McCain-Bush in 2008?

Bill in DC sends us this bit of speculation from E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post, McCain May Be Bush's Ticket

That would be John and Jeb, the most logical Republican ticket if the party remains in the polling doldrums. If President Bush and his political maestro, Karl Rove, decide that the only way to create a political legacy is to nod toward the Arizona senator with whom they have battled and feuded, they will go for the guy who can win.


This scenario was outlined to me recently by a shrewd and loyally Democratic political operative with personal ties to the McCain camp before Mark McKinnon, one of the president's top media advisers, publicly confirmed that he would help a McCain presidential run if it materialized.
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Bush has been battling, with Rove's help, for a long-term political realignment in favor of the Republicans. The president could well come to see McCain as the only Republican with a chance to push a Republican era forward. McCain, in turn, knows that his only way around the Republican right is to run with Bush's open blessing, if not his outright endorsement.

And here is where Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's brother, could be the deal-closer. Jeb Bush has said he will not run in 2008. But that does not rule him out as a vice presidential candidate. If McCain won, Jeb would be the No. 2 to a president who will turn 72 on Aug. 29, 2008, and might well serve only a single term. If McCain lost, Jeb would have enhanced national recognition for a run in 2012. If picking Jeb is the price of winning over George W., McCain will pay it.

George W. Bush and John McCain may prefer not to need each other. But by 2008, they could well become codependent. American politics has produced stranger alliances.

I personally think this is wild and unrealistic speculation. Even with Jeb on the ticket the Radical Christian Cultists would not support McCain. Jeb has no political support except for the cultists and would cost McCain independent and moderate votes. In addition I am convinced that by 2008 a majority will have had more than enough of anyone named Bush. Like Biden and Lieberman in the Democratic Party, McCain has no future in the Republican Party.