Jeb Is His “Own Man” But He Must Lean On His Daddy And His Big Bro To Save His Campaign

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Presidential candidate Jeb Bush has tried to extract himself from the dark shadows of his big brother’s failed presidency and his papa’s mediocre one-term presidency, but to no avail. As Jeb’s poll numbers remain mired in single digit quick sand, he has gathered with his father and brother to try to inject new life into his moribund campaign.

The Bush family has convened an emergency closed door meeting in Houston to try to jump start Jeb’s campaign, less than three months before the Iowa caucuses kick off the real voting in the GOP presidential race. While the Bush’s hope to reactivate family friends, ex-cabinet officials and other mega-donors, the optics of Jeb meeting with his father and brother do not inspire the kind of confidence he is hoping to project.

Even Jeb’s most devoted supporters seem pessimistic, unable to put a positive spin on the family confab. One supporter stated:

The patient [Jeb] is either in intensive care and in need of some good doctors who can save him or being put into hospice and we’re going to see a slow death.

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When a candidate’s supporters are drawing analogies between their chosen candidate and a hospice patient, its safe to say the campaign isn’t enjoying a lot of positive momentum.

Another donor exclaimed:

Having 41 [George H.W. Bush] around helps take the edge off, but we all read the same newspapers and look at the same polls and it’s tough right now. There are a lot of people we thought would have written checks who aren’t on board yet.

With a freshly released Monday Monmouth University poll showing Jeb Bush still languishing in 5th pace in Iowa, at a meager 8 percent of the vote, its hard to imagine a whole bunch of supporters jumping on board any time soon.

Bush’s family gathering is a last ditch effort to save Jeb’s under-performing campaign. For a candidate who was trying to establish himself as his “own man,” the optics of trying to revive his political fortunes by reaching for a hand up from his father and his brother couldn’t be worse. His attempts to revive his campaign by tying himself to the family name, only serves to remind voters of the past two failed Bush presidencies. Worse yet, it defines Jeb as the weakest link in the Bush family, identifying him as a candidate who can’t stand on his own two feet, and who needs Dubya and daddy to lift him up. It is horrible optics for a campaign that is increasingly looking like it is on the brink of collapse.

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Keith Brekhus

Keith Brekhus is a progressive American who currently resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He is co-host for the Liberal Fix radio show. He holds a Master's Degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri. In 2002, he ran for Congress as a Green Party candidate in the state of Missouri. In 2014, he worked as a field organizer for Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick's successful re-election bid in Arizona's 1st Congressional District. He can be followed on Twitter @keithbrekhus or on Facebook.