(H/T: Hot Air) I must say, this is a smart move: “As the American Conservative Union puts final touches on its annual political conference next week, they’ve offered potential Republican presidential contenders the option of a moderated question-and-answer session instead speaking from a podium to the thousands of activists in attendance… One White House aspirant taking the group up on the offer is former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Republican sources told Bloomberg Politics.” As long-time readers know, the RedState Gathering features something similar: our invited speakers are expected to take questions from the audience. We find that it works well, both from the candidates’ and the audience’s point of view, which is why we keep doing it. Interesting that the ACU is trying something broadly similar at CPAC*.
Whether it works or not is another, and interesting, question. A nontrivial percentage of the GOP base have issues with Gov. Bush on a variety of topics; tossing the speech and just answering questions may defuse those concerns for enough people. Or convince them to just let it slide, for the sake of prying the Democrats out of the executive branch. Or explode Jeb Bush’s Presidential bid, once and for all. Any way it works out, there’s this: Jeb Bush is certainly not lacking in confidence, and/or bravery**.
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*With understandable differences: CPAC and the Gathering differ in size, programming, and typical audience.
**If, however, it comes out that Jeb Bush’s campaign fiddled with the Q&A format to ensure that he didn’t get asked enough tough questions, then Jeb Bush might as well just go home.
I’d like to see him do it at the RS Gathering. I have a feeling the questions might be a wee bit different.
And the moderators’ role includes filtering out the known Paul-troons and obviously Paul-tarded questions?
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Mew
And likely, everyone who isn’t a Jeb supporter with questions drafted directly by the campaign.
Not the easiest thing to do, in that venue – and, honestly, it’s kind of hard to do that and not get caught. Jeb’s better off just answering the questions.
Which means he’ll probably try to rig the questions.
Not easy to do, and it’s hard to not get caught.
I agree with both observations.
That said, his campaign manager will almost certainly try to stack the deck in his favor, because that’s what campaign managers do, and because nearly everybody egomaniacal enough to run for the presidency spends a lot of time in a bubble, surrounded by Yes men.
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It’s a transparently stupid thing to do, but from the campaign manager’s perspective, it beats losing his meal ticket, and from the candidate’s perspective, he’s trying to persuade the yokels that he’s right and they’re wrong–which requires the ability to frame the question.
If Jeb does not show up he is dismissing conservatives and their questions; if he does show up then he has the questions rigged.
maybe we wait and see how it goes down? a disagreement over common core or how to handle the border does not necessarily make him Satan in loafers. and hopefully he can show up at RS, too – he does claim to be a conservative so he should fit right in…