Bushed GOP Seeks Alternatives

Dick Morris sizes up possible rivals to Jeb Bush for the 2016 Republican nomination. The good news is that Bush seems much weaker than you'd think from media coverage. The bad news is who might emerge from the rest of the current list:

Setting aside the poll's stragglers, we have to view the candidacies of Walker, Rubio, Carson and Cruz as a unit, together getting 33 percent of the vote. Some voters may prefer one or the other, but their support is, at the moment, likely interchangeable. The winner of this four-way contest will emerge to challenge Bush -- and the former Florida governor is vulnerable.

Until he announced his candidacy at Liberty University, I had some cautious optimism about Cruz -- not that that would have lasted long. Of the rest, I can't support Carson and am leery of Rubio. I might be able to offer qualified support for Walker.

It may be too late -- or too early yet -- for a decent, secular, limited-government candidate to emerge from the Republican Party. I haven't abandoned hope altogether for a not-completely-unacceptable alternative to emerge -- and I could revise my estimate of Cruz, Rubio, or Walker with more information -- but so far, I expect to abstain from voting for President yet again.

-- CAV