You could almost feel sorry for him, if he wasn't Jeb! Bush. His presidential campaign is so pathetic that establishment Republicans are telling him to get out of the way of Marco Rubio.
On Monday, the Right to Rise PAC hit the early state airwaves with an ad skewering Bush’s former protégé for flipping on immigration—an issue on which he and Bush actually agree. And on Tuesday, the group unleashed a second ad that portrayed Rubio as a flip-flopper and mocked his heeled boots.
These attacks aim to clear some space for Bush in the establishment lane of this sprawling primary fight with the Iowa caucuses just weeks away. But to those who no longer believe Bush can win the Republican nomination, his super PAC, with tens of millions of dollars left to spend, looks more like a wrecking ball meant to lay waste to the one contender many Bush donors see as the last remaining mainstream alternative to Trump or Cruz.
"This is something Jeb Bush has to decide. Does he want his legacy to be that he elected Donald Trump or Ted Cruz?" said Stuart Stevens, the GOP strategist who ran Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign. "He can't control that super PAC but he ought to call on the super PAC to stop and stop attacking people with whom he mostly agrees."
Ouch. But it's just so much fun.
"This thing has been mismanaged and screwed up since the beginning," said a Jeb Bush backer in the Washington area who worked in both previous Bush administrations. "It's gotten to the point where the old-timers are saying 'it's really sad.' How as presumptive leader with $100 million in the bank did you get yourself in a box where you have to attack Rubio and Christie to win your lane?"
There’s paragraphs and paragraphs more of Republicans dumping on Jeb!, from Erick Erickson calling him "silly and embarrassing" to Florida Republicans dishing on the pure "hatred […] jealousy, spite" in the Jeb! campaign against Rubio "over his having the audacity to run" when it was clearly Jeb!'s turn.
Remember how everyone thought Jeb!'s chances at the White House were totally ruined by his dumber brother's Iraq debacle? Who knew Jeb! didn't need any help to lose the Republican nomination in such a big and embarrassing way. It is kind of sad, but in a hugely satisfying way.