George W Bushis to enter the Republican campaign trail for the first time in an effort to help his brother Jeb revive his flagging presidential bid in the party’s vital next primary in South Carolina. The former president, who has so far remained silent in the most turbulent Republican nomination battle in living memory, will join his younger sibling at a rally in North Charleston on Monday, which is presidents’ day in America.
He will enter the fray after telling associates he is “bewildered” at the turn taken by the Republican race,the Washington Post reported, particularly its virtual takeover by Donald Trump,the billionaire frontrunner who has dominated headlines and opinion polls and who won this week’s New Hampshire primary.
Mr Bush is expected to rhapsodise about Jeb’s qualifications to be president yet may refrain from directly attacking Mr Trump, according to insiders, to avoid diminishing the presidency, which he held from 2000 till 2008 - despite being infuriated by the tycoon’s repeated belittling of his brother.
Mr Trump has dismissed Jeb, the former Florida governor as “low energy” and may also have offended the Bush family by mocking the presence on the campaign trial of his mother,Barbara- the former first lady during the presidency of George HW Bush, father of the two brothers.
In meetings with friends, the ex-president and his wife Laura have voiced amazement at a contest that has been dominated by Mr Trump, who has made a series of bombastic pledges, including vows to ban Muslims from the United States and to build a wall on the border with Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out. Clay Johnson, a long-term friend, told the Washington Post that in a meeting last month Mr Bush said: “Can you believe what’s going?”“He, like everybody else in America, is taken aback,” Mr Johnson said.
But in a ray of hope for Jeb -whose lavishly-funded campaign has sagged from its early front-runner status- the elder Bush brother suggested that expectations have sunk so low that he could make a surprise comeback. By weighing in in South Carolina, Mr Bush is choosing a state in which he remains popular and where his own presidential campaign in 2000 recovered its momentum with a victory over John McCain after losing the New Hampshire primary. A recent poll showed him with an 84 percent approval rate among state Republicans. Republican strategists have questioned whether that popularity can rub off on his brother.
I don’t think it’s transferable if he just says, ‘Jeb’s a good guy and trust him’,”said Katon Dawson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican party. “I think it is transferable if George W. Bush comes here, takes the gloves off and starts getting at it against Trump.”Mr Bush’s former aides suggested such a bare-knuckled approach was unlikely.
Karl Rove, the former president’s ex-senior adviser, said Mr Bush would behave like “a statesman and focus on extolling the virtues of his brother and sharing observations about what he thinks the requirements are for the next president”.Mr Bush has been reluctant to be involved in his younger brother's campaign,telling Politico last year that his unpopularity stemming from the Iraq war was likely to be a hindrance to Jeb's presidential aspirations. The younger Mr Bush has shown his own discomfort with his brother presidential legacy by distancing himself from the invasion of Iraq,saying he would not have supported it if he had known that intelligence on Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction was wrong.
Follow us on twitter for breaking news around the globe: @eUpdateNG
No comments:
Post a Comment