Word: jeb
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...comment by Jeb Bush, Florida governor and little brother to George W. And it raises serious questions about Dubya's chances of winning the Sunshine State...
...Bush ended what was a pretty good week last Saturday in his brother's state, visiting with seniors, Hispanics and loyal Republicans. Jeb and Jeb's son George P. Bush joined the governor for most of the trip. While Dubya's campaign has been dogged by three weeks of snafus and negative press, last week he got back on message, focusing on his Social Security plan and health care matters...
...Jeb's statement that George can lose Florida and still win the nation is far-fetched, to say the least. The electoral math is strongly against that. Gore holds a two-to-one lead in California and New York, two of the big four electoral prizes. Texas is Bush country. But if Bush does not win Florida, with its 25 electoral votes, he will have to make a clean sweep of the battleground states in the Midwest to win. And if he's not winning over the moderate voters of Florida, he may not grab the moderate voters of Missouri...
...would Jeb say such a thing? To lower expectations, for one thing. To avoid blame, for another. If Bush can gain a slight lead in the next few weeks, it's seen as a significant gain. And Jeb could be trying to rebut those anonymous Republicans claiming that he and his brother should have done things differently...
...Democratic leader Buddy MacKay once quipped--the answer says a lot about where the nation's politics is headed. Florida has a long tradition of diffusing power among its chaotic grid of ethnic and social groups, making its voters perhaps the country's most pragmatic--the first hypercentrist electorate. Jeb Bush found that out when he ran an ideological campaign in 1994 and lost, then in 1998 became a compassionate conservative like his brother and won. "The country is tired of high-temperature partisan politics," says University of Florida political scientist Richard Scher. "Here, voters are fiercely independent...