CORALVILLE, Iowa —Jeb Bush called Tuesday for a “leader with a servant’s heart.”

“We need a nominee who knows it’s not all about him,” the one-time GOP front-runner said.


But, increasingly, establishment Republicans worry that Bush’s campaign is little more than an ego trip. With the former Florida governor now sitting stagnant in the middle of the pack and his super PAC ratcheting up its attacks on Marco Rubio, a growing number of Republican centrists are coming to view Bush’s campaign as a distraction — one that could hurt their ability to keep the nomination away from Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

On Monday, the Right to Rise PAC hit the early state airwaves with an ad skewering Bush’s former protégé for flipping on immigration—an issue on which he and Bush actually agree. And on Tuesday, the group unleashed a second ad that portrayed Rubio as a flip-flopper and mocked his heeled boots.

These attacks aim to clear some space for Bush in the establishment lane of this sprawling primary fight with the Iowa caucuses just weeks away. But to those who no longer believe Bush can win the Republican nomination, his super PAC, with tens of millions of dollars left to spend, looks more like a wrecking ball meant to lay waste to the one contender many Bush donors see as the last remaining mainstream alternative to Trump or Cruz.

“This is something Jeb Bush has to decide. Does he want his legacy to be that he elected Donald Trump or Ted Cruz?” said Stuart Stevens, the GOP strategist who ran Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. “He can’t control that super PAC but he ought to call on the super PAC to stop and stop attacking people with whom he mostly agrees.”

Bush’s White House bid hit rock bottom in late October, after his own botched attack on Rubio during an October debate underlined the perilousness for Bush in attacking his one-time ally. Now, many establishment Republicans, including a growing number of Bush supporters, are frustrated that his super PAC is intent on doing the same thing.

“This thing has been mismanaged and screwed up since the beginning,” said a Jeb Bush backer in the Washington area who worked in both previous Bush administrations. “It’s gotten to the point where the old-timers are saying ‘it’s really sad.’ How as presumptive leader with $100 million in the bank did you get yourself in a box where you have to attack Rubio and Christie to win your lane?”

On Tuesday morning, Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler Tuesday simply tweeted the latest Right to Rise ad bashing Rubio without any additional comment.

“The chances of those ads hurting Rubio are a lot stronger than the odds of them helping Jeb,” said Curt Anderson, a Republican strategist who ran Bobby Jindal’s campaign last year. “The Right to Rise folks don’t want to end the campaign with $30 million in the bank and they probably realize the positive spots haven’t helped Jeb at all.

“But how these ads help Jeb, no one understands.”

In a post Tuesday morning, Erick Erickson, the influential conservative blogger, articulated the sentiments many conflicted establishment Republicans have been voicing for weeks, writing that it’s become “silly and embarrassing” for his super PAC to have “turned to nonstop character assassination against a candidate who tried to get passed a policy Jeb Bush himself supported.”

Beyond the implications on the primary itself, many lifelong Republicans, those who have offices decorated with photographs of themselves standing beside the country’s last two Republican presidents, worry about Bush’s difficult 2016 campaign tarnishing his family’s political legacy.

“To stay in a race and spend millions and millions of dollars attacking other candidates you basically agree with, that starts to look like spite,” said Stevens. “It’s one thing to lose a race and have run a good race. It’s another thing to lose and have as your legacy that you attempted to destroy everybody else who was most like you. That’s a very negative legacy and it’s a long lasting one, and that’s the question that should be paramount in the Bush organization.”

During his hour-long town hall here Tuesday morning, a woman asked Bush about his rift with Rubio and his broader definition as an “establishment” candidate. After a lengthy riff about his anti-establishment tenure as a governor who “disrupted the old order in Tallahassee,” Bush quickly brushed past the idea of a simmering feud with Rubio. “Marco is my friend. He’s my friend,” Bush said. “And what has been said by our campaign, I stand by completely. Everyone’s record will be scrutinized.”

But Florida Republicans in both camps tell a different story, one of an elder statesman who, after waiting eight years to run for president, viewed his younger protégé’s decision to challenge him for the GOP nomination after one term in the senate as an affront—and of personal enmity that’s deepened as Rubio has risen to the top of the field while Bush has sunk.

“People around him have just reached a point of pure anger,” said one Florida politico who is supporting Rubio. “This is purely just hatred amongst his staff to go after Marco out of jealousy, spite, you name it—because everyone knows the one person who can win is Marco and yet they’re doing everything they can to hurt him. They still can’t get over him having the audacity to run.”

But few with qualms about the super PAC’s assault on Rubio, even those who worry about it helping Trump or Cruz, blame Bush himself or expect him to disavow its attacks. “The problem is these super PACS—they're independent and you can't just pick up the phone and call them to stop them,” said Florida state Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto Tuesday in Tallahassee.

Florida Rep. Richard Corcoran, a one-time Rubio consultant and chief of staff who has endorsed Bush, smiled awkwardly and fell uncharacteristically silent when asked about the new Right to Rise ads. "I support Jeb Bush. I can't speak to Right to Rise. But we've all said that, if people got to know the real Jeb Bush who governed the state of Florida, he's going to win the presidency. I would say go out there and let the world know the conservative, principled, courageous Jeb Bush."

Bush, addressing reporters following a second town hall event inside a gun manufacturing plant in Grinnell Tuesday afternoon, brushed past questions about whether Murphy’s attacks might harm Rubio, the GOP more broadly or his own legacy. “I can’t control what anyone else does. I can only control what I do, and I’m advocating my record and my detailed plan to fix the mess in Washington, DC,” he said. “Everybody’s going to be scrutinized. This is not beanbag. In fact, having been around a few times, a few election cycles, this is pretty tame so far. If you think this is hard, wait ‘til the general election.”

Rubio, Bush even suggested, is running tougher attack ads than he is. "If you've got a problem with Rubio, why don't you ask him about his ad about Christie,” Bush said, seemingly referring to an ad from Rubio’s super PAC attacking the New Jersey governor for embracing Obama. “I saw that in New Hampshire. That's a zinger.”

Rubio is ahead of Bush nationally and polling in second place behind only Trump in New Hampshire, but he has yet to consolidate support among establishment Republicans. Bush is playing defense in Iowa this week in an effort to squash Rubio and Chris Christie’s chances for carrying momentum from a strong showing in the state’s Feb. 1 caucuses into New Hampshire, which holds its primary a week later.

Both of Bush’s events Tuesday drew more people than staffers had expected, a sign, supporters say, that he could still be a factor, especially with a strong organization able to harvest whatever support he has. “Survey research indicates that 70 percent of the people are still undecided. The calling our campaign is doing yields about that same number,” said David Oman, a top Bush adviser in Iowa. “That is not out of line with caucus precedent: people break late.”

Few expect Bush, whose chances of getting beyond the first early state contests hinge not on finishing first overall but simply ahead of Rubio and other establishment contenders like Christie and John Kasich, to waste resources attacking Cruz.

“For Bush donors, they gave money to elect Jeb and it doesn’t help Jeb in the short term to attack Ted Cruz or Trump, who aren’t in his way,” said one Washington-based GOP consultant who is unaffiliated but asked to speak anonymously. “But some are coming to the conclusion that Jeb can’t win and they’re worried his super PAC is going to ensure that no other establishment candidate does either. Everyone is looking at [Right to Rise director Mike] Murphy and saying, what are you going to do with our money? Something useful that helps the party or are you going to blow it all up?”

Bush supporters, however, see a double standard in the establishment’s collective pearl clutching when he attacks Rubio, even though Christie’s broadsides against him have been sharper-edged.

“I’ve not heard Jeb say Rubio is trying to slime his way to the White House,” said Ron Kaufman, a Bush backer and long-time GOP operative in Massachusetts. “Why should Jeb Bush, the only candidate in the Republican race with a legitimate national network, why is it not okay for him to draw contrasts when all of these guys are battling to be the finalist in the centrist conservative lane?”

Marc Caputo contributed.

