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“Marco does have a water thing,” said one longtime Rubio associate who has been affiliated with his past campaigns. “I don’t know what it is. He says he just gets thirsty, but it’s clear it’s just a nervous tic. It’s something he just has to have around, like a security blanket or something.” When Rubio addressed CPAC in 2012, event staffers failed to stock the podium with fresh water for his speech. At an early applause line, Rubio — who had been visibly struggling with dry mouth and licking the inside of his mouth and his lips, as he often...

After seven years of the Obama administration, Americans are fed up with their politicians. Americans think their elected leaders have created winners and losers and that the average American is the loser. They think everyone is taking advantage of the system except for them. The electorate is revolting. One presidential candidate they should not be peeved at is Marco Rubio. This has come to the forefront because Sen. Rubio is not a wealthy man. One candidate, Donald Trump, has disparaged him for his lack of financial success. That is particularly fascinating coming from someone who grew up amid great wealth...

Julia Hahn writing at Breitbart tells us what happened here. If yours is one of the brave ten be sure to thank them! (They are mentioned in Hahn's story below but I put them right here on top so you wouldn't have to look far). Rand Paul Jeff Sessions Mike Lee David Vitter John Barrasso Mike Enzi Mark Kirk Jerry Moran Richard Shelby Ted Cruz After Paris and after San Bernardino this is the best they could do--only ten willing to go to the mat for your safety! The amendment, offered Sen. Rand Paul, would have suspended visa issuances to...

It is believed operatives working for Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush are pushing a rumor that rival Marco Rubio fathered a child with a mistress. The narrative - first published on the little-known website FITS News on December 2nd – claimed a so-called "mistress bomb" was about to explode on the Florida Senator's campaign in the next 48 hours. The "female Washington, D.C. lobbyist" was already known by the Rubio campaign, who made her "a focus" of opposition research on the candidate, according to FITS News. ... FITS News has doubled down on its initial story, now claiming in a...

Tossed over the transom by an anonymous (and very reputable) source: Do you know who the woman on the left is? Her name is Jill Kelley. She's from Tampa. Do you remember the Petraeus story and Paula Broadwell emailing the "other woman"? In 2012, Kelley, a Florida socialite with connections to diplomatic and military circles, issued a complaint to the FBI in May 2012 over a series of anonymous stalking e-mails she had received. The threatening emails were traced to Paula Broadwell, the biographer that had an affair with General David Petraeus. Kelley became a focus of media coverage when...

Jeb Bush's backers have watched as Mr. Bush debuted his White House bid amid chatter of inevitability, then plummeted in polls. They have seen him bungle a debate performance, losing a pivotal exchange to his one-time protege, Senator Marco Rubio. And they have observed as Mr. Bush, in small towns and big cities, has proved a much less gifted campaigner than they ever anticipated. So on Saturday, as many of the Bush faithful descended on the Biltmore Hotel near Miami to hear from Mr. Bush and his team, his aides tried to put their most optimistic spin on a campaign...

Let's hope the unnamed source in this Politico story has no idea what he's talking about: Mike Murphy, the Los Angeles-based ad man running Bush's Right to Rise super PAC, isn't about to leave the $75 million left in the group's bank account unspent and is readying a 15-minute biographical film about Bush. According to another source close to Right to Rise, Murphy has been floating another tactical shift to potential supporters, suggesting that he might spend the bulk of the $75 million to carpet bomb Rubio, Cruz, Carson, Christie-everyone but Trump. The thinking: making the race into a binary...

Despite being a favorite of the U.S. Republican Party establishment and a presumed top-tier candidate at the start of the race, Jeb Bush continues to struggle to gain momentum in the presidential campaign, even as the voting season quickly approaches. Bush's troubles were underscored this past week with the release of a new CNN/ORC poll, which suggested the former Florida governor now has the support of an astoundingly low 3 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning independents nationwide.

He’s the GOP’s strongest candidate, right? But what if he can’t win a single early primary? The Rubio problem no one is talking about—yet. Everybody I know, I mean everybody, thinks Marco Rubio is the strongest Republican candidate. Yes, there’s a debate about how strong. Some say he’d beat Hillary Clinton, some say that what with some of the extreme positions he’s taken so far in this race, he’d be hard-pressed to do much better than Mitt Romney’s 206 electoral votes plus maybe his own Florida. So there’s a debate about that. But there ain’t much debate that he’s the,...

When Jeb Bush goes down, he’s taking the rest of the GOP field with him (except Donald Trump).That, at least, is what will happen if Mike Murphy, the head of Bush’s super PAC Right to Rise, gets his way. Right to Rise has $75 million in the bank, and Murphy’s not going to let it go to waste, according to Politico: According to another source close to Right to Rise, Murphy has been floating another tactical shift to potential supporters, suggesting that he might spend the bulk of the $75 million to carpet bomb Rubio, Cruz, Carson, Christie—everyone but Trump....

It says a lot about the malaise afflicting the once-high-flying Jeb Bush for President effort that the most upbeat thing two Politico reporters could find to say is that Team Bush has done a good job of convincing key donors to ignore all the objective evidence that the campaign is going nowhere fast. But such acts of hypnosis are not easily extended to the circling media vultures smelling death, or for that matter, to actual voters. So what is to be done by a presidential campaign that still has quite a bit of money over at the super-pac run by...

Jeb Bush's largest donor has decided to run full-page ads targeting Donald Trump that call the GOP presidential hopeful "a narcissistic BULLYionaire." Billionaire Mike Fernandez, who has contributed $3 million to Right to Rise, the main super-PAC supporting Bush's presidential bid, announced his decision on Friday after a poll showed Trump leading the GOP field with 36 percent support. Bush trails, with just 3 percent.

Looks like Marco Rubio has been fooling around with a Washington, DC lobbyist. This was discovered as people dug through his sketchy finances. I will remind you that Rubio accused Cruz of making the US unsafer and aiding the terrorists because Cruz insists that the intelligence agencies adhere to the Constitution. Then Rubio ran false ads in Iowa against Cruz and is having to pull them. Is this the kind of guy we want as president? I don't think so. It looks like this is being leaked from multiple sources now. Rubio's run is just about done. From Qpolitical: As...

Jeb Bush, struggling to gain traction in a 2016 race moving away from him, argued on Thursday that he could easily beat Hillary Clinton on Election Day. “If I win this nomination, I will take it to Hillary Clinton and I will whup her,” Bush said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s candidate forum in Washington.

Voters will soon get 15 unfiltered minutes of the Jeb Bush story. Right to Rise, the "super PAC" supporting Mr. Bush, has produced a 15-minute documentary featuring him and will release it online on Saturday and will later show it on television. Mike Murphy, the super PAC's executive director, briefed Bush donors on the video at a breakfast meeting in Washington on Thursday morning before the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual gathering, at which Mr. Bush spoke. Right to Rise confirmed the group's plans. -snip- The documentary is the brainchild of Mr. Murphy, who produced a similar, 30-minute town hall-style infomercial...

Jeb Bush has tried everything. His campaign allies have blanketed the airwaves with almost $30 million in ads. Aiming to shake the "low-energy" tag and prove his toughness, Bush hit Donald Trump as a carnival barker unfit for the serious job of being President. He attacked Sen. Marco Rubio, suggesting his former protege was a dilettante in a hurry. He cut staff, hired a debate coach, and pledged that "Jeb Can Fix It." Bush is now polling at 3% -- and dropping. The 3% figure puts Bush in sixth place in the national GOP race, according to the CNN/ORC poll...

Lindsey Graham on Thursday delivered a scathing rebuke of Republican candidates — especially Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump — for alienating Hispanic and female voters with “hard-ass” policies and hateful rhetoric. “How many of you believe that we’re losing elections because we’re not hard-ass enough on immigration?” Graham asked during his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington, D.C. A few people in the room clapped, and Graham responded: “Well, I don’t agree with you. I believe we are losing the Hispanic vote because they think we don’t like them.”(continued)

Britain's Tories fail to reform costly tax credits for the middle class.David Cameron's government last week abandoned its plan to reform Britain's expensive working-family tax credits. U.S. politicians who think this kind of "pro-family" tax policy is a good idea-hello, Marco Rubio might take note. The centerpiece of Mr. Rubio's tax plan is an increase in the child tax credit to $2,500 from $1,000, despite its cost and lack of growth incentive. Such ideas may have a short-term political appeal, but eventually they become entitlements that benefit the left.

Three things about Donald Trump have now become clear to the Republican establishment: 1) He might not implode before people start voting for president next year. 2) He could actually wind up as the Republican nominee for president. -snip- Right to Rise raised more than $103 million in the first six months of this year. It spent - as I mentioned above - $28 million on ads. Let's say the organization has spent another $15 million on fundraising, consulting fees and other miscellaneous costs. And let's assume, just for the sake of this argument, that Right to Rise hasn't raised...

New Hampshire is beginning to look like Jeb Bush's final stand. Stuck in the middle of the GOP pack he was expected to dominate, Bush is accelerating the time frame for his campaign’s next ad buy in the state. His campaign also announced Tuesday that it is opening four regional field offices in New Hampshire and upping its on-the-ground staff from 12 people to 20.