Com­ment: Against the back­ground of six hours of inter­views on the sub­ject of Russ Baker’s remark­able recent book Fam­ily of Secrets, it is worth con­tem­plat­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that Jeb Bush might attempt to per­pet­u­ate the Bush family’s polit­i­cal dynasty. Con­cerned cit­i­zens should care­fully weigh the Bush polit­i­cal machine and its legacy–so amply illus­trated by Russ Baker–and its poten­tial exten­sion by Jeb.

“The Bush Revival: How Jeb, Rove, Gille­spie Are Lead­ing the GOP Again” by Sam Stein; Huff­in­g­ton Post; 7/15/2010.

Excerpt: Simon Rosen­berg is the most bull­ish of Demo­c­ra­tic strate­gists. The for­mer Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial and head of the young non-profit group NDN has been the chief pro­po­nent of the belief that Barack Obama’s elec­tion pro­duced the oppor­tu­nity for a “30-to-40-year era of Demo­c­ra­tic dom­i­nance.” A spe­cial­ist in the polit­i­cal habits of dif­fer­ent demo­graphic groups (specif­i­cally His­pan­ics), he insists that, absent a dras­tic makeover, the GOP risks cement­ing itself “as irrel­e­vant to the 21st century.”

Sag­ging poll num­bers and pol­icy set­backs have done lit­tle to dis­suade these rosy prog­nos­ti­ca­tions. There’s only one thing that makes Rosen­berg ner­vous: another Bush.

“Jeb [Bush] is mar­ried to a Latina, is flu­ent in Span­ish, speaks on Uni­vi­sion as a com­men­ta­tor, his Span­ish is that good,” Rosen­berg said of the for­mer Florida gov­er­nor and brother to the 43rd pres­i­dent dur­ing a lunch at NDN head­quar­ters last week. “And if you look at the elec­toral map in 2012, you have to assume that Obama is going to have a very hard time in hold­ing North Car­olina and Vir­ginia. The indus­trial Mid­west, where the auto decline has been huge, has weak­ened Obama’s num­bers... a great deal. So Ohio, Michi­gan, Indi­ana and Wis­con­sin become a bit more wob­bly. So if you’re Barack Obama, the fire­wall is the Latin belt from Florida to south­west­ern Cal­i­for­nia. And there is only one Repub­li­can who can break through that fire­wall. And it is Jeb.”

Such a sen­ti­ment, Rosen­berg admits, car­ries a slight hint of hys­te­ria. After all, there is a good chunk of the coun­try that recoils at the idea of another pol with the Bush sur­name. But that chunk has begun nar­row­ing. And even within Demo­c­ra­tic cir­cles, there is an emerg­ing belief that in a Repub­li­can Party filled with base-pleasing dra­ma­tiz­ers or bland con­ser­v­a­tives, Jeb stands out. . . .