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Donald Trump is now the choice of nearly one-in-three likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire, while Jeb Bush, who once pledged that he would win in the state, plummeted to just 4 percent in the latest Monmouth University poll. With less than a month before the New Hampshire primary, the Republican polls are showing significant movement, and a competitive battle for second and third place within the margin of error. Trump jumped six points from the November poll, to 32 percent, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, both at 14 percent. For Cruz, the...

Is the art of letter writing really dead? Not if the "super PAC" supporting Jeb Bush has its way. The group Right to Rise is asking Bush supporters to revive the lost art of writing letters, in the form of hand-written appeals to undecided voters in New Hampshire. In a preholiday mailer, the group thanked its supporters for their financial support, and asked them to make "a different kind of gift to Jeb by giving a few minutes of your time." The mailer included stationery and pre-addressed envelopes for five undecided voters in New Hampshire. It urged donors to dash...

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...

Jeb Bush's campaign and allies have spent nearly a whopping $33 million in TV and radio advertisements so far this election cycle - almost more than the rest of the current Republican field combined, according to ad-buying data from SMG Delta. The biggest overall advertiser in the 2016 race is Right to Rise, the Super PAC backing Jeb Bush, which has spent $31.7 million in the contest, while the Bush campaign has chipped in an additional $800,000.

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...

Despite being a favorite of the U.S. Republican Party establishment and a presumed top-tier candidate at the start of the race, Jeb Bush continues to struggle to gain momentum in the presidential campaign, even as the voting season quickly approaches. Bush's troubles were underscored this past week with the release of a new CNN/ORC poll, which suggested the former Florida governor now has the support of an astoundingly low 3 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning independents nationwide.

It says a lot about the malaise afflicting the once-high-flying Jeb Bush for President effort that the most upbeat thing two Politico reporters could find to say is that Team Bush has done a good job of convincing key donors to ignore all the objective evidence that the campaign is going nowhere fast. But such acts of hypnosis are not easily extended to the circling media vultures smelling death, or for that matter, to actual voters. So what is to be done by a presidential campaign that still has quite a bit of money over at the super-pac run by...

Voters will soon get 15 unfiltered minutes of the Jeb Bush story. Right to Rise, the "super PAC" supporting Mr. Bush, has produced a 15-minute documentary featuring him and will release it online on Saturday and will later show it on television. Mike Murphy, the super PAC's executive director, briefed Bush donors on the video at a breakfast meeting in Washington on Thursday morning before the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual gathering, at which Mr. Bush spoke. Right to Rise confirmed the group's plans. -snip- The documentary is the brainchild of Mr. Murphy, who produced a similar, 30-minute town hall-style infomercial...

Jeb Bush has tried everything. His campaign allies have blanketed the airwaves with almost $30 million in ads. Aiming to shake the "low-energy" tag and prove his toughness, Bush hit Donald Trump as a carnival barker unfit for the serious job of being President. He attacked Sen. Marco Rubio, suggesting his former protege was a dilettante in a hurry. He cut staff, hired a debate coach, and pledged that "Jeb Can Fix It." Bush is now polling at 3% -- and dropping. The 3% figure puts Bush in sixth place in the national GOP race, according to the CNN/ORC poll...

After nearly $30 million in super PAC TV ads, Jeb's campaign still hasn't bounced back, which should worry donors. John Ellis Bush is, according to most reports, still running for president. The latest Quinnipiac poll puts Jeb at five percent nationally: slightly higher than the candidates in the Also-Ran nether regions, but well outside the top tier occupied by Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz. That five percent is perfectly in line with nearly every other poll released in the last couple of months, which show Jeb struggling to move out of the mid-single digits. In New...

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.