Last night on the show, Rachel asked who might be behind the mysterious robopolling in New Hampshire, the one Dave Weigel reported asks about former Florida Governor Jeb Bush against President Obama in a hypothetical 2012 election. Since Jeb Bush has said he isn't running for anything, why is his name popping up in polls? Who would want to know the answer to that question?
Thanks to the sleuthing of James Carter, we can now tell you the answer: Purple Strategies, a political communications firm. Director Doug Usher tells us that yes, it's his firm. Purple Strategies looks at the 12 swing states that it believes holds the key to the 2012 election. In this month's PurplePoll (pdf), they threw in Jeb Bush.
Republicans have been asking whether Jeb Bush might step in as a last-minute candidate, despite his saying he won't run this year. Based on the results of the PurplePoll, it might be just as well for Mr. Bush. "This idea that Jeb Bush could come marching in and beat Obama is just not true," Mr. Usher tells us. He says his firm does do polling for hire, but this one they just do for themselves, for fun and for the public service of it. No one commissioned this poll, he says.
In addition to being kind of mysterious, the PurplePoll turns out to have some fascinating data about the state of the election. Much more on the show tonight. Meanwhile, big props to James Carter.
@maddowblog @daveweigel Jeb Bush polling mystery solved! Purple Strategies Dec 2011 PurplePoll: bit.ly/tGMVwI
— James Carter (@JECarter4) December 20, 2011
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Hasn't that family done enough to "help" this country?
Good Lord!!!! No more Bush's! That's almost as frightening as a Gingri-CK presidency!
Good work but Purple strategies is getting paid to do it right? By whom? I still think a Romney superpac is scouting for a VP candidate. Let's dawn those tin foil hats and keep up the search!
Purple Strategies says they did this poll on their own -- they say no one commissioned it.
Do you believe that? Most polling is very scientific and the pollster would be afraid that just adding things might skew the data. They want to know very specific things for very specific reasons. They just don't add things. But I am not in that game so I guess for now we will believe them.
I have admitted to have been one of those waiting for Jeb Bush to say he's running for Pres. I have gotten verbally admonished for saying so.
Let me be clear:
I DO NOT WANT another Bush President, but they keep popping up and I suspect we are not done with them.
At least Barbara Bush (daughter) supports marriage equality, though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iKqr230U9M
I hope he doesn't amBush us.
I just think it's kind of funny that a guy named James Carter is looking at presidential polls. But I'm easily amused.
Kudos to public journalism, I guess.
Jeb Bush was the normal one, and I thought he did a decent job in Florida.
I still wonder how many people in 2000 thought they were voting for the dad.
Yes, he did a great job stealing the 2000 election for his brother -- "cleansing" the voter rolls for starters, and raising mobs for the recount. No, we don't really want any more of the Bush family in charge.
What are you talking about? "...and I thought he did a decent job in Florida." Jeb Bush is responsible for the housing disaster in Florida. Under his watch people earning $30,000 annually were being approved for no cash down, .5 million dollar homes, no interest for the next 5 years. When the interest kicked in, Bush was long gone, and the housing market in Florida was destroyed. People are still crawling out of the bottomless hole created by Jeb Bush. Jeb Bush's governorship was a disaster!
The only thing Jeb did a "decent" job on in Florida was to get his lame-o brother elected president.
Usually those mortgages are a bank issue, not a governor issue. I am a rapid democrat and don't like Jeb Bush (although I couldn't possible hate him as much as a certain brother) but I don't necessarily see a connection with the mortgage crisis. Blame the banks and the unbelievable greed that led them to make those loans so they could sell off the dishonestly-rated mortgage-backed securities to pile up even more money and pad their immoral bonuses.
Even the vague, left-field possibility that another Bush might change his "mind" and run for president should have any American with a shred of human compassion or patriotism or even self-preservation waking up in a pool of sweat.
Like Don Mathews says, who is paying for this?
Doesn't matter which GOP candidate gets the nomination. As POTUS any of them would be rolled over by a Tea Party congress. The only real (stealth) GOP candidate is Grover Norquist.
Good Lord, stay out the Bush's!!! They've done more to damage this nation then any other family in history even the Borgia's!!
Well, to be fair, the Borgias never did ANYthing to damage the US. So their hands are clean in that area, at least, which is more than can be said for the Bushes.
From what I picked up some years ago, Geo HW Bush & Barbara thought that Jeb would run for prez sometime down the road but Shrub jumped in way earlier... kinda screwed up the family plans.
I always heard that Jeb (as "the smart one," whatever that means in that family) was supposed to be the one, but he lost the race for governor of Florida in '94 (though he did win it the next time around, just in time to steal the 2000 election for his brother) while Dubya won Texas, which put him ahead of the game.
Now that Iraq's wound down we need another Bush to push another useless war in the middle east.
At least Jeb Bush is supposed to be the smart one. (He was Phi Beta Kappa, while GW was a 'C' student.)
That said, I really think the country is done with that tiny dynasty, and we will all be happier if they ride off into the sunset and never bother us again.
Hey- DidiPA- it doesn't have to just be in the Middle East. Just because Hugo Chavez has cancer, it doesn't mean he isn't secretly making WMD. Jeb could get us in a whole different rathole of a war!
Jim.... You're right. One thing for sure is that if it's a Bush you can bet on a useless war!
This one-family weapon of U.S. destruction just needs to GO AWAY!
I doubt Jeb Bush wants to run because he can wait until 2016. If he thought it would be a cakewalk to beat Obama, he would have been in the race early on. He is old enough to wait even if Romney wins in 2012.
Thank-you for finally[no one else has]focusing on Jeb Bush...Ever since I heard old man Bush say that[about a year ago, or less]he wanted to see his son Jeb become president[Mr Bush is at least 85 yrs old, so it better be soon]I have been waiting for something sneaky to happen...BTW, originally, old man Bush never wanted George jr. to be president: he wanted Jeb, whom he thought was better presidential material...Focus: George Herbert Walker Bush was once head of the CIA and is the ONLY retired president who has insisted on receiving the updates that any active president gets...why? one might ask...as I heard[also about a year ago]Mrs. Bush say insulting things about Sarah Palin and the tea partiers[who are more populist than republican], I feared something was up...then the campaign begins and I see the republican establishment[run by the Bushes], with their loyal employee, Karl Rove, filling the airwaves of radio talk shows and of Fox News and National Review[now a republican rag, unworthy of bill Buckley's memory]and the Wall St Journal[now owned by Bush's friend, Rupert Murdoch] that reached the top of the polls, one by one being shot down...I smelled a rat...Now you tell me Jeb Bush is giving signals that daddy has given him his marching orders...combine that, with the fact that Romney was down in Texas to visit them, a few months ago, and that Mrs Bush told the media she liked Romney...the play has been written and the actors picked: Jeb Bush, president ; Willard Romney, vice president...yes, running as Republicans...it's too late, you say? There is precedent[I leave this to your research]for this: someone once became president, by starting to campaign in February of the same year...the Bushes stop at nothing to get what they want[and I'm a registered Republican]..try to remember[research again]that a family named Hinckley [great friends of the Bushes]produced a son that tried to kill president Reagan, and that his vice president[a guy named Bush]desperately wanted the presidency...BTW, it was recently in the news that Hinckley is out of jail: watch out, front runners, these people mean business...
Jeb Bush is a vile Christian bigot. In 2002 the Miami-Dade county Christian Coalition placed the voter referendum of "sexual orientation" from the county human rights ordinance. The anti-gay Christians lost by 1000 votes. (At the time Miami-Dade county had about 3 million people in it.) Jeb Bush was in favor of the repeal. He supported the Christian Coalition's notion that it would be okay to discriminate on an individual's sexual orientation in that county. Jeb Bush sucks! He deserves ferocious scrutiny and his family sucks too!
Keywords: Take Back Miami-Dade, Save Dade.
Rachel - I had a polling call last week in which they did in fact ask, not only about Jeb, but also about Mitch Daniels and Sister Sarah . . .