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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) leads a new CNN/ORC poll of the Republican presidential horserace as second-place finisher former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) continues to fall from a large lead earlier this year. Rubio snagged 14 percent of Republican voters, enough for a slim 1-point lead over Bush, a fellow Floridian. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.) and Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) follow with 10 percent, ahead of Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who each grabbed 8 percent.

Weakening ratings for Hillary Clinton present opportunities for her potential Republican opponents, even as their own contest morphs into an all-out free-for-all, with Jeb Bush surrendering his frontrunner status in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll. -snip- Bush, at the same time, has even greater difficulties with personal favorability than Clinton, and a far weaker home base. He’s lost 11 points in support for the nomination among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents who are registered to vote, from a front-running 21 percent in March to 10 percent now, smack alongside Scott Walker and Rand Paul (11 percent apiece) and Marco Rubio...

NASHVILLE — Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told nearly 1,500 Tennessee Republicans Saturday night that he and the GOP can win the White House next year “with a hopeful, optimistic message” and by reaching out to voters beyond conservatives and Republicans. Addressing the Tennessee Republican Party’s annual Statesmen’s Dinner, the former Florida governor and likely GOP front-runner, said “the next Republican president will win if they have a hopeful, optimistic message, not one that is completely negative; if they reach out to everybody in our country, not just those that have already decided that they are conservatives and Republicans.

Saying he believes Republicans can win the White House in 2016 “with a hopeful, optimistic message,” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush came out in defense of the PATRIOT Act, currently under debate in Congress, according to Knox News: -snip- Bush also seemed to prod the GOP, if not conservatives, for presumably not being inclusive enough — saying the GOP can win only “if they reach out to everybody in our country, not just those that have already decided that they are conservatives and Republicans.”

Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” potential Republican presidential candidate former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) said even though his pro-immigration stance is at odds with the Republican Party base, he is “not going to back down.” Bush said, “I’m not going to back down on views on immigration, for example. I think we have immigration problem. It’s a system that’s broken. The legal system is broken. We need to narrow family petitioning expand economic immigrants. We need to enforce the law. We can’t use this, keep having this be political issue when we’re missing opportunity to create growth that everybody...

As opposition to Common Core began to swell in Tennessee, Jeb Bush showed up to an education forum in March of last year, advocating for state officials to keep the higher standards in place. Now, a little more than a year later, Bush returned to Nashville Saturday night to address the state's GOP dinner, but his push for the state to hold onto Common Core didn't succeed. Earlier this month, Republican Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill to review the controversial standards and rebrand them with a Tennessee-specific focus. The bill was widely viewed as a compromise between Common Core...

Republican Jeb Bush, calling President Barack Obama's handling of the Islamic State a failure, said the United States should embed some U.S. troops with Iraqi forces to train them and identify targets. The expected Republican presidential candidate, in an interview to be aired Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation," said he was not calling for U.S. combat forces to be deployed in Iraq, in what would be a return to the war policy run by his brother, former President George W. Bush. -snip- "We need to embed American troops, as we've done successfully in the past, to help train them,...

Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) in an interview broadcast Sunday fired back at campaign watchdog groups who accuse the potential 2016 candidate of violating election law. Bush said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” the he “would never” violate the law. “No, of course not,” he said. “And I'm nearing the end of this journey of traveling and listening to people, garnering, trying to get a sense of whether my candidacy would be viable or not. We're going to completely adhere to the law, for sure,” he said.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said Saturday that Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul is "wrong" on his efforts to end post-Sept. 11 surveillance laws used against suspected spies and terrorists. Bush, a likely GOP presidential candidate in 2016, called for the reauthorization of the Patriot Act enacted under the presidency of his brother George W. Bush. "What I admire most about my brother was he kept us safe," Jeb Bush said at a Tennessee Republican Party fundraiser. "And I believe people will respect him for a long time because of that." Without action by midnight Sunday, a number of tools...

The likely presidential candidate has some significant detractors in his party's base. It's no secret that Jeb Bush isn't a huge favorite of conservatives. The former Florida governor, who has been "actively exploring" a run for president but hasn't yet officially announced a campaign, was met with skepticism and some boos at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference. A poll from earlier this month showed that he's just a plus-5 percent in favorability vs. unfavorability among self-described conservatives, compared to Sen. Marco Rubio's plus-33 or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's plus-27. But a new Quinnipiac poll adds more fire, and suggests...

The Republican flip-flop on the Common Core is nearly complete. On Thursday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie officially pulled the plug on any support he had left for the Common Core. He joins the ranks of other GOP presidential candidates who supported, then ditched, the controversial education standards after a sustained conservative backlash: Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, once a Common Core supporter, is now suing the federal government over the academic standards in math and English. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee previously supported Common Core, but in August, he called for an end to the fighting over the standards. But...

Since he first hit the trail for his presidential campaign-in-waiting, Jeb Bush has repeated this line at event after event: “There are a whole lot of conservatives, they just don’t know it yet.” On Thursday, the former Florida governor hinted at how he might reach those conservatives. At two separate events in Michigan, Mr. Bush urged Republicans to deviate from the traditional events (perhaps like the Lincoln Day Dinner he was speaking at on Friday night), and try something new. At the event Thursday at Eagle Eye Golf Club, he pledged to “campaign in places where Republicans haven’t been seen...

George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and heir apparent to the GOP’s preeminent political dynasty, is teaching a class on character. The 30-minute lesson, which will be streamed on YouTube on Friday, will focus on the character of Texas’ first settlers and how their lessons apply today.

Jeb Bush felt the welcoming embrace of Miami on Monday as he tried to put behind him a difficult week of campaigning without yet being a presidential candidate. His political action committee, Right to Rise, held a political fund-raiser in the overwhelmingly Hispanic, working-class suburb of Sweetwater, where the former Florida Republican governor was greeted as a old friend in need of a little TLC. "Aquí está la vieja guardia -- no tan vieja," Bush joked in Spanish after being introduced by former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart.

“Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer said that he is ” finding some interesting, compelling things” in his investigation of Jeb Bush on Tuesday’s “Hugh Hewitt Show.” Schweizer reported, “We’re about four months into the research project, obviously not as global in scope as the Clintons, but you know, as governor of the state of Florida, you have a lot of things that you can do. So we’re following the money. We’re looking at land deals. We’re looking at an airport deal. We are looking at some of the educational reforms that were instituted, and some of the big corporate winners...

Jeb Bush worked his way through the dim hallway of an Arizona resort for hours, shuttling from room to room and meeting with dozens of Republican officials, many for the first time. He was in need of a political reset. For days, he had offered confusing answers to questions about the war in Iraq. He had disappointed Republicans in Iowa, the leadoff state in the nomination chase. And, for a moment, he had forgotten he wasn't yet a 2016 presidential candidate. Only weeks earlier, donors willing to give millions to put him in the White House were coming to see...

Jeb Bush stumbled over questions about the Iraq War this week, unnerving some congressional Republicans who wonder if he has what it takes to win the White House. Steadfast allies to the former Florida governor say Bush is just a bit rusty and insist the gaffes won’t be debilitating ahead of his expected campaign for the 2016 GOP nomination. But others on Capitol Hill were scratching their heads as Bush struggled during four consecutive news cycles to articulate his position on the unpopular war that defined the presidency of his older brother, George W. Bush. “[I’m] flabbergasted at the degree...

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said that his fellow Republican, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, gave an "incredibly fumbled answer" when he was asked earlier this week if he would have authorized the 2003 invasion of Iraq. -snip- Paul also blasted fellow Republican senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio for his support for foreign aid, something which Paul wants to minimize and in some cases eliminate entirely. "If any Republican nominee wants to run on the idea that borrowing money and printing it up and sending it to foreign countries that often hate us and burn our flag and think it's...

Gov. Jeb Bush hates the Affordable Care Act so much, he’d rather use the health apps on the Apple Watch instead. “I think we should repeal Obamacare,” Bush said to a clapping crowd at Arizona’s Tempe Brewery. Then he pointed to his Apple Watch. “On this device in five years will be applications that will allow me to manage my healthcare in ways that, five years ago, were not even possible.” Bush went on to describe how he believes that, in five years, his Apple Watch will be able to alert him when he’s eaten too many butterscotch sundaes, as...

The war in Iraq -- the issue that defined George W. Bush's presidency and haunted candidates from both parties on the 2008 campaign trail -- is back. And this time it's creating headaches for Jeb Bush. In his clearest declaration yet on his feelings about his brother's invasion of Iraq, the former Florida governor said Thursday that "knowing what we know now, ...I would not have engaged." "I would not have gone into Iraq," he said. The comments marked the fifth time this week that Bush sought to explain his position on Iraq