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ORLANDO, Fla. – Jeb Bush rebuked Mike Huckabee on Monday for invoking the Holocaust in criticizing President Obama over the nuclear agreement with Iran, arguing that Republicans needed “to tone down the rhetoric” if they hoped to recapture the White House next year.

“The use of that kind of language is just wrong,” Mr. Bush told reporters after a town-hall-style meeting here. “This is not the way we’re going to win elections and that’s not how we’re going to solve problems. So, unfortunate remark — not quite sure why he felt compelled to say it.”

Mr. Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, said over the weekend that Mr. Obama’s Iran policy would “take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”

His incendiary language prompted a strongly worded rejoinder from Mr. Obama at a news conference in Ethiopia on Monday.

“The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are just part of a general pattern we’ve seen that would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad,” Mr. Obama said, linking Mr. Huckabee’s comments to similarly inflammatory rhetoric of late from those he called the “leaders in the Republican Party.”

After an hour in a Hispanic megachurch fielding questions from a diverse audience of pastors, Mr. Bush found himself in an increasingly familiar role: grappling with how to separate himself from controversial language and figures in his party who could turn off a general election audience while not irritating the conservative primary voters he needs to win his party’s nomination.

While his criticism of Mr. Huckabee was unmistakable, Mr. Bush seemed to restrain himself when he drifted toward mocking Mr. Huckabee, who since his 2008 presidential bid has made something of a side business of taking Americans on tours of the Holy Land.

“Look, I’ve been to Israel, not as many times as Mike Huckabee,” Mr. Bush said, before quickly adding, “who I respect.”

He also sandwiched his critique of Mr. Huckabee around denunciations of the nuclear agreement itself, which he called “horrific” at the outset and “a bad deal” in conclusion.

Mr. Bush sought a similar balance on another charged issue: the arrest and death of Sandra Bland in Texas this month and other incidents of unarmed African-Americans dying in police custody.

He said he had not seen “the full video” of Ms. Bland’s traffic stop, but called her case and the recent deaths of other African-Americans after police encounters “disconcerting.”

But he declined to offer a diagnosis for what is behind “an outbreak of these cases.”

“I’m not a sociologist,” said Mr. Bush, adding: “Maybe this has been going on a long while, but now because we capture everything in the digital world perhaps that’s the reason. I don’t know if there’s been a larger number of these things.”

As for what can be done to stop such cases in the future, he also walked a careful line.

“I think there ought to be some consideration of, and states are looking at this, expanding cameras, certainly more training,” Mr. Bush said. “There’s also got to be a recognition that being a police officer is a dangerous job, and they get it right a lot of times, too.”

Mr. Bush said mandating that police officers wear body cameras should be done on the state level. Asked if he would sign such a bill if he was still Florida’s governor, Mr. Bush suggested he would defer to the views of law enforcement.

“If they thought it was important,” he said, “then I’d go to the legislature and fund it.”