Jeb Bush has not yet announced his presidential candidacy, but some critics contend that his campaign is already struggling—and in a front-page piece, the Washington Post delves into why that might be. One of the first blunders may have been allowing his political consultant, Mike Murphy, to hold senior staff meetings in a hotel inside the Dallas/Fort Worth airport—odd for an almost-campaign that's technically based in Florida. The awkwardness that created is just one example of the splintered nature of the upcoming campaign: There have been conflicts, for instance, between longstanding staffers and newer ones, and disagreements over dividing funding between Bush’s super PAC and the campaign itself. “These things are always tug of wars,” Bush ally Thomas D. Rath says. “It’s almost like the first day of school, everyone trying to get to the right place and find the right seats.”
The first day of school may have been more like musical chairs, as Republican Party strategist Danny Diaz was named campaign manager earlier this week over the more expected choice—David Kochel. The selection of Diaz just a week before Bush declares his candidacy Monday is evidence that his team is still working out serious kinks, write Ed O'Keefe and Robert Costa; their piece traces Bush's other apparent problems, including shortfalls in both fundraising and the polls, and of course, that Iraq blunder. "In interviews this week, dozens of Bush backers and informed Republicans ... described an overly optimistic, even haughty exploratory operation," they write. "Strategic errors were exacerbated by unexpected stumbles by the would-be candidate and internal strife within his team." As for Bush, he appears unconcerned. “It’s June, for crying out loud, so we’ve got a long way to go,” Bush said of the staffing swap at a news conference yesterday, per the New York Times. “I just urge everybody to be a little more patient about this.” (More Jeb Bush 2016 stories.)
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