Jeb Bush to help party rebuild Former Gov. Jeb Bush and other Republican leaders are holding the first of a series of town hall meetings aimed at remaking the party's image. Get Adobe Flash player * Jeb Bush's career in photos
BY BETH REINHARD breinhard@MiamiHerald.com
When national Republican leaders brainstormed about repairing their party's image after the setbacks of the last two elections, it was only natural that they would turn to Jeb Bush.
The popular two-term governor who led the fourth largest state to Republican dominance. A bilingual, telegenic and powerful near-celebrity. A policy wonk who heads his own education think tank.
Who better to travel the country, mingle with voters and articulate the Republican Party's agenda through the newly formed National Council for a New America? Bush is slated to join former presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Republican congressional leaders at the group's first town hall meeting Saturday in northern Virginia.
''He's really the perfect person to do it because he governed successfully for eight years in a swing state, a purple state, as a conservative and left office very popular,'' said Justin Sayfie, a former Bush aide who last year started his own group called ``Rebuild the Party.''
But Bush's brand of leadership is also associated with the rigid conservatism that some Republicans blame for repelling voters and most recently, veteran Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who switched parties. Dubbed ''King Jeb'' by one Democratic lawmaker, Bush intervened in the Terri Schiavo right-to-die case, helped wrap up the controversial 2000 presidential election that put his brother in office, and pushed through taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools.
''Jeb may be a better spokesman for the Republican Party than Rush Limbaugh, but that's a very low bar,'' quipped Democratic state Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach. ``He wears the right-wing badge very proudly, and as governor he didn't have any appetite for moving the party to the center.''
The new group also includes Republican presidential nominee John McCain, prompting the national Democratic Party to circulate a blogger's snarky observation that 'things are really humming along when your `rebranding' effort is led by your recently crushed presidential nominee and your discredited party leader's brother.''
Sayfie called that a ''cheap shot.'' He added, ``People judge the governor on his record and the president on his record.''
The Republican Party's attempted makeover is getting under way just as the current governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, is mulling a high-stakes bid for the U.S. Senate. The Democratic Party preemptively targeted Crist this week in its first advertisement of the 2010 election. The spot is running only in Tallahassee, but it signals that the Democratic Party intends to play hard for the seat now held by Republican Mel Martinez.
PRESSURE ON CRIST
Specter's defection to the Democratic Party could increase pressure on Crist to run, since he's the closest the Republican Party has to a shoo-in. Or the Senate could seem less intriguing to Crist since Democrats are poised to lock down a filibuster-proof majority.
Crist said Specter's switch wouldn't influence his decision and didn't necessarily reflect on the state of the Republican Party. ''He's got to do what's in his heart,'' Crist said.
Other prominent Republicans said Specter's timing hurts at a time when the party is struggling to offer credible alternatives to a popular Democratic president.
''The Specter departure is significant because of the low point the party is in right now,'' said Al Cárdenas, who served as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida under Bush. ``Our party is thirsting for new and creative ideas. At the present time, we've kind of fallen flat in terms of the quality of our substance and style.''
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