You knew Jeb Bush was going to run for president; after all, assuming the worst is really the essence of conservatism.  And, sure enough, he’s “actively exploring the possibility”—a half-measure that prefigures the weakness and tepidity of another Bush presidency.

Conservatives tempted to glom onto an alleged winner might want to contemplate the wisdom of the bromide that advises us to be careful what we wish for, because we just might get it.  Bromides are hard to avoid when analyzing the circumstances that might accompany the Second Bush Restoration.  Jeb exudes them like a snail excreting slime to smooth its path, such as when he addressed a gathering at Florida’s St. Leo University last year, where he held up Lyndon Baines Johnson as a model of good governance.  Citing Robert Caro’s The Passage of Power, an account of the early years of the Johnson presidency, Jeb declared that, once in the White House, he’d follow in LBJ’s footsteps and make himself “the master of the Senate.”

Bush made no mention of the “Great Society” welfare state that Johnson erected, which has survived pretty much intact to this day.  Instead, the one-term president who fought a losing war and was eventually brought down by it was exalted as the Great Cajoler: “He went and he cajoled, he begged, he threatened, he loved, he hugged, he did what leaders do, which is they personally get engaged to make something happen.”

So what is that “something” Jeb will make happen?

At the top of the list is war—with Iran, with Russia, with anyone Bill Kristol and his fellow neocons deem the enemy of the moment.  Don’t forget that Jeb was one of the original signatories of the Project for a New American Century’s Statement of Principles, which pledged to “spread freedom” throughout the known universe.  The neocons are already scurrying to get in on the ground floor of the Bush campaign.

On the home front, aside from a further expansion of the welfare state, we are in for education “reform,” otherwise known as Common Core, to be imposed nationwide on local school districts.  Jeb is one of the biggest proponents of the nationally standardized test-oriented “scientific” approach to education represented by Common Core, which is geared toward churning out productive little workers who will boost the profit margins of American corporations.

In a rare moment of clarity, Rush Limbaugh homed in on the truth about the Bush Restorationists.  Jeb is “looked at as a savior by the big money donor class and the consultant class, the establishment of the party, to head off the Tea Party.”  The Bush Restorationists aren’t out to win the White House; they just want to end the conservative challenge to the party establishment.

This is what the establishment has been doing ever since 1940, when Wendell Willkie snatched the GOP nomination from Sen. Robert A. Taft.  The conservative icon and leader of the Old Right had to endure the same hijacking twice more, in 1948 and 1952, at the hands of Dewey and Eisenhower.

Conservatives managed to scale the castle walls in 1964, only to be undone by their own contradictions.  The country was so scared that Barry Goldwater would start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union that they didn’t bother listening to his domestic program of decentralization and free enterprise.

That ostensible conservatives will get together to organize an effective Stop Bush campaign is almost as unlikely as the prospect of Jeb beating Hillary in 2016.  Internationalists, anti-interventionists, Jacksonians, “conservative realists”—all are contending in the foreign-policy realm, while on the domestic scene the “moderates,” the libertarians, the big-business conservatives, and the remnants of the Christian Right are at one another’s throats.

The number of prospective candidates—over 20 at this point—reflects this factional atomization, with each group putting up its standard-bearer in hopes of raising issues dear to it—and raising bundles of cash.  That money will go to an army of consultants and GOP operatives, and Conservatism, Inc., will thrive—monetarily—while the movement itself loses ground and effectively concedes the 2016 presidential election.

The one bright spot is the candidacy of Sen. Rand Paul, who is almost certain to announce sooner or later.  He is the Bob Taft of our day, in more ways than one, and this is a very mixed blessing.  He’s generally good on the issues, especially foreign policy—an important factor in this day and age.  However, like Taft, Paul tends to be a waffler, always ready to trim his sails.  Such willingness to compromise was partially responsible for the Old Right’s ultimate defeat, as the Cold War dawned, and its disintegration as a meaningful political force.

Whether Senator Paul can revive this strain of authentic conservatism remains to be seen.