For a group of people successful enough to donate one million dollars or more to a political campaign, the members of Jeb Bush’s SuperPAC — Right to Rise — have been acting in an astonishingly clueless manner for months. It’s almost as if they were all paid political operatives of Donald Trump — and he certainly doesn’t need their help.
One way to look at it is the old saw about not fighting last year’s war. This group has been fighting the last decade’s war — or maybe the last century’s. (It wasn’t that long ago, after all.) Further, from my perspective as one of the few Academy Award nominees in screenwriting actually to vote Republican, the PAC’s creative video work has been nothing short of atrocious. Put bluntly, their ads suck. They’re unwatchable.
Don’t believe me, fine. Read the polls and count the votes. Jeb Bush’s campaign has gone absolutely nowhere and shows virtually no sign of improvement. Worse, it has obstructed other candidates who have a far better chance. To repeat, Right to Rise has, in effect, been working for Donald Trump and blown tens of millions of dollars in the process, far more than Donald has. They should feel humiliated. I certainly would be.
Could nothing have saved Jeb? Probably. This was not the year to run a legacy. But that doesn’t excuse this PAC’s level of mediocrity for that amount of money. I bet not one of those people would have been anywhere near as wasteful individually. And that leaves aside the myriad good works that the PAC’s 100 million or so could have generated for decent charities.
Enough. Saturday’s South Carolina primary is their absolute deadline. (It should have been months ago.) If Jeb doesn’t crack double digits, or only does so barely, it’s time to question the patriotism of Right to Rise if they don’t pull the plug. They may have done it to some extent (the ad buys are diminished) but now the future of our country hangs in the balance. The Democrats are offering the country a woman so corrupt she’d sell uranium to Putin or a Henry Wallace retread from the election of 1948 who preaches a nine-year-old’s version of socialism – this with a disintegrating global economy and Western Europe on the verge of going Islamic. (For an all-too-realistic and frightening account of that transition, read Submission by the French novelist Houellebecq.)
So, you Right to Rise folks, what side are you on — traditional politics or the future for your children and grandchildren? I know that sounds corny, but that’s what’s happening. The country that made you and your families so wealthy hangs in the balance. Stop your nostalgic quixotic quest and allow other candidates — Rubio, Cruz, Kasich — some breathing room, if it’s not already too late. It probably already is and, I hate to say it, you are substantially to blame. And I write this as one who is not afraid of a Trump presidency and would vastly prefer it to any Democrat at this point.
Finally, I was gracious and did not mention any of you by name — although most of your names are readily available. But what you should have learned by now is the one thing American voters, right and left, are telling us. They are SO OVER business as usual. Time to wake up. The world has changed. Does being conservative mean being conventional? I hope not, because, if it does, it’s doomed.
By the way, at this writing, when you type JebBush.com into your browser, DonaldTrump.com comes up. At first I thought it was a hack, but apparently, Jeb forgot to renew the domain names for his website — Trump just tweeted that out. Evidently the people working for Jeb are totally inept. Who would want to vote for someone like that for president in 2016?
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