Billionaire New York investor Paul Singer sent a letter to dozens of other donors on Friday declaring his support for Rubio in a major blow to the struggling campaign of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the newspaper said. “His remarks reflect Bush’s frustrations, but they also have the tinge of an entitled legacy candidate who is angry the nomination isn’t being handed over”.
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On Friday, he attended a football game at Port Charlotte High School, which was battered by Hurricane Charley in 2004. Shortly after the disaster 11 years ago, Bush officiated the coin toss at a matchup featuring Port Charlotte and a crosstown rival.
His famous family rallied around his campaign last weekend, with presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush meeting privately with donors, apparently to reassure them about Jeb’s long-term commitment. In preference polls and places where people can wager on who they think will win, he’s ticking upward.
However, when one looks at the condition the candidates’ campaigns are in now, polling, and the debate performance from Wednesday night, people are starting to make a safe bet.
“The simple fact is you have to be who you are, and I know who I am”.
Leaked internal documents show the Bush campaign recently counted only 1,281 confirmed supporters in Iowa. Even if one supposes that Rubio is a greater threat to Bush’s path to the nomination than the two candidates who have half of the voters between them, Rubio is the future of the GOP and its most talented communicator as well.
The former Florida governor came to the debate after briefing his top fundraisers on a strategy that hinges on overpowering Rubio, whom his campaign sees as his most unsafe competitor for the voters and donors who want to see a traditional nominee.
“And two, what is his theory of the rest of the campaign?”
Bush is establishment, Rubio is the Republican Obama of 2008 vintage. Bush attacked Rubio in the Wednesday evening debate cablecast by CNBC over missing Senate votes in order to campaign for president.
Rubio’s campaign declined to comment on the Bush campaign’s presentation.
Bush was eager to engage, but ultimately came out on the losing end.
As Clinton circa 2008 could tell Bush, inevitability is not your friend, juggernauts are over, shock and awe doesn’t happen in war or presidential races. He has regularly polled in the middle or near the top of the crowded presidential field, and he’s pacing third in the critical early state of Iowa.
“The only reason you’re doing it now is because we’re running for the same position”, Rubio continued.
It slams Rubio for his lack of experience, accomplishments and for his “tomorrow versus yesterday argument”, which the campaign alleges will be ridiculed if he runs against the first would-be woman president. “I’m fine going all the way to Super Tuesday”.
A series of New York Times stories about Rubio’s finances is remembered mostly for the way that the campaign quickly and forcefully seized on the Times’ characterization of Rubio’s $80,000 fishing boat as a “luxury speedboat”, pushed its rebuttal pictures out to other media organizations and used the Times’ characterizations to mock the entire piece.
To take readers inside what is happening today in the upper echelon of the Republican Party, for a few weeks it has been apparent that despite the huge amount of money he has raised and the large campaign infrastructure he has assembled, Mr. Bush continues to lag far behind the GOP frontrunners in all public opinion polling.
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Mr. Bush had several days to plan his attack, and Mr. Rubio was well aware such attacks were coming from opposing candidates or debate panelists from CNBC.
