Tweedledee and Tweedledum....

Bush vs. Rubio comes to Iowa

Appearing with his home-state rival and other GOP contenders, Bush says 'I know I have to get better.'

By Shane Goldmacher

Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio came to the same stage for the first time since their debate showdown earlier in the week that had ended disastrously for Bush, and it was a portrait of two politicians moving in opposite directions.

And it was clear that Bush knew it.

“I’m gonna get better. I oughta get better. I know I have to get better,” Bush told reporters after a speech to more than 1,000 GOP activists at the Iowa state fairgrounds.

Bush began his address in a defensive crouch, as he tried to justify within its first minute his shrinking standing in the polls. “You know, poll numbers, they go up and they go down,” Bush said. “Iowa proves that every caucus.”

Rubio glided through his standard stump speech and, even though it was not his fieriest performance, the crowd surged toward the stage when he was done. Fans, supporters and the curious encircled his campaign booth for more than an hour for a chance at an autograph or a selfie. As Rubio urged them more than once to “turn the page on outdated leaders of both parties,” it seemed as if he had turned a corner himself, becoming one of the celebrities of the 2016 campaign trail.

“Great debate the other night.” “So proud of you.” “Great speech,” they told him. “I’ve given it before, you know,” Rubio replied to the latter. Supporter sign-ups were coming so briskly that the campaign dispatched someone to get extra clipboards earlier in the day.

“Look at all these people!” exclaimed Sen. Joni Ernst as she tucked into Rubio’s booth for a quick hello.

“There’s just a lot of excitement right now,” Jack Whitver, Rubio’s state chairman, said amid the crush. “What we need to do is capitalize that into actual caucus commits, write out the information and do the groundwork.”

It was a different story for Bush, who was peppered with questions about what was next for his campaign and what’s gone wrong already.

Bush delivered an energetic speech, at least once he was past talking about his poor polling. He was well received overall, and more than a dozen Bush operatives and volunteers worked to make sure there were plenty of waving Jeb! signs. Afterward, he was surrounded by a crowd that, while smaller than Rubio’s, was still among the day’s largest.

Bush repeatedly invoked his competitive spirit to reporters.

"I’m a grinder,” he said at one point. “I eat nails when I wake up,” he said at another. “I’m a really competitive guy,” he added for good measure. He urged the press to be the first to write his “comeback narrative.”

It has been a rough ten days for the Bush, with severe cutbacks in his campaign payroll, a poor debate performance and the rollout of a new slogan – “Jeb Can Fix It” – that some have snickered applies as much about his own campaign as it does America’s problems. On Friday, Bush parted ways with his campaign’s chief operating officer, Christine Ciccone, the top-ranked official in the campaign to lose her job. She had been earning $12,000 per month.

Bush said Saturday he hadn’t re-watched the debate yet – “I’m sure I will. I’m sure someone will make me watch it” – but said of his performance, “I didn’t get asked the right questions, I didn’t butt in.”

Interestingly, Bush is not letting up on the line of attack that boomeranged against him. In Saturday’s speech, he again went after Rubio’s voting record, though not by name.

“If you’re elected to serve, you should do what Chuck Grassley does: You should show up and vote,” Bush said, citing Iowa’s popular senior senator.

Numerous Iowans wondered why Bush would target his supposed friend.

“It struck me that Bush is grasping a bit,” said Joe Earle, a Baptist pastor in Harlan and Rubio supporter.

Jim Leslie of Des Moines said it made Bush “look very petty and weak.”

“There’s no question in my mind that he’d be a good president,” Leslie said of Bush. “But a lot of presidential politics is personality and he’s not showing his best side.”

Rubio spoke at the GOP event in Iowa after a strong performance in the CNBC debate. | AP Photo

Bush and Rubio were just two of 10 Republican candidates for president who came to the “Growth and Opportunity Party” sponsored by the Republican Party of Iowa, including Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Rand Paul, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina and Gov. Chris Christie. It was a fair-like atmosphere complete with bales of hay, cotton candy and children in Halloween costumes.

Christie was the only candidate to simply take questions from the crowd, turning it more into his favored town-hall format. “Isn’t this better than a speech you’ve heard a million times?” he asked.

Christie delivered a particularly energized performance – more bad news for Bush, who is competing for many of the same more-establishment supporters as the New Jersey governor.

“Jeb Bush is fighting an uphill battle right now after the last debate,” said Jamie Johnson, a former member of the Iowa GOP state central committee who is currently unaligned, “because Marco Rubio is ascending and Chris Christie has tremendous retail political skills

“The dynamics,” he added, “have shifted.”