"THE FEVER WILL BREAK," PART CMLXXXIV

The lead story at Breitbart for most of this morning was this:

Former President George W. Bush and his family are reportedly planning to retake the Republican Party from President Donald Trump once he is out of office, according to a recent report.

There are allegedly “rumors” stirring that there is a “plot to end the so-called ‘Bush Exile'” as part of an effort to take control of the GOP from Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) policies, according to the Daily Mail....

If you don't find that absurd on the face of it, here's what the Daily Mail story tells us about a recent Bush family gathering intended to launch the plot:

Behind the scenes, and still with deep connections around the country, a shadow Republican Party is lying in wait to take over when Trump is gone....

In August this year ... George W. Bush and his brother Jeb, the former Florida Governor, were among family luminaries who gathered for a secret, and potentially very consequential, event at the dynasty's summer retreat in Kennebunkport on the Maine coast...

Unpublicized and with no media present, a total of 65 friends of the family gathered there and poured money into a pot to help kick off a new Bush political run.

Tech entrepreneur Jonathan Bush, 56, cousin of 'W' and Jeb, and brother of TV personality Billy Bush, will bid to become Governor of the moderate state of Maine in 2026.

If he wins, it would be the third state governorship held by the Bush family.

Both George W. Bush and Jeb Bush used their governorships - of Texas and Florida respectively - as springboards for presidential runs.

Alas for the Bushes, Jonathan has a few blemishes on his record.

The Daily Mail revealed in 2018 that he had confessed to 'numerous physical altercations' with his ex-wife Sarah Selden, according to court papers from a Massachusetts family court during a 2006 custody battle over the couple's five children.

In the court papers his wife alleged he 'screamed at her, directly into her face, calling her a 'w****'… while pushing her into the wall and repeatedly slamming his closed fist into her sternum, his hand landing just inches from their baby who was crying.'

Jonathan has expressed remorse, and voters might accept his insistence that he's a better person now. But I fully expect Donald Trump to send out the bat signal that Republican primary voters shouldn't vote for anyone from the Bush family, and I expect his word to be enough to kill Jonathan's candidacy. (Recall that Jeb's son George P. ran for attorney general in Texas in 2022 and lost the primary to Ken Paxton by 20 points.)

I can imagine Jonathan getting very favorable coverage from Joe Scarborough, The New York Times, The Bulwark, and other centrist pundits and media outlets. Maybe Maine Republicans are different enough from other Republicans that they'll vote for a consciously anti-Trump candidate.

But nationwide, Trump still commands the GOP's loyalty. Here's more evidence: Fox News has just released a brutal poll that has Trump's job approval/disapproval at 41%/58%, down from 46%/54% two months ago. Three quarters of Republicans tell the Fox polling unit that they've been hurt by Trump's economic policies. And yet he still has 86% job approval among Republicans. They're upset with him, but they just can't quit him.

You can also see this in a couple of stories sampling public opinion in Marjorie Taylor Greene's congressional district. The message of both stories -- from The Washington Post and NBC -- is that Greene's voters still support her but are also still loyal to Trump. The Post reports:

Half an hour into the Walker County GOP meeting, Chairwoman Jackie Harling turned to “the elephant in the room” — the explosive breakup of President Donald Trump and their congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

As Harling put it: “Mom and Dad are separated.” ...

“We got Donald Trump trying to take care of the world,” said the chair, Jim Tully, pacing in front of the lectern. “Got Marjorie Taylor Greene trying to take care of the country.” ...

Local Republicans are holding out hope that Trump and Greene will make up, just as Trump has made up with other Republicans now serving in his Cabinet.

And from NBC:

... Angela Dollar, a local Republican official in Floyd County, part of Greene’s district[, said,] “I can like two people who don’t like each other. My hope is they’ll reconcile.”

... Though she said she still supports the president, [Susan] Cooper rejected the idea that Greene is a “traitor.”

“I would much prefer him not say that,” she said....

While mall walking with his wife in Dalton, Richard Houston said he has voted for both Greene and Trump and still supports both.

Right now, these voters don't want to be forced to choose between two bomb-throwers -- and if they ever break with Trump completely, it will be because they see someone else as more likely to be an effective bomb-thrower.

There's no evidence that Republicans will ever turn to old-fashioned institutionalist Bushites. FiftyPlusOne has been keeping tabs on early polling of the 2028 Republican primaries, and the detail to note is that Nikki Haley fares very, very poorly, as do Mike Pence and Tim Scott. The top tier clearly consists of J.D. Vance (who leads all of these polls by double digits), Marco Rubio, Trump's sons ... and Ron DeSantis, the most Trump-like Republican outside Washington. The specific names may change, but I don't think the Republican Party will ever be a party the Bushes can be comfortable in. I'm not sentimentalizing them, but they didn't want to tear the entire system down. The current Republican Party does.