Jeb Bush wants Marco Rubio supporters to stop 'whining' about attack ads

(Image credit: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

last updated 1 February 2016

A pro–Jeb Bush super PAC has spent $15 million on ads in Iowa, with one anti-Marco Rubio spot — depicting the Florida senator as a weather vane that blows around to point at different positions he's purportedly taken — airing on television 2,791 times as of early this week.

If supporters of Rubio have a problem with this, they need to stop "whining" and get ready for some real attacks, Bush said Sunday in Cedar Falls, Iowa. "You don't think that the Republican nominee is gonna get the bark scraped off him by the Clinton machine?" he told The Associated Press. "This is minor league baseball, man. If you can't handle that, then how you gonna deal with a unified Democratic Party that will go out to try to destroy you? And be president of the United States? This is a tough job. This isn't bean bag. Everybody's gotta get a grip."

The Right to Rise super PAC has spent more than $24 million total on TV ads against candidates it views as direct competitors to Bush — Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — and millions more on direct mail in Iowa and New Hampshire. It has 22 different commercials running on broadcast television, but voters don't seem to be connecting with the messaging, Republican strategist and Rubio supporter Katie Packer told AP. "The gross piling on against Marco by Right to Rise does not feel strategic, it feels personal and vindictive," she said. Bush's "fundamental flaw" is that he's a Bush, she added, and "the best marketing campaign in the world can't sell a product that people aren't interested in considering."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.