It was a distinctly different demographic from the audiences that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz get here, conspicuously middle-class to affluent and with a general mood closer to bafflement than anger. They came to see a guy who has been repeatedly mocked and belittled by the Republican frontrunner and the media since the beginning of this electoral season, the scion of a political dynasty who has spent tens of millions of dollars with no discernible results and who barely registered in the Iowa caucuses. They came to see the son and brother of former presidents argue for a return to what he calls "regular-order democracy," and they ate it up [...]

After repeatedly being confounded by the more-conservative-than-thou politics of the Republican race, Bush has made the counterintuitive decision (at least for now) to run to the left of his entire party, with the possible exception of Kasich. That's a highly relative term in 2016, to be sure. But in terms of the policy positions I heard him talk about on Sunday morning, the differences between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton on a broad range of issues are more a matter of tone than substance. He said he was done badmouthing Barack Obama, and that Republicans could never win unless they convince voters they care about the poor and the disadvantaged. "I don't think liberals are bad people," he said, a sentiment you will not hear from Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.

More extraordinary still, Bush agreed with a questioner that climate change was a genuine threat to human society and said that "man has to have some influence" in that process. (That got a heartfelt round of applause.)