Parker: Bush surviving, even thriving, out of spotlight’s glare

“The solutions are there . . . but you’re not going to do a wonk-a-thon in 90 seconds. I try to purge all of that from my head before debates.”

But I’m jumping ahead.

Before a general election against presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton, a heretofore unlikely scenario for Bush, there are the primary contests and yet more debates. The next one for Republicans is today on Fox Business News. This round seems a natural showcase for uber-businessman Trump, but Bush differs with this assumption.

Depending upon how questions are framed, and despite his preference to focus on Clinton’s weaknesses, he’s loaded for bear when it comes to Trump’s presumed business acumen. If the question to Bush begins with something like, You’ve said Trump isn’t a serious candidate …, “I’m going to go after him,” says Bush. “The problem is there’s too much low-hanging fruit.”

Highlight Trump’s weakness

Bush plans to highlight Trump’s multiple bankruptcies, his company’s massive layoffs, and people “getting stiffed,” including a widow, Vera Coking, whose house Trump attempted to replace in the mid-1990s with a parking lot, invariably described as a “limousine parking lot,” for one of his Atlantic City casinos, using eminent domain via New Jersey’s Casino Reinvestment Development Authority. “This is anathema to conservatives,” Bush said, referring to conservative opposition to use of eminent domain for private development.

Bush and other conservatives have long hoped this episode might prove damaging to Trump, especially in New Hampshire where similar cases have been in the forefront recently. But television ads in Iowa from the anti-tax group Club for Growth about Trump’s support for “massive new power to take private property and give it to corporations” don’t seem to have hurt him thus far. And the latest polls show Trump surging in New Hampshire.

It seems that nothing Trump does or says can dislodge him from first place. Yet, Bush would say. There’s still time to win — or lose — but Bush highlights his campaign’s better-than-anybody’s ground game, his very recent doubling of staff in New Hampshire, a proven record of governance, and policies put in place while he was governor of Florida that remain in place, a rarity.

Mary Ann Lindley, former editorial page editor of the Tallahassee Democrat during Bush’s governorship and a county commissioner since 2012, used to refer to his administration’s motto as, “We hate government and we’re here to run it.” Although not a fan of Bush’s at the time, she now views him as “a brain surgeon (ha) compared to (current Gov.) Rick Scott. And compared to the other Republicans, I’d have to say he’s got the intellectual heft I’d appreciate in a president. Not that the voters in general like that sort of thing.”

As for Bush’s path to victory? “One path,” he said, “is surviving.”