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OP consultant Mike Murphy - who was last seen flying the well-funded Jeb super PAC Right-to-Rise USA into a mountain - has some thoughts on Marco Rubio's chances against Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. First up, don't use the Nevada results showing a blowout victory from Donald Trump "as a model" for the rest of the Republican primaries coming up:

It's never clear what the truth is when a campaign ends, but it gets ugly. One of the key types of people in creating a campaign are major fundraisers. And when campaigns fold, they talk sometimes, but usually in blind quotes. But one of the funders, who helped raise millions of dollars for a superPAC supporting Jeb Bush talked on the record with NPR's Morning Edition - and gave his version of what he felt went wrong. "I think the campaign was winnable, and we lost," Jamie Wareham, a Washington, D.C., lawyer, told NPR's Steve Inskeep Tuesday. Wareham donated more...

Right to Rise, the pro-Jeb Bush super PAC that raised a record-shattering sum, is canceling a wave of planned television advertising. The move, confirmed by two media tracking sources, follows Bush exiting the Republican primary Saturday night after a drubbing in South Carolina. The group canceled television buys in Georgia, Idaho, Michigan, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush dropped out of the Republican presidential primary two days ago, prompting campaign officials and supporters to look for a scapegoat for the debacle. They may have settled on a pricey one, indeed. Political strategist Mike Murphy, head of the pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise USA, is under fire for allegedly giving himself a salary and compensation package that totals $14 million. "He made minimum of $14 million," a Bush campaign bundler told CNN.

When Donald Trump pointed the finger at Jeb Bush at the last debate and claimed he's got nothing to show for the millions his campaign has spent, he wasn't kidding. A review of how Bush and his allies spent over $125 million in his failed campaign shows the main thing to come out of it was a lot of consultants and local TV stations made a lot of money. A Washington Post review of Bush spending shows more than 95 percent of the advertising budget - from his campaign and the separate super PAC, Right to Rise - went to...

In the unsparing judgment of the Twittersphere, there was one clear loser after Jeb's Bush's graceful exit from the Republican presidential race Saturday night: political strategist Mike Murphy and the Bush-allied super PAC Right to Rise USA, which he directed. Murphy has long been one of Bush's closest advisers -- and the political world was in awe last year when Right to Rise raised $100 million just as Bush was launching his candidacy. Now, the super PAC will go down in history as yet another failed Murphy juggernaut. -snip- "He made minimum of $14 million," the bundler said, requesting anonymity...

'I need you to throw away money on Jeb - out of loyalty,' a fundraiser told donors. When Jeb Bush announced a record fundraising haul in July, the Florida Republican rewarded major donors with a two-day celebratory retreat at the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. They also delivered a message: $114 million was just the beginning of how much cash they would need to win. Now, seven months later and just 17 days before the first ballots are cast, Bush's donors are no longer high-fiving or strategizing how to keep funds flowing. Instead, the money spigot is shutting off as...

Jeb Bush and his super PAC are set to assault New Hampshire airwaves with a series of ads leading up the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. The spending looks like an effort by Bush to empty campaign coffers, filled in a fundraising haul started in late 2014, in a last ditch effort to gain ground in a state famous for anointing the Republican establishment standard-bearer. This strategy includes two ads from Bush's PAC, Right to Rise. Those ads are set to air in New Hampshire during the Super Bowl. The Boston Herald reported that the Bush team has reserved more than $14...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and his super PAC are set to dominate the TV airwaves between now and the Granite State primary, reserving more than $14 million in commercials on both New Hampshire and Boston stations - including two Super Bowl spots - the Herald has learned. It's a clear sign that Bush operatives, despite criticism over already spending more than $35 million nationally on commercials for just 4 percent in the polls, are doubling down on a strategy of massive TV buys. Bush's forces plan to spend $14.1 million on ads on TV stations in New Hampshire and...

After last night's Republican presidential-candidate debate in Las Vegas, Jeb Bush got some badly needed positive assessments of his performance, albeit mostly of the "he's not dead quite yet" variety. You have to figure that those cheering him on included not just his supporters and Establishment Republicans generally, but the small tribe of people who make their living buying and selling political TV ads. Unless his campaign really starts to cook, Team Bush is on a trajectory to become one of those historic profiles in futility that influence future behavior. And it could push the already crusty and embattled theory...

A year ago, Jeb Bush's allies told reporters that they were preparing a "shock and awe" fundraising campaign in which they would amass such an intimidating pile of cash that other candidates might just leave the race lest they be crushed by Bush's gargantuan war machine made of money. True to their word, Team Jeb met its ambitious target of $100 million, then began to deploy it to sweep Bush's opponents aside on his path straight to the White House. But as you might have noticed, something went awry with the plan. As The Washington Post reported this week, Bush's...

A pricy, pricy, flop. Back before Jeb Bush officially announced his candidacy, I argued that - fairly or unfairly - his candidacy was doomed by his last name. He could be the greatest, most conservative, candidate in history, or he could be a RINO squish, and it wouldn't change a thing. The country simply isn't interested in putting another Bush in the White House. The flip side of that argument was this: The name that doomed him also guaranteed that he and his supporters would have a mountain of cash on hand. The Bush family is, for obvious reasons, incredibly...

I used to feel bad for Jeb because he was so overmatched in his war of words with Trump, but Trump doesn’t bother much with him now that he’s faded in the polls. Lately I feel bad for him because no matter how far he falls and how much people goof on his struggles, he and his team seem dead set on staggering on to New Hampshire. His ads may be ineffective and his media appearances may be completely overshadowed by Trump’s, but there’s simply no way Bushworld will accept the humiliation of quitting the race before any votes...

Jeb Bush's operation has spent an incredible amount of money already during this campaign - to no apparent effect. According to ad-buying data from SMG Delta, posted by Mark Murray of NBC News, Bush's Super PAC and campaign have already spent a massive $32.5 million on ads in total - far, far more than the operation of any other GOP candidate. In fact, Team Bush's spending is twice as much as the combined money spent on ads for the top four GOP candidates in the polls - Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Ben Carson. Yet Bush remains in...

The Jeb Bush backers who poured more than $100 million into pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise haven't exactly been getting a lot of bang for their buck. The group has already spent more than $49 million, not including salaries and other operating expenses, only to have its candidate's poll numbers drop to the low single figures, the Washington Post reports. The spending blitz included $18.5 million on Bush ads in New Hampshire, where Politico reports he's still stuck in sixth place. The super PAC still has more than $67 million, according to finance filings, but that may not be...

The super PAC supporting Jeb Bush is racing through its massive war chest much faster than money is coming in, spending close to $50 million in a record blitz that has so far failed to lift the former Florida governor's sputtering presidential candidacy. The group, Right to Rise, has already gone through nearly half of the $103 million it brought in during the first half of the year, records show. It raised only about $13 million in the five months that followed, according to a person familiar with the figure. That leaves the super PAC with around $67 million heading...

The super PAC supporting Jeb Bush for president has produced a 15-minute documentary about the candidate, his platform and his record as Florida governor, according to The New York Times. Interviews with Bush and his wife Columba are featured in Right to Rise's documentary, according to the report, which will first be released Saturday online.

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...

The Marco Rubio campaign is making the most out of the blockbuster story in today's New York Times about the Jeb Bush campaign about to go nuclear on Rubio. Specifically, Right to Rise, Bush's super PAC, is apparently ready to spend $20 million in attacking Rubio. "Part of running for president is you have to put your big boy pants on and get vetted on the issues, so we know we don't have a dud candidate running against Hillary Clinton," Right to Rise chief strategist Mike Murphy told the Times. Forget whether the strategy makes any sense - who could...

It's still early with the first votes in Iowa and New Hampshire almost three months away, but this has now become a legitimate question to ask: Has the GOP presidential candidates' Super PAC experiment failed? And failed badly? Consider some of the evidence: Jeb Bush's Right to Rise Super PAC has aired $15.5 million in TV ads so far -- more than any other '16 entity -- and those ads haven't moved the polling needle; Both Scott Walker and Rick Perry focused more on building up their Super PACs than their actual hard-money campaigns, and both men are no longer...