The Mex-churian Candidate?

SAN DIEGO -- What's Spanish for "oops"?

As an assimilated Mexican-American, I have no idea. But I bet Jeb Bush does since his Spanish is much better than mine.

The former Florida governor went to Twitter this week to claim that he simply made a mistake when he filled in the bubble and identified himself as "Hispanic" on a 2009 Miami-Dade County voter registration application.

Sure, compadre. Whatever you say.

This story won't do much to assuage the concern of nativists that the likely 2016 presidential candidate is soft on immigration and not worried enough about the Hispanicizing of the United States.

Bush's youngest son, Jeb Jr., joked about the foul-up on Twitter. He wrote: "LOL -- come on dad, think you checked the wrong box #HonoraryLatino." Jeb Sr. retweeted his son's tweet, adding, "My mistake! Don't think I've fooled anyone!"

A Bush spokeswoman said this in an email: "It's unclear where the paperwork error was made. The Governor's family certainly got a good laugh out of it. He is not Hispanic."

He's not? Well, nobody's perfect. But I suspect this was no innocent mistake. I think there are at least three plausible explanations.

The first thought that comes to mind is that, subconsciously, Jeb does identify himself as Hispanic. Not in a literal sense, of course, but in terms of having an emotional connection to Hispanics.

Even though the liberal media couldn't wait to remind Bush that he is -- as MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell put it gleefully -- "a white guy," his Hispanic bona fides are strong. His wife, Columba Garnica Gallo de Bush, was born in Leon, Mexico, where the two met as teenagers while Jeb was on a foreign exchange program. He lived in Caracas, Venezuela, while working for a U.S. bank. He and Columba have three children, who identify themselves as Hispanic.

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