To top it off, the Court rarely took cases before they were ripe, and the political process in Florida was still unfolding. Moreover, the very jurists who’d normally side with Bush were the ones most solicitous of states’ rights, most deferential to state courts, most devoted to the Constitution’s “original intent”-and the Founding Fathers had specifically provided that the Congress, not the judiciary, would resolve close elections. A majority of the justices were conservatives, but they weren’t partisan mindful of the Court’s fragile authority, the justices had always steered clear of messy political spats. Sure, friends and relatives predicted that the case would eventually land in their laps, but that was ignorant, naïve talk-typical of people without sophisticated legal backgrounds. Bush in the White House? The two just laughed. Wouldn’t it be funny, one mused, if the matter landed before them? And how, if it did, the Court would split five to four, as it so often did in big cases, with the conservative majority installing George W. That could indeed be the product of almost a dozen years off the campaign trail.Shortly after the presidential vote in November 2000, two law clerks at the United States Supreme Court were joking about the photo finish in Florida. There have been moments at events in the past six months when he has seemed a little rusty. But that is the last time his name appeared on a ballot. He was, eventually winning the governorship four years later and re-election in 2002. "It's always tough to lose, but we'll be back," Bush said on election night. The race was extremely close, but Chiles was victorious. He took on a vulnerable incumbent, Florida's Democratic Gov. He made a fortune in the real estate business in Florida, the state he moved to as a young man.īut, true to family tradition, he's been successful in politics as well. Most of Jeb Bush's adult life has been spent in the private sector. The Republican Party has also grown more conservative over the past 20 years, with fewer true moderate members, so many activists now put Jeb Bush firmly in the category. They also feel his support for Common Core education standards would be detrimental to school districts' local control. They cite his support for a path to legal status for the millions of immigrants in the U.S. Bush, as governor, fought him at every turn, signing special legislation to prevent the removal of the tube.īut conservative voters in 2016 label Bush a moderate. Schiavo's husband wanted to remove a feeding tube that was keeping her alive. And he was a strong social conservative, most notably in the case of Terry Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman who had been unconscious for more than a decade. Jeb Bush cut taxes, slashed the ranks of state employees and attacked what he saw as overly burdensome regulations. So why do so many GOP activists think he's a moderate? Floridians think he was a conservative governor. It was a nervous month for the Florida governor.Ĥ. Supreme Court awarded the election to George W. And finally, in the very early morning hours, it was given back to Bush. Later that night, the state was given to Bush-Cheney. Within hours, the Florida call was retracted. Ultimately that night, Jeb worked the phones and began poring over detailed county-by-county vote tallies.Ĭonfusion reigned. Now those notions and rumors could harden into truths passed on from one stranger to another: Jeb had failed. The media reports had been hard to take: reports that Jeb hadn't worked hard enough for George, that he resented George's relatively greater success and was worried that a George in the White House would almost certainly mean there would never be a Jeb in the White House. The family business - politics - was now tearing at the fabric of the family itself. "With tears in his eyes, Jeb apologized to his brother for letting him down.
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