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Jeb Bush and his allies are spending circles around his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. Yet for all the money they've invested - $26 million on television ads alone - they've yet to see a substantial return. Having fallen from summer front-runner to autumn afterthought, the former Florida governor made deep spending cuts to his campaign operation in October. But he and his backers plowed ahead with a television blitz three times the size of anyone else's, while putting a new strategic focus on New Hampshire.

Three things about Donald Trump have now become clear to the Republican establishment: 1) He might not implode before people start voting for president next year. 2) He could actually wind up as the Republican nominee for president. -snip- Right to Rise raised more than $103 million in the first six months of this year. It spent - as I mentioned above - $28 million on ads. Let's say the organization has spent another $15 million on fundraising, consulting fees and other miscellaneous costs. And let's assume, just for the sake of this argument, that Right to Rise hasn't raised...

Was Jeb Bush SuperPAC's big advertising push in early autumn the least effective multi-million dollar advertising campaign ever? In mid-September, Jeb Bush's SuperPAC, Right to Rise PAC, unleashed $24 million in advertising, mostly in key early primary states - $6 million in Iowa, $12 million in New Hampshire, $4.7 million in South Carolina, and the remainder elsewhere. Using the RealClearPolitics average as our measuring stick, Bush moved from 4.8 percent in Iowa on September 15 to... 4.8 percent today. He got as high as 7 percent on October 20.

Fresh off a reboot armed with a new slogan, "Jeb Can Fix It," the struggling Jeb Bush presidential campaign's super PAC is purchasing $6.6 million in advertising time on Fox News, the Sunlight Foundation reports. "According to independent expenditure disclosures that we spott[ed] on Sunlight's Real-Time Federal Campaign Finance tracker, it appears Right To Rise USA is doubling down and going after the Republican base by placing more than $6.6 million.. in ads exclusively on the Fox News Channel," the foundation notes in a blog posting on its website.

A couple of new national polls have come out over the weekend. They are very similar: Both polls show the race to be between four candidates divided into two distinct tiers. What is most telling, though, is the way that Jeb Bush has found a comfy home at around 5%. Via the RCP average

Jeb Bush and his supporters have spent more than twice that of any other candidate or outside group on TV ads in the 2016 presidential race. And what does the former Florida governor get for nearly $20 million, asks Mark Murray of NBC News. Apparently, not much. Bush's poll numbers are currently languishing in the single digits both nationally and in the early primary states. Right to Rise, the pro-Bush super PAC, has made $19.5 million in ad spending for Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Murray notes that the campaign also spent another $438,000.

Former Florida governor is spending more than twice as much as any other candidate, according to new data With a full year left until the 2016 presidential election it's still unclear who will emerge the winner. But when it comes to millions spent on TV ads, one candidate has already taken the top spot: Jeb Bush. However, other than some gift baskets from local stations in Iowa and New Hampshire, the former Florida governor has little to show for it, with poll numbers stubbornly stuck in the single digits. Bush and his supporters have so far spent an eye-popping $20...

Jeb Bush and his allies have now spent approximately $20 million in TV ads in the 2016 presidential race - more than twice as much as any other candidate or outside group, according to ad-spending data from NBC News partner SMG Delta. And they have little to show for it, will poll numbers for Bush currently stuck in the single digits both nationally and in the early states. The pro-Bush Super PAC, Right to Rise, has spent $19.5 million in TV ads in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, while the campaign has spent an additional $438,000.

The "super PAC" supporting Jeb Bush's presidential campaign will start showing television ads next week in Ohio, the home state of Gov. John R. Kasich - a rival candidate who shares a similar political space with Mr. Bush in the Republican primary. The spots will begin on Nov. 30 as part of a three-week ad buy that includes Fox News, cable networks and a smattering of broadcast stations on different networks, according to Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the pac, Right to Rise USA. -snip- John Weaver, a top strategist to Mr. Kasich's campaign, called the ads "a quick and...

Rubio's campaign is getting twice the ads for half the price of Bush's super PAC, undercutting his rival's cash advantage. -snip- At KTIV in Sioux City, Rubio's campaign is paying $625 for 30 seconds on the 10 p.m. news on December 30. Bush's super PAC is paying $3,700 - a roughly 500 percent markup. The next morning, Rubio has two more 30-second ads during "Today" for $165 each. The rate for a single 30-second spot for Right to Rise is $650. In other words, Rubio is getting twice the airtime for half the price. Bush has long predicted that his...

Aides to Jeb Bush and the super PAC backing him are so freaked out and betrayed by Sen. Marco Rubio's rise in the Republican presidential polls and Bush's decline, they are setting aside up to $20 million to sink Rubio's campaign and previewing an attack ad criticizing Bush's former protege as too extreme on abortion to get elected president, report Maggie Haberman and Michael Barbaro at The New York Times, citing at least three people "privy to" discussions and preparations in the Bush camp. Bush and Rubio are facing off in a Republican debate on Tuesday, and given how poorly...

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...

After struggling to gain traction in the 2016 race, Jeb Bush's campaign announced last week it is relaunching the campaign. It appears his super PAC is doling out some significant cash to encourage the campaign to lift-off. According to independent expenditure disclosures that we spotting on Sunlight's Real-Time Federal Campaign Finance tracker, it appears Right To Rise USA is doubling down and going after the Republican base by placing more than $6.6 million dollars in ads exclusively on the Fox News Channel. The super PAC spent $18,932 producing those commercials, which were placed by a Virginia-based firm known as Oath...

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...

A new poll of New Hampshire Republicans by Monmouth University confirms the fading fortunes of the Jeb Bush campaign. Despite spending more on TV than all other candidates combined, Jeb has dropped to sixth place in nation's first primary state, a must-win for his Presidential ambitions. In July, Jeb Bush was second in New Hampshire. A great deal of Bush's candidacy was predicated on enjoying an enormous financial edge over his Republican rivals. When he launched his campaign this summer, an allied Super PAC announced it had raised just over $100 million to support Jeb in the primary. This announcement...

A super PAC supporting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has booked airtime for the Texas primary, making it the first known group backing a 2016 presidential candidate to officially move toward TV advertising in the Lone Star State. This week, Right to Rise USA reserved a week's worth of airtime in February in the Lone Star State, according to Paul Lindsay, a spokesman for the super PAC. The $6.1 million buy is part of a previously announced plan by the group to spend $16.8 million on TV advertising in some states that hold their primaries in March.

In what was already a grim week for the Jeb Bush campaign, a bit more bad news late Thursday night. After a meeting in Houston on Monday, the campaign sent parts of a presentation to reporters detailing how they saw the race moving forward. But the day after Bush's inept debate performance, U.S. News and World Report obtained the whole document, including detailed plans for what the campaign had -- or, really, hadn't -- done so far in Iowa. The Iowa Starting Line blog was stunned by what it saw. "[A] brief look at their Iowa numbers show extremely troubling...

HOUSTON — Right to Rise USA, the super PAC supporting former Florida governor Jeb Bush's campaign for president, is considering deploying ground staff to key states after focusing most heavily on running television ads so far. It's a notable strategic consideration that comes as Bush's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has struggled to gain traction in early-voting states and as it makes moves to curtail costs in what began as a sprawling operation.

Three generations of the most famous family in Texas politics are planning to descend on Houston in the coming days to rally with major donors to Jeb Bush's presidential campaign — and try to raise more money for the former Florida governor. The weekend gathering, once billed as a "special appreciation event" for Jeb Bush's biggest financial backers, comes at a precarious time for his White House hopes. His campaign announced Friday it was making significant cutbacks, reportedly reducing its payroll by 40 percent, trimming travel costs by 20 percent and scaling back 45 percent on some other costs. Jeb...

Mike Murphy finds it all very funny that people think Jeb Bush is in trouble. The head of Bush’s $100 million super PAC, Right to Rise, considers most political punditry this cycle to be stupid. Conceded. But both the stupid and occasional non-stupid pundits all agree on one thing: Things aren’t going well for Bush, and one cannot assume that the old rules governing Republican presidential nominating contests will inevitably save him. Murphy outlined his thinking in a rare extended interview with Bloomberg Politics. Why? Most practically, to signal Right to Rise’s thinking to the official Bush campaign and leery...