By Philip Rucker and Ed O'Keefe, Feb. 12, 2016, Washington Post
GREENVILLE, S.C. — The 2016 campaign has bewildered and captivated George W. Bush. At home in Dallas, the 43rd president rises before dawn and reads political news online. He fires off emails to his old advisers to check on the latest campaign-trail gossip. He tunes into the debates, even though they stretch past his bedtime.
In private and among friends, Bush and his wife, Laura, express amazement at an election season that has been hijacked by Donald Trump. At a get-together last month, Clay Johnson, a lifelong friend, recalled that he and Bush said to each other, “Can you believe what’s going on?”
“He, like everybody else in America, is taken aback,” Johnson said. He and Bush chewed over the race for 30 minutes, including the rise of Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side.
By David Lightman, Jul. 31, 2015, McClatchydc.com
Washington - Donald Trump could do to the 2016 general election exactly what Ross Perot did a generation ago – with a Clinton pulling away from a Bush and a wealthy business mogul drawing a surprisingly large share of the vote.
A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds Hillary Clinton leading every potential Republican rival one on one. And while her lead has narrowed over several, it expands greatly in a race against Jeb Bush if Trump decides to jump in as a third-party candidate, as he has suggested is possible.
The poll projects a virtual rerun of 1992. That year, husband Bill Clinton won the White House with 43 percent of the popular vote. President George H.W. Bush, Jeb Bush’s father, came in second with 37.5 percent. Perot, running as an independent, got 19 percent.
This time, Hillary Clinton gets 44 percent, Bush gets 29 percent and Trump gets 20 percent, according to the poll.
The results come as the Republicans prepare for their first debate, Thursday in Cleveland, with Trump leading national polls of GOP voters. Should he fall short of winning the Republican nomination, which party insiders expect, Trump has opened the door to a third-party bid.
More: www.mcclatchydc.com
By Steve Holland, Jul. 9, 2015, OANN
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush on Thursday rejected a contention from Republican rival Marco Rubio that a governor would not be able to manage U.S. foreign policy if elected president in an early sign of their 2016 battle to come.
Bush, who is exploring a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, sought to allay concerns about his conservative credentials at a forum run by a conservative magazine, National Review.
Rubio, a first-term Florida senator, has gained some early momentum in his own race for the Republican nomination for the 2016 election by touting his foreign policy credentials, which includes membership on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“Governors can certainly read about foreign policy, and take briefings and meet with experts, but there is no way they’ll be ready on Day One to manage U.S. foreign policy,” Rubio told the Des Moines Register last weekend.
More: www.oann.com
By Thomas Beaumont, Jun. 27, 2015, Associated Press
DES MOINES, Iowa - Jeb Bush plans to meet with black pastors in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday — part of a rescheduled visit to the state after he cut short an earlier stop because of the church shooting.
The Republican presidential candidate was in Charleston as part of his campaign kickoff on the day that nine people were shot to death during a prayer meeting at a church. Bush was staying not far from the scene of the shooting.
Bush then canceled the rest of his visit, which included a town hall meeting focusing on military issues.
His campaign says Monday's meeting with the ministers will be closed to the media. Later that day, Bush plans to visit a pharmaceutical company in the Columbia area.
Source: www.abcnews.go.com
By Eric Bradner, May 17, 2015, CNN
Washington (CNN) Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was the latest Republican on Sunday to struggle to explain whether it was a "mistake" for the United States to invade Iraq in 2003.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, the Republican presidential contender disputed a question about whether he'd flip-flopped.
After former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush struggled with inquiries about Iraq last week, Rubio said -- knowing what he knows now -- that he wouldn't have launched the war. Six weeks earlier, Rubio had said definitively "the world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn't run Iraq."
"That was not the same question," Rubio said Sunday. "The question was whether it was a mistake, and my answer was, 'It's not a mistake.' I still say it's not a mistake because the President was presented with intelligence that said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
