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First Read is a morning briefing from Meet the Press and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter. Jeb leads the GOP pack A brand-new national NBC/WSJ poll finds Jeb Bush leading the crowded Republican presidential field, with 22% of GOP primary voters saying he's their first choice. He's followed by Scott Walker at 17%, Marco Rubio at 14%, and Ben Carson at 11%. While Jeb had a similar five-point lead in our April NBC/WSJ poll, you see his current position has strengthened when you look inside the numbers of this new...

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush invoked the controversial case of Terri Schiavo at a conservative conference in Washington, DC Friday morning, reminding the audience of his role in the case when he was governor of Florida. "I stood on the side of Terri Schiavo," Bush said at the Faith and Freedom conference. Bush rarely brings up the Schiavo case on the campaign trail but his brief mention of it was made to a religious, conservative audience receptive to his role in the case.

Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush says his views toward single mothers "have evolved" since he suggested 20 years ago that they were becoming too accepted by society. In a 1996 book, Bush and co-author Brian Yablonski expressed concern about changing cultural mores and wrote, regarding unwed motherhood, that there was "no longer a stigma attached to this behavior." This was in a chapter titled "The Restoration of Shame."

In my July-issue Editor's Note column released earlier today, I expressed some skepticism about National Review writer Charles C.W. Cooke's conservatarian project, partly on grounds that libertarians should be wary of a political party that keeps on coughing up government-growing Republicans with the last name "Bush." So it's only fair to point out that, according to the shrewd political Washington Examiner political columnist Byron York, Jeb Bush is floundering to the point of shaking up his campaign staff. The remedying began Monday with word that Bush has shaken up his campaign before the campaign has even been formally announced. The...

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine — A banner in the town square says, “Happy 90th Barbara Bush.” Postcards read “Kennebunkport: 2 presidents, 1 town.” A local gift shop is already selling unofficial “Jeb Bush 2016” magnets. In this coastal hamlet made famous by George H.W. Bush and his cigarette boat, it is hard to escape the Bush family — but Jeb Bush is trying very hard to do so. After festivities this weekend to celebrate his mother’s 90th birthday, Bush will jet overseas for a foreign-policy tour and then launch his 2016 presidential campaign 1,500 miles to the south in Miami. The iconic...

Jeb Bush made a series of astonishing remarks about immigration Wednesday. Actually, his comments were not so much about immigration as they were about illegal aliens. First he said he wanted to repopulate Detroit with illegal aliens. It just seems to me that maybe if you open up our doors in a fair way and unleashed the spirit of peoples' hard work, Detroit could become in really short order, one of the great American cities again," Bush said then. "Now it would look different, it wouldn't be Polish...But it would be just as powerful, just as exciting, just as dynamic....

A new profile in New York magazine underscores the idea that  former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is not nearly as moderate as he may seem as he  campaigns for the Republican nomination for president.News outlets have been pointing this out for months, and Jennifer Senior's article  in New York is full of even more examples of Bush's record and reputation in  Florida, where he served two terms as governor.The story argues that the 62-year-old is "not the Bush you think he is" and  "is more ruthless than he looks, more conservative than moderates like to  believe."For example, Bush likes to...

May 29, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Around 20 percent of hospital patients condemned as "brain-dead" are misdiagnosed – that is, those patients could be conscious and likely to recover. In fact, they may be as likely to respond to questions as healthy patients – they just lack the ability to communicate with the outside world.Neurosurgeon Adrian Owen of the University of Western Ontario and his colleagues performed brain scans on hospital patients diagnosed as being in what some call a "persistent vegetative state" – i.e., completely unresponsive and lacking brain activity. They asked the patients questions, and a brain scan showed...

NASHVILLE — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told nearly 1,500 Tennessee Republicans Saturday night that he and the GOP can win the White House next year “with a hopeful, optimistic message” and by reaching out to voters beyond conservatives and Republicans. Addressing the Tennessee Republican Party’s annual Statesmen’s Dinner, the former Florida governor and likely GOP front-runner, said “the next Republican president will win if they have a hopeful, optimistic message, not one that is completely negative; if they reach out to everybody in our country, not just those that have already decided that they are conservatives and Republicans.

He said this on a conference call hosted by the Alabama GOP, which counts as one of its most honored members the leader of the anti-amnesty caucus in the U.S. Senate. Say this for Jeb: When he promised not to pander to conservatives in the name of winning the primaries, he meant it. Imagine how well received he’ll be on “Morning Joe” after he flames out of the race and does the inevitable Huntsman-esque media tour to explain how right-wing radicals stole the party from pragmatists like him. Bush 2016: Resolute for amnesty. There’s a banner worth carrying into the...

George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and heir apparent to the GOP’s preeminent political dynasty, is teaching a class on character. The 30-minute lesson, which will be streamed on YouTube on Friday, will focus on the character of Texas’ first settlers and how their lessons apply today.

You blinked, you missed it. The pro-life community just switched positions; it now supports assisted suicide! In their vital fight to save Florida’s Terri Schiavo from being starved to death by judicial decree, they foolishly hinged their position on the absence of a “written directive.” If the Hemlock Society had tried to pass a federal law legitimizing assisted suicide, pro-lifers would have stopped them. But pro-life leaders have so often compromised on “Thou shall not murder,” they no longer realize when they’re making concessions. They tried desperately to pass the Incapacitated Persons Legal Protection Act which, for the first time...

He was born in Midland, Texas, and he spent a good bit of his boyhood in Houston, and he went to high school in Andover, Massachusetts, and to college in Austin, Texas, and he has lived for the last three and a half decades in Miami. But at the top of the list of the most important places in the world in the life of Jeb Bush is the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, and its conservative, old-world Catholic capital of León. León is why he proposed marriage in Spanish, why his three children are Mexican-American, why his favorite foods...

EXCLUSIVE: Columba Bush's car sports bumper sticker declaring 'Viva Jeb!' and his campaign for 'Presidente 2016' (but he still won't say he's actually running) Jeb Bush has been coy about whether he will formally enter the 2016 presidential race. But his wife already has the bumper sticker. Columba Bush was photographed Tuesday in Coral Gables, Florida getting into her green Mini Cooper with a clearly visible Spanish-language message on the back-end. 'Viva Jeb! Presidente 2016,' it read. It's the first outward sign that Bush's presidential announcement is a certainty, and could come soon. The sticker includes Jeb's first name in...

Columba Bush, the wife of expected Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush, continued to increase her public profile this week with an op-ed on domestic violence in Iowa's biggest newspaper. Her Des Moines Register op-ed asked readers to offer their support for the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence, where Bush writes she spent "quality time" on Friday. "It was inspiring to learn from our domestic violence leaders about the transforming process that Iowa implemented to maximize limited financial resources while creating a regional-based comprehensive service delivery program for domestic violence survivors and their children," she wrote.

You can tell that campaign season is fully underway when Jeb Bush’s wife takes to social media for the first time ever – well before his campaign for president has even been officially announced. Columba Bush, originally from Mexico and fluent in Spanish, recently opened separate Twitter and Instagram accounts to begin the process of introducing herself to voters. Wives of presidential candidates are usually used as a way to soften their husbands’ public images and broaden their appeal to female voters. According to BuzzFeed, there’s another political strategy in place here: The Jeb Bush campaign wants to appeal to...

“Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer said that he is ” finding some interesting, compelling things” in his investigation of Jeb Bush on Tuesday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show.” Schweizer reported, “We’re about four months into the research project, obviously not as global in scope as the Clintons, but you know, as governor of the state of Florida, you have a lot of things that you can do. So we’re following the money. We’re looking at land deals. We’re looking at an airport deal. We are looking at some of the educational reforms that were instituted, and some of the big corporate winners...

It’s not just Iraq: Bush repeatedly insists he won’t yield to popular pressure, until he does.After a week of misinterpreting, misspeaking and mismanaging the media over his position on the Iraq war, Jeb Bush’s hoped-for shock-and-awe campaign-in-waiting looked nothing like a political juggernaut. “It’s the Bad News Bears,” quipped Dave Bossie, president of the Citizens United conservative group. “The problem for Jeb Bush is he didn’t look very agile. He didn’t look smart in the sense of a rapid-response communications system that could get him out of the trouble he was in.” More troubling for Bush is that many supporters...

His latest attempt to clarify his stance on the Iraq war all seems very clumsy and awkward for a man who wants to be president. President George W Bush had a speaking problem with his well-documented Bushisms. His father was not immune either, once telling surprised listeners that Ronald Reagan and he had "had some sex", before correcting himself to say he had meant "setbacks". Jeb Bush seems to have inherited the same problem, but a hearing disorder, too. "I'm running for president in 2016," the former Florida governor let slip in Nevada on Wednesday before hastily adding an "if"....

It is nearly axiomatic that presidential contests tend to shine a harsh light on conservative Christians — inasmuch as they are viewed as the Republican Party’s base and are, therefore, deemed fair game. Of course, religious folks come in a variety of stripes, checks and polka dots. Many are Democrats. But it is the members of the Christian right — evangelicals and Catholics, especially — who are treated every four years to the sneers of lefties, academics, proud atheists (allow me to quote myself: “There’s no dogma like no dogma”) and certain but not all media. Roger Ailes’s Fox News...