The chances of another Bush family living in the White House any time soon appear to have gone out the window, as Jeb Bush’s presidential candidate campaign looks as if it is well and truly derailed.
According to this mornings CNN/ORC poll, the former two time Florida Governor and son and brother of two former presidents, is polling at a mere three percent – and dropping. He is running a distant sixth place in the Republican candidate stakes.
When he announced his bid back in June, Bush, a self-proclaimed “joyful tortoise”, was one of the unquestioned establishment favorites. Now it appears it will take a political miracle for him to regain any ground in the two months left before the Iowa caucuses.
Bush’s campaign team is hoping the rules of prior presidential campaigns will come into play, citing the 2004 Democratic campaign when veteran Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry made a huge comeback in the weeks before Iowa, and in 2012, when John McCain ignored Iowa and set up camp in New Hampshire to launch his comeback.
But, Kerry and McCain were sitting senators and war heroes with charisma, and all Bush appears to have is a family history and a laurel resting career that last saw active political action more than a decade ago. Even his latest campaign video called “Storm Governor” highlights how out-of-the-loop he is as it shows Bush’s leadership achievements after Hurricane Ivan hit the Sunshine State way back in 2004.
His campaign allies have taken over the airwaves with almost $30 million in ads aimed at shaking his “low-energy” tag and showing his toughness, but according to this morning’s poll, they have not worked.
However the Bush campaign team’s communications director Tim Miller is not concerned. He says this morning’s poll does not show what is going on behind the scenes. He says there have been increased conversions among voters in phone calls and door knocking over the past few week.
“It’s something that we feel optimistic about and so that infrastructure needs to be in place to capitalize on what we hope is momentum heading into the primaries and caucuses,” he says.
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