Free Republic

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush urged Republicans to pursue "21st-century solutions" to issues Americans face and govern inclusively if they wish to improve the GOP's brand and build on recent party victories under the next administration. "Our party must be big-hearted and creative and opportunistic," the ex-White House hopeful, who was President-elect Trump's greatest rival for much of the GOP primary, wrote in a Friday op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. Bush declined to support Trump in the general election, often criticizing his lack of policy knowledge and foreign policy plans, though he now admits the incoming Republican president "successfully...

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson hinted Wednesday that former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush might be considering an endorsement. "I can't say that we haven't had conversations," Johnson said in a Wednesday afternoon conversation on CNN from Cleveland. "But no push on the conversations." Johnson said he has also had conversations with 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney. When asked who initiated the conversations, Johnson replied, "Not me." When asked if the former Florida governor has called him, Johnson added quickly, "I don't want to — I want to protect the innocent.

Jeb Bush's three delegates at the Republican National Convention cost him and his campaign around $50 million each.  After being the 'hands down' favorite to win the Republican primary with an unlimited bank account supporting him, Bush ended up spending all the money his donors had fundraised and losing the election in miserable fashion.  Ever since, Jeb and the entire Bush family have been extremely negative and reluctant to support the Republican nominee.  In May, (politically correct) Bush criticized Trump for eating a taco salad.  “What Trump did was so insensitive,” Bush told Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.  "First, not all Hispanics are Mexican,"...

Jeb Bush's three delegates at the Republican National Convention cost him and his campaign about $50 million each. Bush, who ended his presidential campaign in February after a poor showing in South Carolina, had only three delegates vote for him at the Republicans' nominating convention Tuesday. His campaign and super PAC spent $46 million for each delegate, according to The Washington Post's Dave Weigel. He was a favorite going into the primary season and had substantial financial backing from his family network, but he was unable to muster the enthusiasm his campaign needed. Donald Trump's attacks on Bush as “low-energy”...

Call it a tipping point, a time of choosing or testing. Whatever you call it, it is clear that this election will have far-reaching consequences for both the Republican Party and our exceptional country. While he has no doubt tapped into the anxiety so prevalent in the United States today, I do not believe Donald Trump reflects the principles or inclusive legacy of the Republican Party. And I sincerely hope he doesn’t represent its future. As much as I reject Donald Trump as our party leader, he did not create the political culture of the United States on his own.

I congratulate Donald Trump on securing his place as the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee. There is no doubt that he successfully tapped into the deep sense of anger and frustration so many Americans around the country rightfully feel today. The tremendous anger of the current U.S. electorate – whether Republican, Democrat or independent – is a result of people fearful about the future, concerned with the direction of our country and tremendously frustrated by the abject failure and inability of leaders in Washington, D.C. to make anything better. American voters have made it clear that Washington is broken, but I’m...

Meet Curly Haugland, former chairman of the North Dakota Republican party and current Republican national committeeman. Haugland is one of just 112 delegates who will arrive unbound to this summer’s Republican convention in Cleveland, free to cast a vote for any candidate he chooses on a first ballot because North Dakota does not hold a primary or caucus. That makes him a particularly valuable asset to the still-dueling presidential campaigns. Haugland, a Bismarck businessman and a member of the powerful RNC committee that will set the rules governing this year’s convention, says voters may be in for a rude awakening...

His campaign started out stuffed with money. By last July, Jeb Bush had raised $103 million for his super PAC, Right to Rise, an astonishing sum that seemed to foretell the most lavishly funded campaign in American history. No super PAC had ever raised so much cash so early in an election cycle. In fact, Right to Rise alone outraised all the super PACs combined at the same stage in the 2012 elections. Now, after primary elections in just three states, Bush is out. He finished sixth in the Iowa caucus, fourth in the New Hampshire primary, and now, fourth...

It ended without an exclamation point. On a mild Saturday night in South Carolina, Jeb Bush took to the stage at his victory party (using those two words in the least literal sense) and told supporters that he was out. It wasn't supposed to be this way. When Jeb jumped in, Tea Partiers panicked and grassroots conservatives lit their hair on fire. He carried an air of inevitability after all-at its onset, his campaign practically drowned in shock-and-awe money and big name endorsements. But from its inception, there were cracks. When he spoke at CPAC a few months before his...

Jeb Bush has finally put his presidential campaign out of its misery. But it wasn't so long ago that Jeb was widely seen as the candidate to beat in the Republican presidential primary. Pundits predicted that Bush was almost as inevitable a nominee as Hillary Clinton was. Commentators cast Bush as the Republican Party's best chance at leaving Clinton shaking in her boots. Between his "rock star name" and the gusher of money he had flowing into his campaign before even announcing, Bush was thought to have the nomination nearly at his fingertips. Then reality intervened. The former Florida governor...

Jeb Bush, the Republican establishment’s last, best hope, began his 2016 campaign rationally enough, with a painstakingly collated operational blueprint his team called, with NFL swagger, “The Playbook.” On page after page kept safe in a binder, the playbook laid out a strategy for a race his advisors were certain would be played on Bush’s terms – an updated, if familiar version of previous Bush family campaigns where cash, organization and a Republican electorate ultimately committed to an electable center-right candidate would prevail. Story Continued Below The playbook, hatched by Sally Bradshaw, Mike Murphy and a handful of other Bush...

JUST HEARD IT LIVE

The Jeb Bush presidential campaign people deny it in a high-energy way so unlike their famously even-tempered boss: Tonight's South Carolina primary is not a litmus test for the former Florida governor's so-far fizzling presidential campaign. If he does lousy here, expect him to trudge on, through Nevada and next into Super Tuesday on March 1.

Several Jeb Bush campaign workers are already shopping their résumés with Florida political consultants as expectations mount inside his team that their candidate won’t push on after South Carolina. “I can unequivocally tell you that people are looking for work, because they say they’ve been led to believe that they won’t have a job because the campaign won’t be around any longer or their jobs won’t because the campaign won’t have any money,” said one Republican who helps run one of the Florida campaigns and who is a Bush donor.

Jeb Bush, who has struggled with the political baggage attached to his famous last name, has finally come to a place where his family is not a liability: South Carolina. This state has been good to the Bushes, handing key primary victories to both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush in their White House bids. As Jeb Bush looks to continue his family's winning streak on Saturday in the first southern primary, his campaign is becoming an all-hands-on-deck family affair. George W. Bush will stump for his younger brother for the first time Monday night, attending a rally in...

Sitting on his campaign bus - laptop, turkey jerky, and coffee all nearby -Jeb Bush was befuddled over his campaign's failure to capture more attention from the news media. "I could drop my pants," he said in an interview. "Moon the whole crowd. Everybody would be aghast, except the press guys would never notice." Bush is entering the final days of his last stand, and hints of exasperation are leaking through his cheerful, stoic demeanor. Without a major comeback in New Hampshire on Tuesday, or, absent that, a Bush miracle in South Carolina later this month, he will face increasing...

Jeb Bush said campaigning with his brother, former President George W. Bush, tomorrow could help save his presidential campaign. -snip- "The point is, is he a popular Republican? You bet he is," Bush said of his brother. "And he will make the point ... that he knows what it takes to be president of the United States, to be commander-in-chief, to keep the country safe and that he believes that I have those skills based on my record and based on how he knows me, and that will be validator in South Carolina where values matter and where national defense...

Some of the biggest Republican donors, who collectively have contributed tens of millions of dollars to shape the presidential race, are tightening their purse strings out of frustration with their inability to boost their favored candidates, or to slow Donald Trump. Rather than continuing to write huge checks to support the cluster of establishment candidates jockeying to emerge as the leading alternative to Trump, a billionaire real estate showman roundly despised by the GOP elite, these donors have mostly retreated to the sidelines. They're watching anxiously, hoping that the field sorts itself out, according to interviews with a half dozen...

The family loyalists watch the decline of Jeb Bush's presidential ambitions with a mix of sadness and resignation. New Hampshire-It is never a good sign for a candidate when your supporters start feeling sorry for you, but that is what has happened to Jeb Bush. "Poor Jeb," said Tony Manix, a 54-year-old Air National Guard member in jeans and a puffy down jacket, who had come to see Bush speak-not for the first time-at a private school here, on a chilly, wind-whipped seacoast night. "I just don't understand why his numbers aren't up," Manix added plaintively. "If you listen to...

GOP elites have blown $65 million on Jeb Bush so far this campaign cycle and have another $30 million to blow on his failed campaign. Roll Call reported: The spectacular bust of Jeb Bush's campaign for president so far is as much a story about Bush himself as it is about the failure of Right to Rise, the shock-and-awe super PAC that was supposed to launch him into the lead and keep him there. Right to Rise raised $103 million in 2015 and has spent more than $65 million so far. But nine months after he got into the race,...