Jeb Bush sounds upbeat, faces challenges in race

Associated Press

MIAMI

Vowing to win the Republican presidential nomination on his own merits, Jeb Bush launched a White House bid months in the making Monday with a promise to stay true to his beliefs – easier said than done in a bristling primary contest in which his conservative credentials will be sharply challenged.

“Not a one of us deserves the job by right of resume, party, seniority, family, or family narrative. It’s nobody’s turn,” Bush said, confronting critics who suggest he simply seeks to inherit the office already held by his father and brother. “It’s everybody’s test, and it’s wide open – exactly as a contest for president should be.”

Bush sought to turn the prime argument against his candidacy on its head, casting himself as the true Washington outsider while lashing out at competitors in both parties as being part of the problem. He opened his campaign at a rally near his south Florida home at Miami Dade College, an institution with a large and diverse student body that symbolizes the nation he seeks to lead.

“The presidency should not be passed on from one liberal to the next,” he declared in a jab at Democratic favorite Hillary Rodham Clinton.

And he said: “We are not going to clean up the mess in Washington by electing the people who either helped create it or have proven incapable of fixing it.”

That was an indirect but unmistakable swipe at Republican presidential rivals in the Senate. Among them is his political protege, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who welcomed Bush into the 2016 contest earlier in the day.

Bush enters a 2016 Republican contest that will test both his vision of conservatism and his ability to distance himself from family.

Neither his father, former President George H.W. Bush, nor his brother, former President George W. Bush, attended Monday’s announcement. The family was represented instead by Jeb Bush’s mother and former first lady, Barbara Bush, who once said that the country didn’t need yet another Bush as president, and by his son George P. Bush, recently elected Texas land commissioner.

Before the event, the Bush campaign came out with a new logo – Jeb! – that conspicuously leaves out the Bush surname.

Bush, whose wife is Mexican-born, addressed the packed college arena in English and Spanish, an unusual twist for a political speech aimed at a national audience.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said Monday there’s “Bush-Clinton fatigue” in America. “I think some people have had enough Bushes and enough Clintons,” Paul said in an interview with The Associated Press.