The mark of a desperate candidate, and of an apparently sore loser, is when he flails so much that he directly contradicts his own longstanding positions.
Jeb Bush is doing that right now.
Again and again in recent days, the latest incarnation of the Bush-for-president franchise has been castigating his own former protégé, Marco Rubio, as a “backbencher” who — get this — has “never done anything of consequence in [his] life.”
If this is true, it says something truly horrid about Jeb Bush’s own judgment.
What it means is that Jeb Bush thinks it is a good idea to put someone a single heartbeat away from the most powerful position in the world even if that person has “never done anything of consequence.”
Four years ago — four years before Rubio gained some seasoning in the Senate, three years before Rubio put a significant dent in Obamacare — Jeb Bush publicly advised Mitt Romney to choose Rubio as his vice-presidential nominee. Bush said back then that Rubio is “dynamic, joyful, disciplined and principled.”
But now Bush says Rubio, a very successful former Speaker of the House in Florida, has never done anything of consequence.
We are left with two options: Either Jeb Bush doesn’t have the judgment and wisdom to be president because he would put a no-account back-bencher one step short of leading the free world, or else Bush doesn’t have the grace and decency to avoid petulance when he gets trounced in the polls by somebody his allies have spent more than $10 million attacking.
Either way, Jeb Bush is providing a very poor testament to his own character and judgment.
Jeb Bush's Marco Rubio Gaffe