In talking with Bob Sanchez, from the James Madison Institute in Florida (his views don’t necessarily reflect the views of JMI), Sanchez underplays the value of a last-minute Jeb Bush endorsement.

First there’s the fact that record numbers of Floridians have already voted in the primary. Sanchez wonders if Crist’s (or Martinez’s, for that matter) McCain endorsement has that much of an impact for the same reason — as I write more about here.

On Jeb, Sanchez says:

If Jeb had taken sides several weeks ago, it might well have helped the candidate he favored – especially among South Florida’s Hispanic voters, with whom the former Governor remains very popular.
I think Jeb may also have correctly decided that an endorsement from him would be a mixed blessing for the favored candidate on the national scene, where there is a certain amount of “Bush fatigue” related to the failures rightly or wrongly attributed to his brother’s presidency.
Among the chattering classes in Manhattan and Washington, D.C., an endorsement by Jeb also would have triggered inevitable speculation that he was angling for a vice presidential spot on someone’s ticket – a scenario that would strike anyone who knows him well as absurd.