It's make or break time for Jeb Bush

[Fuzzy Bear]

From the article,

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My god the Bush team is delusional. Jeb will never win over the Conservative base no matter how hard you try to push him onto others. I've literally never met a Jeb supporter in real life that was a solid conservative. Go to any Conservative website and read the comment section and find a Jeb supporter. They don't want him.

Jeb Bush is not trying to win over the base, he's "losing the primary to win the general."

That means Jeb is running as an independent, eh?  At least if you take it literally it does.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Struggling in a primary normally means you'll struggle in the general.

This is simply false. All republicans would suck up and vote for Jeb Bush when it came down to it. He's perfectly conservative enough, has excellent fiscal achievement in Florida and has a heart that you can't quite find out of the other 20+ candidates in this race on both sides. I don't care what people tell polling companies right now, the Republican base would come down to election week with Hillary Clinton as the Dem nominee and would get off their ass and vote for Jeb. He's not George Pataki. Jeb is absolutely conservative on various issues and conservatively moderate on a few issues at absolute worse.

Jeb is playing for the general and seeings as how the GOP base would suck up and vote for him, then he just has to broaden the base outside that, which is what he looks to be doing.

Jeb struggling in the primary is not a sign he'll struggle in the general. He's struggling in the primary because he is playing for the general instead of catering to the GOP base this early on.

Jeb is strugging for a specific reason, which is that a wide range of Republicans blame George W. Bush for the collapse of center-right hegemony in Presidential politics and the advantage the Democratic candidate enjoys in Presidential elections.  They also consider the Bush name to be toxic, and nothing that has happened in the last 8 years has significantly mitigated the negativity toward the Bush Family as a whole.

This is different than struggling for your particular campaign tack.  Lots of struggling candidates have fired their consultant and changed course on the way to better fortunes.  All the consultants in the world will not remove Jeb from the negatives of being a Bush.  Period.

[Fuzzy Bear]

I find it incredibly troubling that one has to be a great speaker to become President of the United States. You have to be able to articulate a message and communicate once elected, yes, but not everyone is Ronald Reagan.

Jeb Bush is where he is because people are angry right now, probably more angry than they were under Jimmy Carter. Bush is telling people to be happy and optimistic, and in the end I think they will be, but right now they are angry and the outsiders are tapping into that anger. But Jeb Bush is the anti-Obama in this election; he has a conservative agenda, a conservative record, and he is an honest guy. But people are fed up and don't realize that Bush draws the starkest contrast not just on the stump, but in having an actual record, with the Democrats.

Republicans are angry with Bush because he's running for President despite being the brother of a recently failed GOP President.  All the apologia for W you can muster doesn't change the public verdict on Bush 43, which still stands.   Republicans of ALL stripes get this, and they don't want to lose in 2016.  They view Jeb's candidacy as self-indulgent on Jeb's part, and on the part of the entire Bush Family, and, quite frankly, I can't see a reason why any partisan Republican, whether they be liberal, moderate, or conservative, should view Jeb's candidacy in any other light.