A top supporter of Gov. Jeb Bush is saying the GOP’s 2016 frontrunner, Donald Trump, is “dead politically” and won’t be president of the United States, despite being at the top of the polls.
Trump is “a false zombie front-runner. He’s dead politically, he’ll never be president of the United States, ever,” Mike Murphy said in an interview with Bloomberg Politics.
“By definition I don’t think you can be a front-runner if you’re totally un-electable. I think there’s there an a-priori logic problem in that,” said Murphy, who is the chief strategist at Bush’s “Right To Rise” Super-PAC that has received more than $100 million in donations for the 2016 primary.
Murphy weighed in on the fact that Bush was an early favorite among establishment voters, but that his lead quickly faded.
“Well, I knew it would be kind of hyper because that’s the business now. But one thing in hindsight is we got this paper crown of front-runner early that we didn’t want and I don’t think realistically we should have had,” Murphy stated.
“Because what happens is when the punditocracy says, ‘You’re the front-runner,’ then they take a bunch of meaningless polls and a Donald Trump or a Kardashian or whatever jumps in and they say, ‘Now you’re not the front-runner.’ So they put you on trial for them being wrong at the beginning. I think we’re getting a little bit of a bad rap on all that stuff but, you know, who cares? We’re going to power through it.”
Bush can win once he consolidates the voters of other establishment candidates, Murphy argued. “There are people we have respect for… Governor Christie, Senator Rubio, Governor Pataki, Governor Kasich — that’s the vote we’d like to consolidate,” Murphy added.
According to the New York Times, Murphy has been a Bush advisor since 1994. He is now behind Jeb Bush’s more than $100 million super PAC.
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