GOP Hope: Jeb Bush's Great Society?

After Marco Rubio runs second to a Carnival cruise ship in last week’s watery mishaps, a fellow Floridian bobs to the surface hugging a fifty-year-old life preserver.

In a speech, Jeb Bush asserts that a neo-Lyndon Johnson is the answer to refloating the sinking GOP:

“He went and he cajoled, he begged, he threatened, he loved, he hugged, he did what leaders do, which is they personally get engaged to make something happen.”

By no means is Bush III advocating a new Great Society, but his 2016 self-positioning is another sign of a new Republican undertow, following such other ripples as Karl Rove’s pushback against Tea Party crazy Steve King’s Senate bid in Iowa.

The sight of a Bush and Rove as centrists is one measure of where the GOP is heading in its efforts to rebalance in a second Obama term with embrace of immigration reform and a possible deal on sequesters.

As John McCain and Lindsey Graham run out of steam on their Benghazi bluster and Hagel-blocking while Rand Paul pipedreams of a Presidential bid, the Washington scene seems set for easing gridlock.

If the President is relaxed enough to be seen golfing with former pariah Tiger Woods rather than John Boehner, anything can happen as Jeb Bush tells Republicans, “We can’t be anti-progress, we can’t be anti-innovation, anti-technology.”

GOP moderation is on the march.