NOW WE KNOW WHO'S BEEN POLLING JEB

Rachel Maddow's blog explains who was recently polling New Hampshire voters about Jeb Bush as a presidential candidate:

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.

... Mr. Usher ... 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....

Hmmm ... I go to the "People" page at the Purple Strategies site and who's the first person listed? Founding partner Alex Castellanos -- a Romney adviser in 2008 (and an advisor to Bush/Cheney in '04 and the McCain campaign in the '08 general election), who praises Romney here as "this wonderful, genuine guy."

Yeah, Castellanos's partners include a couple of Democrats, but I'm suspicious.

Maybe this poll wasn't meant to gin up interest in Bush as a replacement for Romney, someone who might combine Romney's delegates with his own at a brokered convention -- maybe it's just the opposite, the idea being that Jeb might pick up some delegates and toss them to Romney to put Romney over the top at a brokered convention.