LEESVILLE, S.C. - Jeb Bush offered perhaps his most pointed remarks about Marco Rubio, calling him a gifted speaker but an unaccomplished "back bench" Senator.

"He's a gifted speaker, man. He an light up a room. He's charismatic. He can make grown men cry," Bush told a full audience at Shealy's Bar-B-Que.

"But what in his life would suggest that he can make a tough decision? Is there something in his past that would give you confidence that he can do it? Look Barack Obama is a gifted speaker ... what was in his background that could give you a sense that he could make a tough decision?"

"We don't need a talker as president of the United States," Bush said.

Bush proceeded to give a litany of criticisms of the Obama administration’s positions.

“No more red lines with no backing it up. No more calling Russia a regional power. How’d that work out, Mr. President?” Bush asked, adding, “No more reset buttons with great grandiosity with nothing to show for it. No more pivoting to Asia, and Asian countries wondering where the pivot went, and the rest of the world wondering, ‘Why have you pivoted away from us?’ No more trash-talking. In fact, what we need to have is someone who quietly goes about the business of rebuilding our military.”

Given Bush’s argument for quiet leadership, Yahoo News asked if he still feels his campaign logo — “Jeb!” — and its exclamation point is the best representation of his candidacy. He brushed off the question.

“Take a hike, man,” Bush said.

.....Trump committed the greatest heresy of his increasingly heretical run for the Republican nomination. He not only spoke of George W. Bush, but he raked Bush over the coals rather than adhering to a milquetoast, generic "mistakes were made by everyone." Trump laid it all at W.'s motherfucking feet: "Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake. All right?...The war in Iraq, we spent $2 trillion, thousands of lives, we don't even have it. Iran has taken over Iraq with the second-largest oil reserves in the world. Obviously, it was a mistake...George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty. We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East."

.....Republicans have spent the last seven years trying to erase Bush from voters' memories. They've convinced their base that whatever anger they have about the state of the nation, President Obama should bear the blame (although that's like blaming the plumber for your leak that's flooding the house). Now, Trump wasn't trying to say that Obama shouldn't have Republicans' idiot anger directed at him. But he was bringing Bush back into the equation, ostensibly to discredit Jeb and the rest of the GOP establishment. When Jeb said that his brother built "a security apparatus to keep us safe," Trump wrecked him with "The World Trade Center came down during your brother's reign, remember that...That's not keeping us safe."

Marco Rubio tried to jump in and say that he was glad Al Gore wasn't president on 9/11/01, which should have been immediately followed up with the question, "Do you really think a President Gore would have invaded Iraq?" Instead, Trump went totally Godzilla on the whole proceeding, taking a giant shit on Tokyo while burning down everything around him with his nuclear breath: "How did he keep us safe when the World Trade Center -- the World -- excuse me. I lost hundreds of friends. The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush. He kept us safe? That is not safe. That is not safe, Marco. That is not safe...And George Bush-- by the way, George Bush had the chance, also, and he didn't listen to the advice of his CIA."

.....

While Trump is still a frightening prospect who truly has no chance of winning on his platform of rank xenophobia and absolutely no concrete plans, his purpose in this race is clarifying. He is forcing the GOP into a reckoning with its most poisonous beliefs and with its suppressed past. It's about fucking time someone did, even if that someone is a gluttonous ogre who is the embodiment of the ugly depravity of capitalism.

Meanwhile, the ghostly figure of George W. Bush is campaigning for Jeb, and he looks for all the world like a man who is so lost that his soul is already damned and he's just waiting for his body to finally give out.