Jeb Bush stumbled at Wednesday’s debate, but the following day he spiritedly denied suggestions his White House campaign is on life support, insisting he remains the best candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton.
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The Bush camp then cites that a number of state lawmakers have endorsed the former governor while none have officially come out in favor of Rubio.
Late in Wednesday’s debate, Bush was asked whether fantasy football should be treated as gambling.
In describing the leaked campaign plan published by U.S. News this week, radio host Rush Limbaugh said the 112-page plan looks like the blueprint of a presidential campaign of decades past. The candidate himself spoke briefly, saying he was a doer, not a talker, and that the job of president is about more than standing out during televised debates.
“Every one of these elections goes through a process”, Bush shared. 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.
For the record, we’d note that we endorsed Rubio for the Senate in 2010, and Mitt Romney for president in 2012, because we were frustrated by the pace of hope and change in Washington, and they both promised to work hard to make a difference.
Sig Rogich, a longtime adviser to the Bush family and now the former Florida governor’s Nevada finance chairman, said it’s obvious Bush is uncomfortable when he has to go into attack mode. “You get, like, three days where you have to show up?” “It has nothing to do with the personalities of the people on the stage”.
But Bush found himself in the uncomfortable position on Thursday of tacitly acknowledging a poor debate performance while brushing off suggestions his campaign might be doomed.
If Jeb thinks emulating the McCain campaign and destroying Marco Rubio are the keys to a presidency, that says an terrible lot about his capacity (or lack thereof) for strategic thinking.
He joked about his own fantasy team before suggesting that the government should get more involved.
In July he said, “people need to work longer hours”, and announced, “We need to figure out a way to phase out” Medicare. We have – wait a second – we have $19 trillion (€17.3 trillion) in debt.
“We have Isil and al Qaeda attacking us”.
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“He said that he believes in his brother, that he has a strong record, that he has it in his heart and his gut to do it”, said one major donor who attended.
