Former President George W. Bush says every American citizen should vote in the presidential election, though he hasn't revealed whom he plans to vote for. But it won't be Donald Trump. We can be sure of that.
Trump has managed to alienate the Bushes: ex-President George H. W. Bush, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and now the man known to friends as W. The senior Bush is voting for Hillary Clinton. Jeb Bush has announced he won't vote Trump or Clinton.
Trump may not be concerned about this, but he should be. His campaign is paying a price for losing the Bushes, the first family of Republican politics. Their influence is indirect. The Bushes don't command a wing of the party. They haven't urged Republicans not to vote for Trump. But their aversion to Trump has had an impact.
The Bushes have sent a signal to Republicans, especially to those whose allegiance to the GOP is tenuous, that Trump is unacceptable. David Brady of Stanford University's Hoover Institution says this is a factor in Trump's failure to lock up the support of 90 percent of Republicans, the minimum needed to defeat Clinton.
Brady, a political scientist, is an associate in the polling firm YouGov/Polimetrix. Its CEO, Doug Rivers, is a professor of political science at Stanford and a Hoover fellow. In YouGov's polling, Trump is backed by only 72 percent of Republicans. (Trump has fared better among Republicans in other polls.)
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05.01.2024