Jeb’s campaign has, by almost all accounts, been a disappointment to donors, to GOP primary voters, to Jeb’s campaign team, and to pretty much everyone who cared in the first place.
Despite this, he continues to talk as if he is the front runner he never really was and hope that at some point others will believe it, too. Part of this strategy appears to be relying on the questionable claim that this election cycle mirrors that of 2012.
According to the Herald-Tribune, Jeb claims that the current front runners will fall . . . just as Herman Cain did in the 2012 cycle. They report:
Jeb Bush cited the rise and fall of 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain as he sought to reassure supporters at a Longboat Key fundraiser Monday that their faith in him is well placed.By noting that Cain led in the polls at this point in 2012 only to flame out, Bush implied that current GOP front-runners Donald Trump and Ben Carson could follow the same path.“We have plenty of time to persuade” was the message said Bradenton state Sen. Bill Galvano. “They’re not voting tomorrow.”
Herman Cain didn’t take long to respond to this claim and penned an article for his website challenging Jeb.
Cain writes, in part:
Someone should tell Jeb Bush that I’ve accepted an invitation to speak at Donald Trump’s rally this coming Monday in Georgia. I accepted for a simple reason: He asked. But Gov. Bush seems weirdly interested these days in the connection – if only in his own mind – between what he thinks happened to me and what he thinks is going to happen to Trump.I’ve heard this one before, of course. Herman Cain was leading the 2012 primary race only to “flame out,” and the same thing is going to happen to Trump. This is how Bush tried to reassure disappointed supporters this past Monday, invoking “the fall of Herman Cain”. . . .I’m sure his supporters were really reassured by this. Hey, don’t worry that I’m way behind and gaining no ground whatsoever, but there was once this one guy who led and didn’t win.
Cain then goes on to discuss the reason for his fall, a story LI also covered.
So let’s talk about this. In late October 2011, the polls had me leading the Republican race for president with 24 percent. After that, of course, I was the target of accusations that I’ve already explained were complete B.S. . . . . This precipitated my fall in the polls to the point where, by late November, I was in third place and polling at 14 percent. This is when I decided to leave the race because the turn it had taken was imposing too much hardship on my family.But there’s a reason I bring up these numbers. At the height of my campaign I was in first place at 24 percent. Even when I left the race I was in third place at 14 place. Who am I? A guy who ran a pizza company and had a successful corporate career before hosting a talk show in Atlanta. I was not anonymous but I was hardly famous.Who is Jeb Bush? He is the former governor of Florida and he has one of the most famous political last names in America. He has more political money behind him than any candidate in this race with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton. And how is he doing in the polls? The current Real Clear Politics average shows him in fifth place at 5.5 percent.
Cain ends with one final piece of—quite good—advice for Jeb: “if I were to give Jeb Bush a piece of advice – not that he probably thinks he needs any from me – it would be to focus on coming up with a rationale for a Jeb Bush presidency. To date, I haven’t heard one that’s got many people very excited. And to judge from the polls, 94.5 percent of Republican primary voters agree with me.”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY