"If this election is about how we're going to fight to get nothing done, then I don't want any part of it. I've got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them. That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that." Jeb Bush
October 28, 2015
By: Linda Case Gibbons
If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
And Jeb can't.
No matter how his family props him up, the kitchen's too hot for him.
Because Jeb comes from one of the three families we're expected to choose our presidential candidates from, he is used to having things handed to him. He doesn't like it one bit when things don't go the way his family told him it would.
Things aren't looking too great right now for Jeb. Donors are balking, volunteers are fleeing, and Jeb is losing it, the same way Hillary did in the "Benghazi Hearing Round One."
He even had to rope his family in to help him figure out how to become president.
He doesn't like being at seven percent in the polls, and he doesn't like the reason: People don't want him. So he's decided that if he doesn't get what he wants, he's taking his ball and going home.
If Jeb were president, how do you think a meeting would go between him and Russian President Putin?
Can you imagine what he'd do if he had the Republican Establishment snapping at his heels like Donald Trump? And the media? And the presidential dynasties, Kennedy, Bush and Clinton?
Grace under pressure. It's one of the things we like about Trump that the press doesn't understand.
And his resilience. His ability to tackle the issues Washington won't.
And his willingness to spend his own money at a time in his life when he, like Jeb, doesn't need the hassle he's getting running for president, but, he, unlike Jeb, is doing it because, in his words, his country is in trouble.
But that is not what Washington is used to, is it? And there's the rub.
They're used to politicians who cave before the battle is waged.
Like Establishment Republicans.
They are not used to a candidate who gets rid of SuperPacs because he doesn't know what they are, or what they do, and has decided he wants nothing to do with them.
They are not used to a candidate who sent lawyers' letters to those SuperPacs, telling them to disband and to return money to whomever the donors are.
Interestingly none of the other candidates or the media are talking about what he did, even though other candidates and the media are always insisting there's a need for campaign reform.
I don't know, but isn't that what this is?
In the past eight years, the Washington we have come to know call it a victory when Hillary gets a new haircut, and manages to fix herself up to look presentable, and gets through a Congressional hearing without blowing her top, and through a debate with no debaters.
The Republican Party we have come to know tells us what they can't do. Like get Lois Lerner indicted. Like get HIllary Clinton indicted.
It's what Washington is used to doing. Losing. Giving up. Not winning.
In the past eight years, we have become a nation where kids get handed trophies for not winning; where a 19-year-old-high-school-graduate-witness in the Trayvon Martin trial admits she can't read cursive writing; and a New York Post columnist calls a black sheriff an "Uncle Tom" for opposing the Black Lives Matter movement. Winning isn't even in the picture anymore.
The battle lines are drawn, between fixing a broken, misguided Washington and the politicians who want to preserve the status quo, afraid they'll be the ones getting "fixed."
The battles lines are drawn, between the "For the People, By the People" type of government, versus the politicians who don't want to lose their place at the trough.
The stakes are high this time around. Not everyone can stand the heat. Ask Jeb's family.
Hold the line, America.