Jeb Bush has launched a Republican presidential bid months in the making with a vow to get Washington "out of the business of causing problems" and to stay true to his beliefs easier said than done in a crowded primary contest where his conservative credentials will be sharply challenged.
"I will campaign as I would serve, going everywhere, speaking to everyone, keeping my word, facing the issues without flinching," Bush said in his prepared remarks, opening his campaign at a rally near his south Florida home at Miami Dade College yesterday, where the institution's large and diverse student body symbolises the nation he seeks to lead.
The former Florida governor, whose wife is Mexican-born, was addressing the packed college arena in English and Spanish, an unusual twist for a political speech aimed at a national audience. "In any language," Bush said, "my message will be an
optimistic one because I am certain that we can make the decades just ahead in America the greatest time ever to be alive in this world."
"We will take Washington the static capital of this dynamic country out of the business of causing problems," Bush yesterday and added, "I will take nothing and no one for granted. I will run with heart. I will run to win." Bush enters a 2016 Republican contest that will test both his vision of conservatism and his ability to distance himself from family. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
holds a commanding lead in the Democratic race, setting up the possibility of another Bush-Clinton presidential race after her husband Bill Clinton defeated incumbent President George H W Bush in 1992.
Neither his father, former President George H W Bush, nor his brother, former President George W Bush, attended yesterday'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 joins the race in progress in some ways in a commanding position, in part because of his family connections. He has probably raised a record amount of money to support his candidacy, allowing him to make a deep run into the Republican primaries. But on other measures, early public
opinion polls among them, he has yet to break out.
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