Lost in the hoopla over Jeb Bushs event focusing on education, his new book and his release of old emails was a minor brouhaha over tweets posted by Ethan Czahor, his new social media and technology guru, back in 2009.
The DNC tried to make an issue of old posts from Czahor in which he called young women sluts, derogatory comments about gays at his gym and even comments about drunk driving.
But the DNC is wrong to think this is a replay of the Sandra Fluke incident. Before she headed off to California and electoral defeat, Flukes support for forcing health insurers to pay for contraception led Rush Limbaugh to call her a slut. Conservatives might have disagreed with Limbaughs take on Fluke but most would probably agree that insurance providers shouldnt be forced to take on contraception costs.
Certainly, conservatives will find plenty to disagree with in Czahors tweets.
New study confirms old belief: college female art majors are sluts, science majors are also sluts but uglier, Czahor posted. Thats not something Republicans like Rick Scott want to hear as they prioritize STEM subjects across the educational gambit from elementary school to colleges.
Babies are like startups: once they grow up, 80 percent will be failures, 19 percent will be irrelevant and Im sick of seeing 100 percent in my Facebook feed, Czahor tweeted. Not exactly the message Bush wants to take to the pro-life community.
I saw a sign that said drunk driving kills but thats not logically correct -- it should be having accidents while drunk driving kills, Czahor tweeted. Thatll play well with the family values crowd and evangelicals.
Czahor quickly apologized and said hes grown up since making those tweets. Bush and his team had Czahors back as well.
But this raises some questions about Bushs vetting efforts. Bush is supposed to be the professional in the Republican field, the grown-up when compared to Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and the rest of the Republicans. Granted, social media offers new challenges for vetting and background checks but the Bush team dropped the ball here.
Bush is ahead in the polls right now in some key states and he is starting to catch some flak from the other Republican presidential possibilities on immigration and Common Core. His last name is a double-edged sword. Conservative activists might be sick of the Bushes but the GOP hasnt won a presidential election with a member of the family on the ticket since 1972.
There are plenty of Republican primary voters who simply wont question if a member of the Bush clan is a true conservative and will vote for the former Florida governor in 2016 -- but that number is shrinking. Jeb Bush is in a far weaker position than his father was in 1988 and his brother was in 2000.
Already vulnerable on the right, Bush simply cant afford these kinds of errors that can be easily caught and corrected. It simply takes away from his chief selling point: that he is the most presidential option for the Republicans in an increasingly dangerous world.
Tallahassee political writer Jeff Henderson wrote this analysis exclusively for Sunshine State News.
