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Is Jeb Bush Conservative Enough? Bush Meets Las Vegas Voters

 In what he hopes is the beginning of a beautiful friendship with Nevada voters, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush came to Las Vegas Monday--Part of his early efforts to promote a possible presidential campaign.

“I’m seriously considering the possibility of running for president,” Bush said. “We got cameras here. We don’t want to have a campaign triggered here.”

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If Bush is not yet running for president, it has been difficult to tell. And in these very early days of primary positioning, speechifying in an early-voting states, Bush focused his 15-minute speech on the areas he, and presumably his strategists believe are his most notable conservative bona fides.

“I got to apply conservative principals consistently for eight years,” Bush said of his tenure as Governor of Florida. “We cut taxes every year total $19 billion. We reduced the state workforce in government by about 13,000 or 15,000. And we increased the number of jobs, by 1.4 million net new jobs during those eight years.”

Bush told an audience of some 400 people that he left Florida in better shape by being a tough leader.

“I was called Veto Corleone,” Bush said—not for the first time. “We had part of the line item. And I used it over 2,500 times, cutting all sorts of things. I got to act on conservative principals, not just yap about them.”

Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but Jeb Bush has moderate credentials too. He supports Common Core standards, and a pathway to legal status for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.—two positions that the far right is fiercely aligned against. Bush has apparently, “filled his ‘campaign-in-waiting’ with a number of notable gay-rights advocates,” which could hurt him with socially conservative voters.

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For moderate, and perhaps even practically-minded Republicans looking for a strong candidate to line up against presumed Democratic front-runner Hilary Clinton, Jeb Bush looks like the horse to beat. And in his efforts to pick up conservative votes during a primary that could have many other candidates, Bush needs to seem conservative enough, while avoiding the kind of conservative appeasement that haunted Mitt Romney’s general election campaign in 2012.

But Jeb Bush is getting tons of pressure from conservatives. At the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Washington, D.C. this past weekend, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham used her time to bemoan the rise of Jeb Bush as presumed front-runner. And when Jeb Bush himself took the stage at CPAC for a sometimes-testy Q & A with Fox News’ host Sean Hannity, he endured boos and jeers.

Pre-campaign stops like the one in Las Vegas Monday are a way for Bush to begin telling the story that he hopes will win him the primary. Polling shows him trailing Hilary Clinton, but pollsters says that’s likely because fewer people know the Jeb Bush story—something he’s clearly aware of. The estimated 400 attendees got the cliff notes on Bush’s marriage, heard he “signed checks” and owned a business before he ran for office. And of course, he is of the Bush Dynasty. He mentioned his father, his brother and his mother.

Nonetheless, Bush is currently highlighting his positions, sometimes very nuanced positions, that support one message.

“I’m the most conservative governor in Florida’s history,” Bush said again, addressing the gaggle of reporters outside after the speech and handshaking was over. “Life got better for a lot of Floridians because we (implemented) conservative principals. That story hasn’t been heard. And once it’s heard, I think a lot of people are going to say, ‘what’s all this nonsense about Jeb Bush not being a conservative?’”
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