Free Republic

It’s a tough position to be in if you’re the former Florida Governor staring down the barrel of a gun in the 2016 general election. After all, you’re the only member of your family to seek the Presidency with disastrous results and the “chaos candidate” who beat you handedly has basically been your sworn enemy for the last year. So when Jeb Bush was pressed by former GOP strategist Nicolle Wallace about who he would be voting, he doubled down on assertions he has previously alluded to: neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump would earn his vote.

People supporting Donald Trump's presidential bid will "feel betrayed" should the presumptive Republican nominee's campaign promises go unsatisfied, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush predicted Monday. Speaking to MSNBC contributor Nicolle Wallace, who served as his press secretary in Tallahassee, Bush called Trump "to his credit ... very smart at exploiting these kind of opportunities." "He's a master at understanding how the media works — more than anybody I've ever seen in politics. Kudos to him, for kind of creating the environment and then manipulating the environment to his effect," Bush said in the interview airing in full Monday night. There...

Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida who ended his presidential bid after a string of disappointing finishes, is planning to meet with three of the remaining Republican candidates while they’re in Miami for the Republican debate on Thursday night. Mr. Bush has plans to meet with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, an aide to Mr. Bush confirmed. The list’s glaring omission, of course, was Donald J. Trump.

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.

As rumors swirl that Jeb Bush's presidential campaign is collapsing, he refused to say whether he would remain in the race if he placed poorly in Saturday's primary in South Carolina. "I'm going to work as hard as I can till 7 p.m. I'm not going to feed the speculation of people who have no clue about my campaign," Bush told reporters after greeting voters at a polling place at an elementary school in this tony island hamlet. Bush, accompanied by his son Jeb Jr., Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and other supporters, skittered around this state that political...

A top Jeb Bush adviser on Friday morning repeatedly dodged the question of whether the former Florida governor will stay in the presidential race if he disappoints in South Carolina, instead saying the campaign is laser focused on Saturday's primary. At the outset of the interview on "New Day," host Chris Cuomo asked Michael Steel, Bush's adviser for policy and communications, whether his candidate is finished if he does not finish in second or third place in Saturday's South Carolina primary. The on-screen chyron: "IS SOUTH CAROLINA THE END OF THE ROAD FOR JEB BUSH?" "Look, we're excited about South...

A senior advisor to Jeb Bush seemed non-committal Friday when asked definitively if the former Florida governor's presidential campaign will move forward after Saturday's South Carolina primary. "I can say we're looking forward to a good result here in South Carolina and we'll move on from there," Michael Steele eventually said on CNN after first dodging the question. Bush is publicly scheduled to attend two events in Nevada ahead of that state's caucus: a town hall Sunday evening in Las Vegas and another Monday evening in Reno and the campaign insists they will move on regardless of the outcome Saturday....

The Bushes don't go down without a fight. With the family name and political fortunes on the line, former first lady Barbara Bush joined son Jeb on the stump today, doing her bit to keep his presidential bid viable. It's a long shot, even if he survives South Carolina's primary on Saturday. Speaking briefly, she called Jeb "one of my four favorite sons" -- two others, Neil and Marvin, were on hand. Jeb later protested that she had whispered moments earlier that really, he was the favorite. The fourth brother, former president George W. Bush, stumped with Jeb on Monday...

Jeb Bush has had a tough week on the campaign trail. And even he seems to admit it. The former Florida governor, who it was once predicted would be one of the strongest candidates in the 2016 GOP field, has been going at it with Donald Trump for months. But this week, his campaign took on a different tone, when a clearly frustrated Bush let his anger show at campaign events in South Carolina, sometimes even becoming testy with his own supporters. "I should stop campaigning, maybe, huh?" he said at a Wednesday rally. "Let's just - it's all done."...

Some of Jeb Bush's most steadfast allies think Saturday might be the end. Donors, who poured millions into his campaign and super PAC, have stopped giving – one refusing a direct request to raise $1 million this week. Bush himself is hitting the phones, pleading for patience with his most influential supporters. And even some of his confidants are suddenly dejected after a dispiriting week capped off by South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley rejecting Bush in favor of Marco Rubio. "What a kick in the balls," said one of Bush's closest supporters and one of the more than a dozen...

CNN's Anderson Cooper asked Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush about his ability to speak Spanish, and Bush responded by asking Cooper in Spanish if he wanted to conduct the rest of the interview in his second tongue. The exchange happened during CNN's town hall meeting Thursday night. -snip- The phrase, "Si quieres hacer esta entrevista en Espanol, los hemos," translates to "If you want to conduct this interview in Spanish, we can."

Erick Erickson is reporting at The Resurgent that the Bush campaign is broke. This is pretty remarkable. Sources close to the Bush campaign are beginning to leak about a call last night. I'm told the Bush team is out of money. Pay for campaign staff will end on Saturday. The campaign is all but over. Additionally, after having hundreds of millions of dollars on hand, the Bush Super PAC has less than $15 million from what I am being told. The Bush campaign is denying the rumor but it is coming from too many places take the denials seriously.

Campaign denies reports as evidence of implosion mounts. Jeb Bush's campaign insists that it is not imploding before primary voters' eyes despite mounting evidence to the contrary. The former Florida governor now finds himself in a situation where his own supporters say he isn't firing on all cylinders, his polls are sagging, Republican insiders claim he is running out of cash, and key endorsements are going to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. "Sources close to the Bush campaign are beginning to leak about a call last night. I'm told the Bush team is out of money. Pay for campaign staff will...

The Republican lashed out on Wednesday, after Governor Nikki Haley's endorsement went to Marco Rubio. This is not the first time that the pundits have declared a Jeb Bush campaign deathwatch, but the vital signs are getting weaker and weaker, and South Carolina may provide the final blow. The latest bad news came on Wednesday, when popular Governor Nikki Haley endorsed Senator Marco Rubio. Her backing gives Rubio another boost in his quest to consolidate the backing of the Republican establishment against Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and it makes it even harder for Bush to do that. Bush had...

Jeb Bush's campaign officials and a top fundraiser are pushing back aggressively against a story by conservative talk show host Erick Erickson in which he claims that the Bush campaign will stop paying staff on Saturday due to lack of funds. Citing "sources close to the Bush campaign," Erickson wrote that there was a phone call on Wednesday night in which the news leaked out that the Bush campaign was out of cash. After Erickson's story reverberated through the political world on Thursday morning, Bush campaign spokesman Tim Miller tweeted: -snip- Al Cardenas, a longtime Bush insider and senior fundraiser,...

On Wednesday, MSNBC showed a clip of Jeb Bush at a campaign event. The former Republican frontrunner appeared frustrated. "It's all decided, I mean we don't have to go vote I guess, it's all finished. I should stop campaigning maybe, huh? Let's just—it's all done! That's not how democracy works, right?"

All of the color has bled from the face of Jeb! 2016. The campaign is bedridden, confused, moaning in agony. At this point, the best thing for Jeb Bush and everyone around him would be to let his candidacy die with dignity. In Nevada, Jeb Bush has become the candidate of the one percent - literally, he has one percent of the vote there. In Quinnipiac's most recent national poll he's at 4 percent, which puts him in a tie for last place with Ben Carson, who barely has a campaign and spent much of a nationally televised town hall...

The latest Nevada poll finds that Donald Trump is dominating the early state with 45 percent. Jeb Bush, on the other hand, is at a mere 1 percent in the poll.

For Jeb Bush, the crushing phone call came Wednesday afternoon. It was Nikki Haley, South Carolina's wildly popular governor and Republican Party darling. She had decided to endorse a candidate ahead of Saturday's GOP presidential primary. Not Bush - even though his brother, former President George W. Bush, paid her a deferential visit Monday. Instead, Haley backed Jeb Bush's fiercest primary rival, Marco Rubio. Moments later, Bush was due at a campaign event at the Summerville Country Club, northwest of Charleston. He showed up in shirtsleeves, no tie - and, now that he's realized they aged him, no glasses -...

Jeb Bush is having a rough day. Fighting for his political life in the final days of this primary battle, Bush took the stage intent on showing toughness and drawing a sharp contrast between himself and Marco Rubio. Just moments earlier, he'd gotten devastating news: South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, whose endorsement he'd sought, was backing Rubio, who poses the biggest threat to his own chances of political survival. "Disappointed," Bush told reporters, summing up his feelings about Haley's endorsement as he was leaving the town hall here. "She's a very good governor and should I win the nomination, there'll...