Jeb Bush is right, he has 'no clue': Column Christie's, Huckabee's and Bush's gaffes explain why conservative voters don't trust their candidates.

David Mastio | USA TODAY

In all the liberal news media foofaraw after Wednesday night’s Republican debate on CNBC, most people missed the liberal presidential candidates. No, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley didn't crash the party. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Mike Huckabee forgot which party they belong to.

In the middle of a contest to attract conservative Republican primary voters, the two former governors and a sitting governor each took time out to endorse big government. Bush’s gaffe could well signal that the end of his campaign is nigh.

Here’s what Huckabee said: “Instead of cutting benefits for old people, cutting benefits for sick people — why don’t we say, 'Let’s cure the four big cost-driving diseases … diabetes, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s?' …

"You want to fix Medicare? Focus on the diseases that are costing us the trillions of dollars. …. Eradicate those and you fix Medicare and you’ve fixed America, its economy and you’ve made people’s lives a heck of a lot better."

Unless Huckabee was talking about his magic wand, the former Arkansas governor is proposing a big government plan to fund disease research, something the United States already does to the tune of billions of dollars a year.

For Christie's part, responding to a question about high drug prices, he argued that government prosecutors should go after the meany-mean companies that charge prices he doesn’t like.

Here’s what Christie said: “We don’t need Hillary Clinton’s price controls. … What we do, though, is, if there is somebody who is price-gouging, we have laws for prosecutors to take that on. Let’s let a Justice Department — and I will make an attorney general who will enforce the law and make justice more than just a word. It will be a way of life.”

Of course, if the New Jersey governor’s big government price prosecutors started throwing drug company execs in jail for charging high prices, it might make Huckabee’s plan for government to shower drug researchers with federal grants a bit more expensive and a lot less productive.

That’s why Republican voters shy away from big government solutions: Even plans with the best of intentions have destructive consequences that undermine other important goals. You can’t have a government that aggressively throws drug execs in jail for charging high prices and have a vibrant drug research industry that cures diseases fast enough to save Medicare.

Democrats are typically the ones who forget this inconvenient fact of life, not Republicans. But the Christie/Huckabee plan for big government health care wasn’t the night’s greatest farce. That was provided by Jeb Bush.

During the debate, the former Florida governor denounced regulation as one reason for today’s slow economic growth and blamed the cost of complying with regulations for forcing small businesses to close. Then he was asked about the $18 billion fantasy sports industry.

Here’s what Bush said: “I think this has become something that needs to be looked at in terms of regulation. Effectively, it is day trading without any regulation at all. And when you have insider information, which apparently has been the case, where people use that information and use big data to try to take advantage of it, there has to be some regulation.”

Got a problem? Jeb has a solution: Regulation, regulation, regulation.

Realizing that he had just endorsed regulations three times in 60 words, sounding like Jan Brady in the process ("Marcia, Marcia, Marcia"), Bush tried to walk it back:

“If they can’t regulate themselves, then the NFL needs to look at just, you know, moving away from them a little bit. And there should be some regulation. I have no clue whether the federal government is the proper place. My instinct is to say, hell no, just about everything about the federal government.”

Christie interrupted before Bush finished his thought, but the damage was done. This is exactly why conservative Republican primary voters do not trust establishment candidates.

When Bush was confronted with an issue he wasn’t perfectly prepared for, his instinct was to go for the standard issue big government answer: regulation.

And that is why all the money in the world probably can't save Bush's campaign.

David Mastio, who worked as a speechwriter for a member of the Cabinet in the George W. Bush administration, is the Deputy Editorial Page editor of USA TODAY. Follow Mastio on Twitter.