The Bush campaign’s 112-slide deck that U.S. News revealed to the world last night made it clear that the ex-Florida Governor has been after Marco Rubio for some time – and with about the same level of competence as Bush himself showed while he ate his foot at Wednesday night’s debate.
The slide deck became a all-too-convenient excuse to shift gears from the let-Bush-lead-with-his-chin strategy to an anonymous whisper campaign (Politico):
The document highlights the campaign’s plans to target Rubio, calling him a “risky bet.” At one point, the document says that “Those who have looked into Marco’s background in the past have been concerned with what they have found.”
U.S. News, citing an anonymous Bush aide, said the reference was to “concerns Mitt Romney’s team unearthed when they vetted Rubio for vice president in 2012.”
Whereas the Bush’s efforts to take down Rubio were destroyed by the Senator himself in less than 30 seconds, his anonymous aide’s foray at least lasted about six hours…before one of Bush’s own supporters weighed in and blew the whole thing up (Politico again, emphasis added).
Yet, in an email to POLITICO, Beth Myers, a longtime Romney political adviser who in 2012 oversaw his vice presidential search, pushed back on the assertion.
“As the senior Romney advisor who handled VP vetting and had access to all the vetting documents, I can say that Senator Rubio ‘passed’ our vetting and we found nothing that disqualified him from serving as VP,” wrote Myers, who counts herself a Bush supporter. “The Bush aide referred to in this article is simply wrong.”
To borrow a meme from my good friend Shaun Kenney: Amateurs resort to whisper campaigns; professionals do to, but they make damn sure theirs can’t get blown up by their own supporters the same day.
