If there is one thing that all of the Republican presidential candidates can agree on, it is the importance of winning this election. Time after time we hear everyone from Governor John Kasich to Ben Carson talk about how transformative this election will be for the country and the importance of the right person winning the job. They couldn’t be more right.
Even the most conservative Supreme Court observers believe that the next president, whomever they may be, will have the opportunity to appoint at least two Supreme Court Justices. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia, Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy will be at least 80 by the end of our next President’s term, meaning that potentially the ideology and makeup of the Supreme Court could be radically altered in the next decade.
That is why, as Republicans, it is time for us to cut the nonsense and start supporting the only candidate that can win the White House: Jeb Bush. Jeb is anything but the sexiest pick in the field of candidates, but he is distinctly the safest. Carly Fiorina, Donald Trump and Ben Carson are simply the flavor of the week among the anti-establishment wing of the GOP, a group that, despite its insistence to the contrary, doesn’t have the numbers to propel their candidate to the White House alone.
Jeb’s resume alone makes him one of, if not the, most qualified candidates seeking the office. His tenure as governor of Florida represented a period of responsible, conservative leadership in the Sunshine State and a window into what a Jeb Bush presidency would look like. During his eight years in office, former governor Jeb Bush cut taxes by around $19 billion, vetoed $2 billion of pork barrel spending and established a school voucher program before it was cool. In fact, governor Jeb Bush’s education reforms were so successful that the achievement gap between minority students and white students in Florida has narrowed much more rapidly than the national average.
It was Ronald Reagan who once said, “The Republican Party, both in this state and nationally, is a broad party. There is room in our tent for many views; indeed, the divergence of views is one of our strengths,” a quote that would later allow Reagan to build the Reagan Coalition and reinvigorate conservatism in the United States. Of the entire crowded field of candidates, Jeb Bush is the only person who represents this same brand of Big Tent politics and has the ability to build the broadest coalition of support in 2016.
Fluent in Spanish and married to a woman of Mexican descent, Jeb Bush is uniquely keyed into the issues facing Latino and Hispanic communities in his country (second only to Marco Rubio). It is this perspective that has guided his politics on immigration to be both pragmatic and compassionate, favoring a path to citizenship over more extreme methods. These positions, while unpopular among many Republicans, represents Jeb’s ability to stick to his guns and do what is right.
When governor Jeb Bush announced his candidacy, everyone in the Republican Party assumed he would eventually win the nomination; I still believe that this is true. But, after a myriad of sideshow candidates joined the race, Governor Jeb Bush has been a little lost in the crowd. However, it is finally time to end these silly games and coalesce our support around Jeb Bush, not just for the benefit of our party, but also for the country.
Will Gonzalez is a senior majoring in political science.
