To quote Donne:
Never ask for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.
The South Carolina primary will likely be the end of Jeb Bush’s run for the Whitehouse. I’m on the record decrying the idea that we’ll have yet another member of either the Clinton or Bush family lead our nation.
Still, I’m struck by what this means, not only for Jeb and his personal legacy, but also for the Party and our nation as a whole. The saddest part of the slow-motion denouement of Jeb Bush’s campaign: This is not who Jeb is.
He’s a sane, credible, thinking man. He cares about immigrants and working people. He was an able leader and governor. He wants government that helps people succeed, not people that help government succeed–that is, he’s what the Republican party OUGHT TO BE.
This campaign has thrown him into the modern equivalent of an Elizabethan bear-baiting, amid a radicalizing party tearing itself apart. He’s had to lower himself to the same mean, petty, ad-hominem insults that his cliptastic peers practice, especially Cruz and Trump.
The current winnowing of candidates is leaving us with only chaff, people so Robespierre Radical that they’ll further divide this nation.
God help us.