Last I heard, she spent more time with her family (meaning, the family she left to marry Jebby) than she does with her Bush family...! And she's not political, she doesn't want to campaign. So there's that....
Why didn’t Jeb Bush run for president in 2012?
In a Republican field as weak as any in the past 30 years, Bush might have easily mopped the floor with Mitt Romney.
But Jeb had virtually disappeared after he left office in 2007, studiously avoiding the national press. His first order of business was filling his coffers. He signed on as a consultant to Lehman Brothers. After Lehman’s collapse in 2008, he joined Barclays, which led to a lot of golf games with bankers in New York. Along the way, he trimmed down his weight, consulted continuously with donors and political consultants, and prepared himself for … what?
Friends and former advisers say Bush was torn over whether to run for Senate in Florida in 2010. He opted instead to support Marco Rubio for the seat. As 2012 approached, he seriously mulled the presidency. Donors and former aides urged him to consider. He was again torn.
People close to Bush describe several factors that dissuaded him, including a desire to make more money. But the major reason was the unwillingness, or inability, of his wife to be a political partner. Columba Bush, long and awkward presence in the Bush family, speaks English haltingly and has rarely joined her husband on political stages. When Jeb became governor, she spent less time in the capital of Tallahassee than she did in their home near Miami, where the family, including Jeb, all spoke Spanish. Signs of trouble first emerged in 1999 when she went on a five-day Parisian shopping trip and bought $19,000 worth of clothes and jewelry and tried declaring only $500 at Customs (to hide the expenditures from her husband, she said). After the ensuing media debacle, she was kept out of sight. “My wife is not a public person,” Bush said at the time. “She is uncomfortable with the limelight, which is why I love her. I don’t want a political wife—I want someone who when I get home I can have a normal life with.”
....But then there was the obvious: People simply weren’t prepared for another Bush in the White House. As Jeb negotiated the right wing of his party in a primary circus, the media hot lamps of a presidential race would be trained on his ailing father, his reclusive brother, his own troubled family. No matter the weakness in the Republican field; it would take more time for the House of Bush to get back in order.
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Long article, interesting...! A few (out of sequence) tidbits--this one is about Dubya:
“He’s become increasingly agoraphobic,” this person adds of the former president. “He looked startled by the whole thing. But he doesn’t like people, he never did, he doesn’t now.”
How Karl Rove stole the Bush donor list, that began life as Barbara Bush's Xmas card list:
While the network sits moribund, awaiting a Bush candidate, W.’s legendary “brain” and political footman, Karl Rove, has virtually absconded with the Rolodex, using it to christen himself party boss and kingmaker of the GOP. The Rove-conceived American Crossroads super-pac network is populated with the same oilmen and real-estate tycoons who fueled the Bushes. For W.’s cause, Rove was a brilliant tactician, and he helped build the network. But the larger family has long looked askance at Rove—Jeb Bush and his parents, especially Bar, don’t trust him, according to several family associates.
Little George P. Bush is besties with nut-job Cruz:
George P. Bush, whose grandfather famously referred to him and his siblings as “the little brown ones” in the eighties, says he cannot escape the family name, even though he tried at first. “It’s quintessentially Bush to establish your own identity,” he says, “but in the eyes of others it’s viewed as something larger than that in terms of having the name. I feel like I can kind of be myself, but embrace who I am as a Bush.” As is Bush custom, George P. has been establishing his fortune, first in private equity doing real-estate deals, and now investing in the energy sector—just like Grandpa. Like his grandfather, George H.W. Bush, he served in the Navy, doing a six-month tour in Afghanistan under a pseudonym to protect his security. He is head of pacs trying to draw young people and Hispanics into the party, and this August, he agreed to be the deputy finance chair of the Texas GOP—an echo of how his father entered into politics before running for office. Like his father, he has also thrown his support behind a Hispanic tea partyer—Ted Cruz, who is running for Senate in Texas this fall.
Lotta baggage, there....!!!!
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flamingdem!
