Things are really heating up between Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio in the contentious race to become the 2016 Republican presidential nominee.
While the trio continues to throw barbs at one another, the real juicy fight is going on between “Marquito” Rubio and his political mentor, Jeb Bush.Bush and his son, Jebbito, have already jabbed at Rubio, but now Jeb is taking it a bit further, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that his protégé “misled” Americans with his recent fundraising totals.
Jeb’s spokesman Tim Miller flat out called Rubio a liar, after Rubio’s campaign stated that they outraised Bush in 3rd quarter fundraising, but failed to mention that $1 million of the money he raised, can only be used in the general election.
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With that being the case, and even though he can’t spend the money in the primary, Rubio still raise the money, right?
Here is what was said during Jeb Bush’s appearance on Tapper’s show:
Jake Tapper: “After campaign fund-raising numbers were — were put out this week, your spokesman, Tim Miller, had a rather arch comment about your former protégé, Senator Marco Rubio. Miller tweeted — quote — “Lying about budgets, guess Marco picked up something in the Senate.” Them’s fighting words, governor.”Bush: “Yes, I’m not — I’m not into all that. But he — he kind of misled people about his — about his fundraising results. That’s fine. Look, the process part of this is not my motivation to run. I believe we can grow our economy at a far faster rate and have a set of concrete plans to do that. And I think, on foreign policy, we’ve done the exact same thing. So, each and every day that I campaign, I focus on those things.”
Team Rubio responded to Jeb’s remark with this email:
“Team Jeb’s epic freakout over reports that Marco has more COH [cash on hand] than Jeb (which we do) says a lot about how scared they are that their donors will leave Jeb for Marco. Marco is on track to fully funding his ad buy and run competitive campaigns in each of the first four states. Jeb is on a trajectory where he’ll be out by February without running any more TV. (Jeb is spending $1m/week — and it’s 20 weeks until Iowa. Under no realistic finance plan will he be able to afford his current operation until then. And it’s too late for him to try a McCain-style reset.) Also worth noting, none of the sniping from Jeb at Marco is targeted at early state voters. This is all about convincing nervous Jeb donors to not jump to Marco.”
This is true. Rubio is pealing off Bush donors. If Jeb continues poking at him, many more donors and supporters that are currently sitting on the fence, or those who are barely supporting Bush over Rubio, will jump ship and back Marco.
This strategy of going after Rubio will backfire on Jeb Bush.