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 "Let Jeb be Jeb" was the message Bush's advisers conveyed.
A former Florida governor, Bush will launch his campaign for the
November 2016 election in Miami on Monday, having built a
well-funded organization but facing some of the same dilemmas that
Romney faced.
Opinion polls show the 62-year-old Bush tied for the lead with
others in a packed field of Republicans hoping to succeed President
Barack Obama. Obama's former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton,
leads the pack among Democrats.
In 2012, having failed to define himself otherwise, Romney left
himself open to attack from rivals in both parties. Democrats called
him an out-of-touch wealthy elitist. Conservatives were skeptical of
him.
Like Romney, Bush faces an uphill task persuading conservatives in
the Republican Party that he is one of them. He will also want to
avoid being branded inaccessible.
"The prime thing he talks about is he wants to go about showing his
heart," said Bush spokesman Tim Miller, recalling the message of
exit polls on Election Day in 2012.
 "A lot of people highlighted in the exit polls how Mitt Romney beat
Obama in a lot of characteristics but was trounced when it came to
'who cares about people like me,'" Miller said.
In a secretly recorded video in 2012, Romney famously portrayed
Obama's supporters - which he said were 47 percent of the electorate
- as people who live off government handouts and do not "care for
their lives."
It was only when a sympathetic documentary came out in 2014, long
after he lost to Obama, that Americans saw a different side of
Romney. The "MITT" movie was packed with behind-the-scenes video of
his family life, including his pain at losing the election.
A STARK DIFFERENCE
North Carolina donor Theresa Kostrzewa, who raised campaign dollars
for Romney and now donates to Bush, attended Bush's April retreat in
Miami. She saw a stark difference between the two campaign
organizations.
"We learned who the real Mitt was two years after the election when
someone did a documentary," Kostrzewa said. "The mantra of this
campaign is, 'Let Jeb be Jeb.'"
"Let Jeb be Jeb" means Americans will see Bush in places Romney did
not visit and where candidates of their white-dominated party don't
always go, such as black churches, Hispanic neighborhoods and
college campuses, a Bush adviser said.
Where Romney was tightly controlled, Bush will make a deliberate
attempt to be more accessible to voters, taking their questions at
town hall-style events, a far less-scripted pattern than that
practiced by Romney.
And where Romney had few interactions with reporters who covered
him, occasionally tossing fast-food hamburgers to them on his plane
but infrequently taking their questions, Bush has appeared largely
comfortable sparring with the media, despite a stumble over whether
he would, like his brother President George W. Bush, have launched
the Iraq war knowing what he knows now.
Significantly, advisers said, Bush will work to define himself in a
way that respects his famous family but stresses an independent
path, like his formative years spent in Venezuela. And he will show
people that he cares by stressing his record as Florida governor,
they say.
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Bush and his advisers may not dwell on the Romney example - they say
it does not come up in meetings - but they are aware of the lessons
learned.
WELCOMING OTHERS
Bush adviser Sally Bradshaw co-authored an official autopsy report
on the 2012 election that found, "we have lost the ability to be
persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on
every issue."
By sticking to his moderate positions on immigration and Common Core
education policy, Bush is trying to prod Republicans into being more
inclusive, a risk given the rightward tilt of the party in recent
years.
"I am going to be who I am, I am not going to change who i am
because at a given point in time someone has a particular point of
view," Bush told reporters in Estonia on Saturday as he concluded a
three-nation trip.
Should he win the nomination, his positions could help him in the
general election campaign when the nominees of both parties will be
reaching for the undecided voters in the middle of the political
spectrum.
For now, though, Bush is open to attacks from Republican rivals who
will try to outflank him on the right and feed on conservative fears
that he is not one of them.
Bush, whose Right to Rise SuperPac is raising perhaps $100 million
for starters, will be prepared to fight back, a stance underscored
by Bush's hiring of pugnacious Republican political veteran Danny
Diaz as his campaign manager.
As proof that Romney remains a looming presence and potential power
broker, the former Massachusetts governor played host this weekend
to several Republican candidates at a donors' retreat in Deer
Valley, Utah. He had breakfast on Friday with Bush rival Marco
Rubio, a Florida senator.
Ron Kaufman, a senior adviser to Romney in 2012 who is backing Bush,
said Bush and his team will need to work hard to define their
candidate and stress his conservative record as governor of Florida
from 1999 to 2007.
"Once Americans are reminded, shown and discover the depth of his
leadership as governor and the things he accomplished, I think his
numbers will rise," Kaufman said.
(Additional reporting by Emily Flitter in Deer Valley, Utah, and
David Mardiste in Estonia; Editing by Howard Goller)
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