As to Jeb! -- Slate content from a few days ago seems striking:
Aug. 5 2015 2:12 PM
How Jeb’s “Women’s Issues” Comment Could Hurt Him
By Josh Voorhees
Just a few months after stumbling around for a hindsight position on the Iraq war, Jeb Bush on Tuesday found a second war he’s having trouble staying clear of on the campaign trail.
During an appearance at the Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday, the Republican hopeful was discussing how he would defund Planned Parenthood when he offered up a casual—yet potentially costly—aside. “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s issues,” the former Florida governor said. The first blow came, fittingly, from Hillary Clinton, whose campaign took direct aim at Bush on Twitter: “You are absolutely, unequivocally wrong.” Clinton’s fellow Democrats quickly piled on. Bush’s team later issued a statement saying he had “misspoke,” but for a party hoping to avoid the same war-on-women narrative that hurt it in the 2012 election, the damage had already been done.
The potential for the stray comment to hurt Bush in the long term is obvious: The remarks—which were captured on video and preserved on YouTube—were pretty much tailor-made for a general-election attack ad. They aren’t as meme-worthy as Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women,” but liberals won’t have to get nearly as creative to give them some staying power.
The comment wasn’t about some niche demographic, either. The chattering class likes to talk about “women voters” and “women’s issues”—but what they’re really talking about is 53 percent of the votes cast in the 2012 election. These aren’t voters Democrats need to micro-target to find.
[italics added; links in original omitted; go to the Slate link for that]
The item does go on from that opening excerpting to mention other efforts by Jeb! to dig a deeper hole than he should be digging. So have a look, again:
Here.
As to the other GOP wannabes, none have anything like a resonant answer on income inequality and its growth per the Reagan tax cuts for the uber-rich, followed by the Bush tax cuts for the same constituency. However much that cabal spends and lies and spins, the truth of the regular voters having gotten screwed twice by the Republicans cannot be overcome by Rovian rovings away from the glaring inequality - hey look, God, gays and guns worked before but by now is an overworked cliche that in part has backfired.
Go Bernie, go!