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A Jeb Bush campaign speech breached a new dimension of awkwardness this week. The former Florida governor was speaking at a Rotary Club in New Hampshire Monday when a Rotary official interrupted the presidential candidate and sent him back to his seat. A C-SPAN video of the speech shows the man interrupting Bush's speech and ushering him off the stage. "They're kicking me off the stage!" Bush says, waving his arms, apparently flabbergasted by what is happening.

It hasn't been an easy month for Jeb Bush. He placed sixth in the Iowa caucuses and fourth in New Hampshire, and then there was that awkward "please clap" moment at a campaign event. But there's still plenty for Bush to celebrate: Thursday marks his 63rd birthday. On his big day, POLITICO looks back at some of his more expressive moments in politics.

Jeb Bush landed in South Carolina facing his last, best shot at convincing Republican voters to support him - and is offering up something that has escaped him all cycle: a little authenticity. "I know that I'm not perfect," he said Wednesday night, referring to his low poll numbers and stilted debate performances. "I have enough self-awareness to know that I can improve, and I am improving." His self-assessment came at the end of a rowdy town hall meeting here where he answered questions for nearly an hour. One attendee cut straight to the heart of Bush's problems as a...

Donald Trump would be a worse president than Barack Obama, Jeb Bush told a crowd here Wednesday. "We will be worse off than we are now" with Trump as president, Bush said. "And we are pretty bad off right now."

Everything wrong with Jeb Bush can be summed up in his approach to border security and American sovereignty. As we all now know, the former Florida governor considers illegal immigration an "act of love" on the part of the illegal immigrant sneaking into America illegally. Wednesday morning on "Morning Joe," after barely getting out of New Hampshire alive, Bush repeatedly described frontrunner Donald Trump's proposed temporary ban on foreign Muslims as "horrific." You don't have to agree with the idea of Trump's temporary ban to see the benefits of such a thing, or why two-thirds of Republican voters in a...

Can you believe this? One longtime Rubio supporter who backs Bush faulted Rubio's campaign for the slip-up. He said they drove Rubio too hard and too long and he didn't have enough sleep. In the days before New Hampshire primary, Rubio struggled to find his footing coming off as subdued and tired during some of his final campaign stops. Rubio also repeated himself, again, this time about family values in his last campaign rally in Nashua, N.H., before the primary. "It was the pace. He couldn't keep up," the source said. "And then they doubled-down on it - tripled and...

The super PAC backing Jeb Bush's Republican presidential campaign is planning to increase its ad buy in South Carolina ahead of the Feb. 20 primary. Right to Rise USA is pouring another $1.7 million into the Palmetto State in the next 10 days on top of the more than $10 million the group has already spent in the state, according to people familiar with the plans. The money will be spent primarily on television, radio and digital advertising. The cash infusion is coming as the PAC is postponing the start of ad buys in seven states holding contests in March....

-snip- Bush is a massive threat to Rubio now. Don't get me wrong - Jeb did not do particularly well in New Hampshire either. Fourth place is no great achievement, especially when you consider how much money Bush spent in order to turn in that mediocre finish. In the context of this bizarre race, however, Jeb did himself a lot of favors by finishing 0.5 percent ahead of Rubio. His campaign has been an expensive disappointment up to this point, but now he can make the pitch to wary donors and Republican establishment types that he stuck with it, fought...

Jazzed by a fourth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush opened his campaign for the next contest in South Carolina by taking repeated shots at front-runner Donald Trump. Mr. Bush accused the billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star of being a divisive figure just like President Obama and slammed him for declaring bankruptcy four times for his business ventures. "I'm giving you a reality-based answer not a realty-TV answer," Mr. Bush told the crowd at a town hall in Bluffton, South Carolina, as he touted his record of cutting taxes, reining in spending...

Donald Trump stormed back into the national spotlight by winning the New Hampshire primary Tuesday and Democrat Bernie Sanders avenged his narrow Iowa loss to Hillary Clinton. -snip- "You've all reset the race," Bush declared to his well-organized supporters. "This campaign is not dead. We're going to South Carolina." As he began to speak in Manchester, television networks switched to Trump's victory address, denying Bush his moment. Still, Bush earned new life and scored a psychological victory over Florida rival Marco Rubio, who finished fifth, his claim of momentum stunted after a poor debate performance Saturday in which he robotically...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's virtual tie for third place in the New Hampshire primary Tuesday is the moment he has been waiting for to revive a struggling campaign. Campaign advisers said he needed to exceed expectations and beat his home-state rival, Sen. Marco Rubio, and after months of slumping poll numbers, he did. Mr. Rubio was in fifth place, roughly a point behind Mr. Bush and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Mr. Bush now heads to South Carolina with some wind at his back, a political organization on the ground and some potentially powerful surrogates on hand. "This campaign is...

The worst-kept secret among those tracking Jeb Bush's presidential campaign is that former president George W. Bush is about to take on a much more prominent role. Few details of what the 43rd president will do exactly are yet known, but he is expected to campaign with his younger brother at some point in the coming days across South Carolina, where the Bush name remains revered and popular among GOP voters. Palmetto State voters getting in the car on Wednesday may hear a new radio ad bought and paid for by Jeb Bush's presidential campaign. Aides wouldn't immediately say where...

After finishing in fourth place during Tuesday's New Hampshire Republican primary, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is looking towards a longer-term strategy for the GOP nomination. "I think the field will whittle down eventually," Bush said in an interview with "CBS This Morning" early Wednesday. "I'm a patient person. I wish it all happened overnight, that's kind of the obsession of the pundits want that to happen but it'll happen. And when it does, I'm the one candidate that has taken on Donald Trump that does not believe he's a conservative." Of Trump, who won the first-in-the-nation primary by a...

Behind the would-be juggernaut lay a candidate who'd never won a competitive election. Jeb Bush banned me from the bus. It was October 2014, two months before Jeb would announce he was exploring a run for president, and I had come to west Texas as an Associated Press reporter to ask about his plans. The former Florida governor had taken a day off from campaigning for midterm candidates to enjoy a victory lap with his son, George P. Bush, who was cruising to election as Texas land commissioner. A Texas colleague and I were set to interview father and son...

Jeb Bush goes "Hot Tub Time Machine" Republican - soft on climate, immigration and Obama - and draws big crowds. During four days in New Hampshire, I have attended only two events that did not feel as if they were primarily constructed as media spectacles, and as if they were using actual citizens or prospective voters mostly as props or design elements. One of those was the big Bernie Sanders rally on Sunday afternoon in Portsmouth, where a boisterous crowd of more than 1,200 crammed into a community college gym to bask in the Bern. The other was a Jeb...

Jeb Bush's stump speech started to take on a defensive, pleading tone in the days following his sixth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses last week. I know I've been written off, I know the end is near, I know all that stuff," the onetime overwhelming favorite for the Republican presidential nomination told a couple of hundred people in a school cafeteria in Concord. "You know what gives me confidence? New Hampshire. ... I trust you all. I've shown my heart. I've shown the depth of knowledge." Political reporters have been asking him about quitting the race and how his campaign...

On the eve of today’s New Hampshire presidential primary, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush finished his day at the Frank Jones Center on the seacoast, the same locale where another unlikely GOP contender, John McCain, once hosted his final town hall in a state that he ultimately won eight years ago. The former Florida governor joked that "the Bushes are getting acclimated" to New Hampshire again after his mother visited days ago, nodding to the state in which the family has collectively won four primaries. -snip- It’s no secret that the Bush campaign has gone all-in here. Supporters were shipped...

With just hours to go until primary votes are cast here, a new poll conducted by Jeb Bush’s super PAC finds him moving into third place. The poll, which was conducted after the end of Saturday night's debate and concluded before the start of the Super Bowl on Sunday evening, shows Donald Trump with a wide lead over the field with 29 percent. John Kasich follows with 14 percent, followed by Bush at 12 percent. Ted Cruz, the winner of the Iowa caucuses, notches 10 percent. The one-day survey of 300 likely New Hampshire voters found Marco Rubio at just...

Despite being backed by the monumental Right to Rise super PAC, Jeb Bush said Monday he would "eliminate" the Supreme Court decision that paved the way for super PACs. "If I could do it all again I'd eliminate the Supreme Court ruling" Citizens United, Bush told CNN's Dana Bash. "This is a ridiculous system we have now where you have campaigns that struggle to raise money directly and they can't be held accountable for the spending of the super PAC that's their affiliate." Bush's Right to Rise super PAC has dominated the fundraising race, pulling in $117.6 million last year,...

Jeb Bush has a fighting chance of making an important second-place finish in New Hampshire's primary on Tuesday - a comeback that some believe can be pinned on his decision to embrace his inner bewildered goof. Writing for Slate, Franklin Foer argues that Bush has gone from being kicked-while-he's-down to emerging as a true contender in the Granite State thanks to his uncensored authenticity. "Bush may be the most authentic of the pack - patrician, goofy, a little flummoxed," Foer claims.