Jeb Bush wants a Republican to challenge Trump in 2020

Author: KATHRYN WATSON/ CBS News
Published:
(AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Former presidential candidate Jeb Bush says he thinks a Republican should challenge President Trump in next year’s presidential election.

“I think someone should run. Just because Republicans ought to be given a choice,” said the former Florida governor in an interview that will air on CNN on Saturday.

Bush, who himself was unable to defeat Mr. Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries, said beating him in 2020 will be tough for anyone because the president has a “strong, loyal base” and it’s difficult to defeat a sitting president.

“But to have a conversation about what it is to be a conservative I think is important,” Bush also said, according to CNN. “And our country needs to have competing ideologies that people — that are dynamic, that focus on the world we’re in and the world we’re moving towards rather than revert back to a nostalgic time.”

Last year, Bush told the Yale Daily News that Mr. Trump is a “Republican in basically name only.”

Few Republicans so far are choosing to rise the occasion. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a popular Republican governor in a blue state, isn’t ruling out a challenge to Mr. Trump but has yet to announce any intention to do so. Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld announced his intention to primary Mr. Trump last month.

Some Republicans are trying to thwart any primary challenges to Mr. Trump. In January, a member of the Republican National Committee, fearing primary challengers to President Trump in the wake of a scathing op-ed from GOP Sen. Mitt Romney, urged fellow committee members to change the rules to thwart intra-party threats to Mr. Trump in 2020. That attempt was ultimately unsuccessful, but it points to the closing in on the ranks.

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