Column: Jeb Bush finally finds his message: He’s the anti-Trump

A funny thing happened on the way to Jeb Bush’s long-expected disappearance from the Republican presidential contest: He became a better — and more interesting — candidate. Improbably, he has Donald Trump to thank for it.

For much of 2015, after launching his campaign as a presumptive front-runner, Bush watched in miffed disbelief as GOP voters cheered Trump’s uncouth braggadocio. “I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around being miserable, listening to people demonize me,” Bush said last fall. “That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that.”

But as Trump’s insults continued, Bush’s standoffish pique morphed into slow-boiling anger.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Jeb Bush: A Feb. 10 Op Ed column about Jeb Bush’s improved campaign said a 2010 Supreme Court decision allowed super PACs to raise money anonymously. It is an election law loophole that allows super PACs to accept donations from organizations who do not disclose their contributors. —
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In recent weeks, the former Florida governor has redefined himself as the anti-Trump, out to save his party from the specter of a nominee without qualifications or polish. The newfound mission has given Bush a clear message, an ingredient his campaign had been missing.

Along the way, he’s shed his politesse to match Trump insult for insult.

“Donald Trump, you aren’t just a loser, you are a liar and a whiner,” Bush taunted, un-Bush-like, on Twitter this week.

In campaign stops across New Hampshire, Bush argued that Trump’s candidacy is a danger not only to the party, but to the country as well.

“At some point in the next presidency, there will be a crisis,” he told Rotary Club members in Nashua, N.H., on Monday. “Who do you want sitting behind the big desk?”

“Donald Trump organizes his campaign around disparaging people,” he added. “It’s not strong to insult women. It’s not strong to castigate Hispanics. It’s not strong to ridicule the disabled. And it’s certainly not strong to call people like John McCain ... losers.”

The new message appears to have given Bush only a modest boost in New Hampshire, where he finished in the middle of the pack — far behind Trump. But tactical advantage isn’t the reason he’s attacking the businessman, Bush told Politico.

“I was offended” by Trump’s campaign, he said. “I still am.... You don’t insult your way to the White House.”

Before anyone had cast a ballot in New Hampshire, Bush and his aides insisted that he would stay in the race for months to come.

“This is a long-haul process,” he said. “Public sentiment, how people feel, will change. It always does. And if you stick to who you are … the simple fact is you can win the day.”

Bush has other reasons to continue, no matter how long the odds appear. His campaign has more than enough money; at the end of 2015, his super PAC reported $58 million in its coffers. He has a serious campaign organization in South Carolina, site of the next primary on Feb. 20.

One other factor: Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, has urged him to stay in. “His advice is consistently: Stay the course, be patient, it’s coming your way,” Bush told Politico. (With a Bush in the race, there’s always an extra dash of family drama.)

So Bush has found a mission and freed himself from caution.

He’s even migrated back to some of his original, moderate-conservative positions — at least in New Hampshire, where GOP voters are less hard-line than other places.

At a town meeting in Bedford last weekend, he sounded almost like a Democrat on the subject of climate change.

“Look, the climate is changing,” he said. “We have billions of people that live on the planet. We clearly have an impact. To deny it doesn’t make sense.” (He added, though, that massive subsidies for clean energy projects don’t make sense, either.)

In Nashua, he said he wants to overturn the Supreme Court decision that allowed super PACs (including his own) to raise money anonymously. He still favors unlimited fundraising, he said, but he favors “total transparency” — a position that puts him at odds with GOP leaders in Congress.

And he said one of his central goals as president would be to restore the lost art of bipartisan compromise to Washington.

“I don’t think liberals are bad people,” he said.

Bush is still out of sync with tea party voters who prize ideological purity over deal-making. He’s not likely to win many of Ted Cruz’s voters, but those aren’t the voters he’s aiming for. He’s trying to peel support away from Marco Rubio and Trump.

But when Bush talks about Rubio, his former political protege in Florida, he sounds more disappointed than angry. It’s Trump who elicits his hitherto unglimpsed passion.

“Donald Trump: You’re the loser!” Bush declared in Nashua.

He’s not merely a candidate; he’s an anti-candidate. Bush may not win, but if he succeeds in denying the nomination to Trump, he’ll count that as one mission accomplished. Trump may yet rue the day he derided Bush as a low-energy loser.

doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com

Twitter: @doylemcmanus

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