Donald Trump vs Jeb Bush: Republican rivals square up in the battle of the barbs

Donald Trump more or less questions the manhood of Jeb Bush, while Jeb Bush has taken to calling Donald Trump “un-American” and, worse, a closet Democrat. These are the taunts being traded by two of the runners for the Republican presidential nomination, plumbing new depths of political vitriol.

“Small” and “low energy” are Mr Trump’s two favourite descriptors for the former Florida governor. Recently, when he found himself addressing supporters in New Hampshire just a few hundred yards away from a similar event organised for Mr Bush, he scoffed: “Very small crowd [down there]. You know what’s happening to Jeb’s crowd… they’re sleeping!”

Sometimes Mr Trump prefers simply to call his rival a fool. Asked by a reporter this week if he thought Mr Bush was the right man to steer the US economy, Mr Trump replied: “Steer it? He can’t steer himself.”

There is evidence that the insults are taking their toll on Mr Bush, once considered the likely frontrunner among Republicans. His rating sank to just 7 per cent in a new Gallup poll, compared with 28 per cent for Mr Trump. Mr Bush has little choice but to engage, however distasteful he finds the battle. Thus, in recent days he has described as “un-American” Mr Trump’s plan to deport 11 million people who are in the US illegally. He repeatedly queries Mr Trump’s conservative credentials, even his seriousness as a candidate. “Leadership means you have to be all-in, it’s not about yapping,” he told supporters last week. He didn’t need to say who the yapper was.

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There is political logic behind Mr Trump’s relentless bombardment of Mr Bush, which he has expanded to include his brother and father, both former presidents, and indeed the whole Bush clan. While this summer has afforded him a solid lead in the race for the nomination, Mr Bush is arguably still Mr Trump’s biggest threat, if only by virtue of the torrents of cash captured by the groups that support him.

Yet it is also personal. Trump and Bush are among the most famous names in America, royalty almost. But the Court of Trump and the Court of Bush have never quite overlapped or gelled. The closest it came to happening was in 1997, when George W Bush Snr persuaded The Donald to hold a Manhattan fundraiser for Jeb when he was running for election as Florida governor. Since then, relations have deteriorated. Class could be a part of it. Some royal blood is just bluer, or in this case waspier. “The Bushes were never Trump’s cup of tea,” Roger Stone, until recently an adviser to Mr Trump, told the Washington Post this week. “He’s not from old, Wasp [white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant] money. The Trumps didn’t come on the Mayflower.”

In a 33-minute exchange with the Washington Post, Mr Trump managed to blurt barbs at the Bush dynasty at the pace of one per minute, so 33 in all. George W was a dud bulb who didn’t appear to understand the questions when interviewed on TV. (And Mr Trump has long castigated him for invading Iraq.) George HW said “read my lips” on not raising taxes, but did. As for Jeb, Mr Trump offered: “I don’t think he has a clue... He’s not up to snuff... Jeb is never going to bring us to the Promised Land. He can’t.”

That is not disdain summoned for the political moment. There is little record of Mr Trump trying to cozy up to Mr Bush in the eight years that he governed Florida until 2007, even though he had important gambling aspirations in the state and his mansion at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, too. And Mr Trump is remembered for bad-mouthing Mr Bush to other Florida politicians even while he was in office.

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The damage he has inflicted on Mr Bush has already been devastating. It is made easier for Mr Trump by the current aversion of voters to anything that smells of dynasty politics. That might one day help him with Hillary Clinton, too. Except that the Trumps and the Clintons have been pretty pally over the years.