Bush's Downfall: Don't Blame Trump

Pundits weigh in on Jeb's doomed campaign
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 22, 2016 2:44 PM CST
Bush's Downfall: Don't Blame Trump
Jeb Bush addresses supporters after his bad night in South Carolina.   (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

The post-mortems on Jeb Bush's failed campaign are rolling in. Some examples:

  • Don't blame Donald Trump. "What killed Jeb Bush’s campaign was first the failure of his brother’s administration, and then the emergence of Marco Rubio to present a more attractive face for its continuation," writes Jonathan Chait at New York.
  • Still, Peter Beinart at the Atlantic explains why Bush was Trump's "perfect foil."
  • The Week sums things up by collecting 19 "devastating quotes" that compare coverage of Bush in early 2015 with more recent stories.

  • One problem: His campaign underestimated "Bush fatigue," observes the Washington Post.
  • Another: He didn't have advisers who could recognize shortcomings and, more importantly, point them out to Bush himself, says this piece in Politico Magazine.
  • How on earth do you spend $130 million and have so little to show for it? The New York Times digs into "one of the least successful campaign spending binges in history."
  • Those early stumbles on Iraq didn't help, notes CNN.
  • Gary Legum at Salon bids "good riddance" to the "Bush Dynasty" with the question, "Can anyone think of another family dynasty that has had such a huge role in a particular stretch of American history, yet has almost zero hold on the country’s imagination?"
(More Jeb Bush 2016 stories.)

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