2008, and with no apparent poverty he needed to address. As one Republican consultant told Weiss and Green:

“Running as the second coming of Mitt Romney is not a credential that’s going to play anywhere, with Republicans or Democrats,” says John Brabender, a Republican consultant and veteran of presidential campaigns. “Not only would this be problematic on the campaign trail, I think it also signals someone who isn’t seriously looking at the presidency or he wouldn’t have gone down this path.”

And not only that, but Bush’s commitments to investors in his enterprises might be seriously compromised if he bails to run for president.

It’s not clear how easily Bush could extract himself from his funds. Most have a “key man” provision binding the principals for the duration of the fund. In April, hedge fund manager Marc Lasry of Avenue Capital Group withdrew from consideration to become President Barack Obama’s ambassador to France when some investors wouldn’t grant him a key man waiver. A source close to Bush says he’s not a key man, but wouldn’t discuss how easily he could leave if he decides to run for president.

All in all, you can begin to understand the recent interest among big GOP donors, who had been panting for a Jebbie run, in a possible Romney revival. If you’re going to run a candidate who is perceived as “the second coming of Mitt Romney,” why not go with the original, who has already made his peace with the movement conservatives who originally opposed him in 2012 and doesn’t have the dynastic baggage?

If I hear one more media villager salivating over the idea of another Clinton v. Bush matchup, I will beat the snot out of the effin’ idiot.