Crashing the Party: Why the GOP Must Modernize to Win

For the six years since President George W. Bush left office, his party has turned its back on him. Bush spoke at neither the 2008 nor the 2012 Republican National Convention. When aspiring successors to his former office mentioned him at all during the primary debates, they cited his legacy as something to avoid repeating. Yet Bush may prove much harder to ignore at the party's next convention: one of the most mentioned possibilities for the 2016 Republican presidential nominee is the ex-president's brother, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Yet observers shouldn't be misled by the GOP's back-to-Bush drift. It's never easy for a defeated party to rethink its recent history. After Richard Nixon narrowly lost to John F. Kennedy in the 1960 presidential election, Republicans rebounded toward the radical right, setting up Goldwater for a landslide defeat in 1964.