New York Times Butters Up Jeb Bush to Hit 'His Party's Hard-Liners' -- But How Long Would NYT Flattery Last?

By Clay Waters | December 14, 2014 | 8:23 AM EST

Saturday's front-page report by Jonathan Martin on Jeb Bush, "Looking to ’16, Another Bush Stakes Out the Middle Ground," marks the latest New York Times profile to flatter the moderate Republican, at least in comparison to those "hard-line" right-wing conservatives (though they still find Jeb "deeply conservative" on taxes and abortion.)

Bush, a two-term former governor of Florida, has indeed taken pains to separate himself from conservatives on Common Core education "reform" and especially on amnesty for illegals, and claimed during the 2012 presidential campaign that his father, former President George Bush, and Ronald Reagan would struggle in today's GOP, "an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement." That would certainly explain profiles like the one on Saturday. From Martin's front-page story:

When former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida quietly visited Senator John McCain in his Capitol Hill office this fall, discussion turned to a subject of increasing interest to Mr. Bush: how to run for president without pandering to the party’s conservative base.

“I just said to him, ‘I think if you look back, despite the far right’s complaints, it is the centrist that wins the nomination,’ ” Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, said he told Mr. Bush.

In the past few weeks, Mr. Bush has moved toward a run for the White House. His family’s resistance has receded. His advisers are seeking staff. And the former governor is even slimming down, shedding about 15 pounds thanks to frequent swimming and personal training sessions after a knee operation last year.

But before pursuing the presidency, Mr. Bush, 61, is grappling with the central question of whether he can prevail in a grueling primary battle without shifting his positions or altering his persona to satisfy his party’s hard-liners. In conversations with donors, friends and advisers, he is discussing whether he can navigate, and avoid being tripped up by, the conservative Republican base.

....

Though he is deeply conservative on some issues such as taxes and abortion, in other ways, Mr. Bush -- culturally and philosophically -- is out of step with the grass-roots activists who now animate the party. He has pushed Republicans to find consensus with Democrats, especially on fiscal issues. He has pushed for an immigration overhaul that would include a path to citizenship for people who are here illegally, and he has championed the Common Core educational standards, two incendiary issues among Republican activists, many of whom oppose both.

The governor’s decision will have significant consequences for the Republican Party. If he goes forward with a campaign in which he avoids trying to appease the most conservative voters and wins the nomination as well as the presidency, it could reshape Republican politics for a generation. Should he take that approach and lose the nomination to a more aggressive conservative, however, it would send a powerful message that a more pragmatic approach has little appeal among the party’s primary voters.

The party’s establishment elites and some longtime advisers to Mr. Bush are urging him to remain steadfast on his positions, especially on immigration, if he runs. They are convinced that Mitt Romney ruined his chance to win in the fall of 2012 by veering too far to the right during the primaries, turning off general election voters as a result.

It's ironic then that the Times is soliciting advice from John McCain, a Republican known for picking fights among conservatives who also lost his presidential race.

Speaking last month to a Republican donor, he discussed the difficulties posed by the early states in the nominating process, especially Iowa, where religious conservatives have won the past two Republican presidential contests.

....

Mr. Bush would benefit most if those Republicans who do run vie for the support of the party’s hard-liners. That would fracture the conservative base, leaving an opening for him among more moderate-leaning Republicans.

“Lock up the center and let them fight it out on the right,” Mr. McCain said.

Former reporter Frank Bruni also chipped in with a column quibbling over Bush's reputation as a "moderate" as opposed to the "headbanging conservative" he'd once claimed to be.(He also questioned Hillary Clinton's reputation as a liberal as opposed to a moderate.)

A May 25 profile by reporter Michael Barbaro flattered Jeb to bash George W. Barbaro tweeted about that piece: "My deep dive into the intellectual life of Jeb Bush, who's definitely not his brother." Barbaro gushed: "...the younger Mr. Bush seems to have defined himself as the anti-George W. Bush: an intellectual in search of new ideas, a serial consulter of outsiders who relishes animated debate and a probing manager who eagerly burrows into the bureaucratic details."

Such reportorial flattery from the Times would end the day Jeb Bush won the Republican primary, as John McCain found out in 2008.