Jeb's Shaky Performance Has Rivals Asking "Is Jeb Ready?"

I had strongly suspected it was Team Jeb aggressively pushing the "Is Walker ready?" meme a couple of months ago, so this is just too delicious.

The stumbles mark the toughest period yet for Bush's still-undeclared campaign and have lit a fire under his likely GOP opponents, many of whom have happily proclaimed that they would not have authorized the Iraq invasion under those conditions. Many conservative leaders and pundits are also lacerating Bush as appearing unprepared to address an obvious topic and are casting him as a tone-deaf relic of the GOP elite.

"These are the questions that are extraordinarily important for the country, and I think if you're considering running for president you need to answer the question," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), who is weighing his own 2016 bid, said on a radio program Wednesday.

Apparently, that motor-mouthed, CodePink-talking-points spraying 19 year old dullard's interrogation of Bush is also being folded into the media's New Narrative.

Earlier Wednesday, at the end of a rowdy town-hall meeting in Reno, Bush had testy exchange with a 19-year-old Democratic college student who said, "Your brother created ISIS," referring to the Islamic State terrorist group.

Then the student, Ivy Ziedrich, complained that Bush was being "pedantic" in response to her remarks.

Yes, and she also sounded like, get this, a Millennial who uses words whose meanings she doesn't understand:

Ziedrich: The threat of ISIS was created by the Iraqi Coalition Authority which ousted the entire government of Iraq. It was when 30,000 individuals who were part of the Iraqi military, they were forced out, they had no employment, they had no income. Yet they were left with access to all of the same arms and weapons. Your brother created ISIS.

Bush: Is that a question?

Ziedrich: You don't need to be pedantic to me, sir.

Bush: Pedantic? Wow.

Still, Bush's response wasn't really all that one could have hoped for.

"You can rewrite history all you want, but the simple fact is that we’re in a much more unstable place because America pulled back," Bush said.

In addition to Christie, at least five other potential Bush rivals have said in recent days that they would not have backed the invasion if they knew in 2003 that the intelligence on Iraqi weapons was inaccurate: Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), plus Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

"To say that nothing would happen differently means we're going to get George Bush 3," said Paul, who is attempting to bridge the hawkish and libertarian wings of the GOP.

And again, the "is he ready" question:

...

"I don't get it. How could you not have been ready for this question?" said conservative activist Grover Norquist, who has clashed with Bush over taxes. "The answer was odd, but the lack of preparation was odd and unusual."

Speaking of preparation, Marco Rubio is getting high marks for his. Even if you think he's too hawkish on foreign policy, he does seem to have come prepared to talk about it.

posted by Ace at 01:29 PM

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