As Jeb Bush Campaign Flounders, Rubio Becomes Target
Feud or sour grapes?
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Ahead of and with the release of the quarterly campaign fundraising totals, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are jostling for the top spot among establishment candidates. Rubio has jumped to the fourth spot (below Trump, Carson, and Cruz), and Jeb, once considered an “unstoppable juggernaut,” has slipped into single digits and is slashing campaign staff salaries.
A long-simmering feud between two Florida Republican presidential heavyweights has erupted out into the open over the past day, prompted in part by the release of federal campaign-finance disclosures.
The campaigns of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) publicly traded barbs Thursday over the reports, each trying to outdo the other over which campaign was thriftier and in better position going forward.
Both are from Florida and both are counting on the same donors and the same support, so the competition is fierce as Florida voters’ shift from Jeb to Rubio. This gets even more dicey because Rubio was Jeb’s protégé, and apparently, Trump isn’t the only one who sees him as “disloyal” in attempting to further his own presidential ambitions in a race that many thought Jeb would win handily.
Watch Justin Sayfie (former Jeb advisor) and Javier Manjarres (from The Shark Tank) discuss the Jeb-Rubio battle for Florida:
The Jeb team is not happy with this turn of events and has been lashing out at Rubio in an attempt to regain standing (and donors). For example, Jeb compared Rubio to Obama in an obvious attempt to diminish Rubio: “Look, we’ve had a president who came in and said the same kind of thing — ‘new and improved,’ ‘hope and change’ — and he didn’t have the leadership skills to fix things,” Bush said. “What we need is someone with proven leadership.”
In this same interview, he gave one of his back-handed compliments about how great Rubio was to work with . . . because Rubio was good at following Jeb’s lead.
Watch:
Not only is Jeb taking jabs at Rubio, but so are his surrogates. A Bush aid expressed concern about anonymous Rubio donors and “dark money” used to fund ads, and Jeb, Jr. said Rubio should drop out of the race so he can attend votes in the Senate.
Jeb Bush Jr. told a group of college students Thursday afternoon that Sen. Marco Rubio should “drop out or do something” rather than miss votes by campaigning for president.
“As a Floridian, I’m a little disappointed, because he’s missing, like, 35 percent of his votes. And it’s just, kind of, like, dude, you know, either drop out or do something, but we’re paying you to do something, it ain’t run for president,” Bush Jr. told about about 70 students at a New York University College Republicans event.
Jeb told CNN that Rubio “misled” on his campaign fundraising. Watch:
For his part, Rubio is so far not responding to Jeb’s attacks. And not because he’s not capable of fighting back . . . he simply doesn’t have to. He’s in the lead . . . against Jeb, anyway.
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Comments
All that is needed now for the Jeb Bush campaign is a fork. The outside of it is brown to crisp.
But he has the Mannings.
As I said a few weeks back…
“Pass the marmalade”.
Mama Bush was right… No More Bush’s! Rubio is a RINO deluxe and we sure don’t need him as well.
So that leaves the “nice” guy Carson who has zero executive experience and we all know how such turned out during the past six and a half years.
The lady-in-waiting has executive baggage as to actual accomplishments so that’s not a positive.
So who’s left that is fearless, runs over the competition and has the right mindset to take on bloated DC? A loud mouthed nu yawkah who just might be what this country needs… A good dose of reality!
Jeb?
nope.
Florida is only big enough for one RINO and that’s Rubio, dadgummit.
Jeb! Is right. He’s a proven leader. Rubio is a proven talker … out of both sides of his mouth. Ask the TP.
This is that classic behavioral science observation that a beta attacked by an alpha goes and attacks another “beta.” Rubio needs to show he is an alpha (he did well with Trump, he needs to help finish Jeb off).
When kissing the behinds of Schumer and McCain and selling the rest of us out, Rubio channeled his inner alpha? More like his inner Alfalfa. He’ll do it again.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/07/29/schumer-admits-i-recruited-marco-rubio-to-be-part-of-our-group-of-eight/
He hasn’t dented Trump. Sheldon Adelson might foolishly inject money into Rubio’s fantasy (Sheldon, on behalf of what is left of sane people in America: kish mein touchess), but it is about as lousy an investment as Saudi payoffs to Hillary Clinton will prove to be.