Well, I guess a conspiracy theorist might assume that some of the Media Village Idiots’ “ha ha, zero dark thirsty!” busy-ness could mean that Young Marco has offended his Party betters by trying to cut in line. Points to Buzzfeed, they posted McKay Coppins’ longread a full day in advance of Waterbottlegate:
… In the months that have followed the 2012 election, the Biltmore, a 400-room luxury resort surrounded by banyan trees, has emerged as a national center of gravity for Republican politics: a must-stop for campaign fundraisers, and a favorite vacation spot for retired presidents. Bush runs his foundation out of an office at the hotel, and Rubio, who lives just a few miles away, has been spotted at the hotel gym’s morning spin classes.
It has become a matter of social survival here to develop a playful non-answer when asked which candidate one would support if both men decided to run for president in 2016, something Ana Navarro knows better than anyone. A high-profile Republican strategist, longtime girlfriend to the Biltmore’s owner, and an avowed friend and ally to both Rubio and Bush, Navarro described a Rubio vs. Bush face-off as “the nightmare scenario for everyone here.”…
On a sunny Sunday afternoon in December, Jeb Bush Jr. sat at a poolside table a few hundred yards from the office where his father plots his political future, and, between sips of Diet Coke, offered his view of the immigration landscape, eagerly name-checking high-profile Republicans he expected to work on the issue.
“You’ve got the old guard — Lindsey Graham, John McCain — but what will be really interesting to see is where [Texas Senator] Ted Cruz comes out on this issue,” Bush said. “He’s a Tea Party guy, but he’s really nice. I mean, he’s, you know, really bright, very intelligent, and also comes from Cuban descent.”
Conspicuously missing from his list: another Cuban-American Tea Party star who happened to live a few miles away. Wouldn’t Rubio be a leader on immigration?
“I hope so,” Bush said. “He’s got to actually execute and get something done rather than just talking.”
In the political soap opera that is today’s Republican Party, the younger Bush’s not-so-veiled swipe at Rubio could be viewed as a juicy plot twist in the winding narrative arc that leads to the 2016 presidential primaries. (Rubio declined to comment on the jab.) But Bush was also giving voice to a sentiment that had been growing in his hometown ever since Rubio took office in 2010…
We are never, ever going to rid of the Bush family crime syndicate, are we? They’re the political equivalent of herpes, or a yeast infection — when the American body politic’s immune system is stressed, up pops another Bush-rash….