Jeb Bush Has It Right... PERIOD.

According to the Washington Wire Gov. Jeb Bush is considering a run for Senate. Sen. Mel Martinez R-FL, a one term Senator, has decided not to seek re-election in 2010. Unlike his brother, Gov. Bush remains popular in Florida.

Since the Republican failure in November, Gov. Bush has been extremely vocal about his disagreements with the party. He and I share almost the same view of what the GOP's problem is and what they need to do about it. He makes some astute observations in his recent Newsmax.com interview.

Bush makes a simple statement from a plain observation that many local and state GOP leaders refuse to realize. He advocates that the GOP must broaden its appeal to avoid becoming “the old white-guy party".

“You’ve got to do the hard work. That means grass-roots organization. It means listening to the base of the party. It means voter registration. It means turn-out operations. It means recruiting candidates that look like the population we’re trying to attract to our cause. Those things seem to have waned in the last couple years.”

Perhaps most importantly, Bush said, the party must confront the nation’s changing demographics.

“We can’t ignore large segments of our population and expect to win,” Bush said. “We can’t be the ‘old white-guy’ party. It’s just not going to work, the demographics go against us in that regard.

This is the 'invitation only' party that I have been talking about. Bush then speaks about the Hispanic vote. He, like others, recognizes that the Hispanic vote is and will continue to make an impact on American politics. Republicans lost this year in part because Hispanics did not give a sustainable amount of votes to them. One reason is the GOP's harsh rhetoric used in the immigration debate. Bush expands on the Hispanic vote and immigration.

“Among Hispanic voters, I think we need to change the tone of the conversation as it relates to immigration. In Florida, we’ve not participated much in the chest pounding and the yelling and the screaming. I mean, it just drives me nuts when there are substantive policy differences that we can show mutual respect on, but the tone needs to change. And I think we need to recruit more candidates who share our values in the Hispanic community. In Florida we’ve done that.”

In New Mexico we haven't! When I've made statements similar to Gov. Bush's, I am nearly ostracized from a party that doesn't like a 21 year old political light weight making embarrassing observations. Governor Jeb Bush gets it, New Mexico Republicans don't. State leadership must work to remake the 'big tent' party in order to shed their 'invitation only' party image.