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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference, June 14, 2013 in Washington, DC.

It’s about winning, Jeb Bush says.

David Brody, of “The Brody File” at the Christian Broadcasting Network, may have heard what we heard at last week’s Faith and Freedom Coalition: a Jeb Bush speaking a different line from Ralph Reed’s.

Brody sat down with Bush for an interview Friday — airing on “The 700 Club” today — in which the host asked about the state of the Republican Party: “Where do you see evangelicals’ role in all of this? Because really, there is somewhat of a fight for the soul of the Republican Party. Many evangelicals feel the culture is not where it needs to be and it’s going down pretty quickly.”

And Bush replied: “I think we could focus on all our disparate parts, all of the points of disagreement that conservatives have and never win again. My general thought is that the focus ought to be on how you get fifty plus one. Not how you win amongst forty-five. ”

“And that’s kind of where we are where everybody has a view that’s slightly different than one another and certainly social conservatives are a huge part of a winning coalition which means that we have to change our language to be inclusive but not abandon principle and that’s not as hard, I think, as people make it out to be.”

Original post is Jeb Bush: ‘Fifty Plus One’ by Political Capital.

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A protester holds a sign reading, ‘Rubio: Don’t Oppose Family Unity’, as she joins with others in front of Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) office on May 22, 2013 in Doral, Florida.

There’s a lot of death talk surrounding immigration reform.

Will the bill itself, hailed as the magical medicine for the revival of the Republican Party, die in the Republican-run House?

Will passage of the bill kill the chances of any Republican associated with it in the party’s 2016 presidential primaries?

Marco Rubio is the one Republican who stands perhaps the most to win, or lose, from the immigration bill he co-authored.

“Dead to me,” conservative radio talk show host Steve Deace says of Rubio’s standing among Republicans in Iowa.

It doesn’t matter who the party runs in 2016, says Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican working with Rubio and the other six members of the bipartisan Gang of Eight on immigration. If the party doesn’t get it right on immigration this year, he says, it can forget 2016.

“I would suggest a guy like Jeb Bush would have a really good chance in 2016,” Graham said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday.

Bush is co-author of a book, “Immigration Wars,” which takes a middle ground approach toward reform: “We propose a path to permanent legal resident status for those who entered our country illegally as adults and who have committed no additional crimes of significance,” he and co-author Clint Bolick write. “Permanent residency in this context, however, should not lead to citizenship.” Yet, Bush too, has said he can live with citizenship if that’s the consensus.

Nothing short of that path to citizenship will satisfy the Democrats in the Senate, where leaders hope to amass 70 votes for their bill before July 4 to increase pressure on the House for action. Citizenship, it’s been clear all along, could kill it in the House.

So in strengthening the bill as it moves through the Senate, Rubio is attempting to keep the focus on border security.

“The vast majority of Americans, the vast majority of conservative Republicans are prepared to support immigration reform, but only if we can ensure that we’re not going to have another wave of illegal immigration in the future,” Rubio said on ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday. “And so I think they have pointed to valid criticisms of how the border security plan is structured in the bill, and quite frankly very reasonable ways to address it.”

Consider either Bush or Rubio among the party’s best prospects down the road, neither at this point committed to a national campaign.

Consider immigration reform critical to their party’s future, in that life and death spiral.

“If we don’t pass immigration reform, if we don’t get it off the table in a reasonable, practical way, it doesn’t matter who you run in 2016,” Graham said on “Meet the Press. “We’re in a demographic death spiral as a party, and the only way we can get back in good graces with the Hispanic community, in my view, is pass comprehensive immigration reform. If you don’t do that, it really doesn’t matter who will run, in my view.”

It’s not only Hispanic voters with whom the Republican Party must reengage — having lost 71 percent of the vote to President Barack Obama last year. It’s also Asian-American voters, who voted in even greater numbers for Obama – the real “canary in the coal mine,” Bush says.

Yet consider immigration, still, a problem within the party that forced Mitt Romney to stake a position untenable in November.

“If I know anything about the Iowa caucuses, it’s that Marco Rubio shouldn’t even bother showing up in 2016,” Deace writes in a Politico commentary today. “Sure, if you ask state party officials and some other big names, they’ll say all the politically correct things about Rubio’s chances publicly to preserve the process, plus Iowans are nice. But privately I’ve heard “Rubio is dead to me” from plenty of conservatives.”

Original post is Republican ‘Death Spiral:’ Life-and-Breathless Immigration Debate by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

Immigration reform advocates hold signs of young immigrant “dreamers” during a protest outside a fund raising event for Texas Senator Ted Cruz on May 29, 2013 in Manhattan, New York City.

Jeb Bush is taking a Twitter-ribbing today for saying that immigrants are more “fertile.” What he meant was, they have more babies, not that they have a greater ability to procreate.

Yet the former Florida governor had a more serious message overlooked in the instant social media: “Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.”

“Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans,” Bush said. “Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population.”

Which is his rationale for reforming the nation’s immigration laws to provide a lawful role for the undocumented as well newcomers to the U.S. while tightening control of the border — the mantra that fellow Florida Republican Marco Rubio has adapted in Washington.

“We’re facing a crisis on the family front today,” Bush said at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, pointing to the fact that 42 percent of children are born out of wedlock. “We have to reclaim the family as a force for good…. We have to be supportive of a single mom or dad, a grandparent taking care of children… The goal should be the outcome.”

What he did not say is something that Ralph Reed, coalition founder, said there: “I would say this to those who say that we should ride in the back of the bus, that our issues are a liability,” said Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition. “When it comes to the sanctity of human life… when it comes to the sacred sacrament of a man and woman as the foundation of marriage,… we cannot be silent.”

Bush did speak of his conversion to Catholicism, first for his wife of 39 years, the Mexican-born Columba Bush, and later strengthened by his study of the sacraments — including the church’s commitment to the “God-given” virtue of life. (Applause from the audience.)

“Things are not as black and white as they used to be,” said Bush, 60 now. “There’s a lot more gray now, particularly on my head.”

Bush, who served two terms as governor of the fourth-largest state, is a son and brother of two former presidents. He is widely viewed as a Republican who has escaped the bounds of the bright lines of religious right orthodoxy the Reed and associates have drawn, and is, for that and other reasons, electable — “fertile,” in the political sense of the word.

He will appear Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week,” where his views on immigration will be pressed – his book, Immigration Wars, takes a different tack than Rubio’s on the question of a path to citizenship for the undocumented, though he concedes that he can live with that, too. More blurred lines.

He probably won’t answer the one question everyone is asking: whether he will run for president in 2016. His own family is divided on that question, he notes — mother Barbara says the country has had enough Bushes as presidents.

“I think we’ve got a split ballot amongst the Bush senior family,” Bush says with a smile in the interview airing Sunday, according to ABC News. “Pretty sure that’s the case.”

Original post is Jeb Bush: Politically ‘Fertile’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Travis Lindquist/Getty Images

U.S. President George W. Bush dances with first lady Laura Bush as his brother Jeb Bush dances with his wife Columba at the Liberty Ball in this file photo.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush waxes eloquently about all manner of public affairs: Education reform, immigration policy, governmental responsibility, personal responsibility…

And his own fiery affair with his wife, Columba.

Bush, 60, delved into romance this morning at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington with an ear-catching juxtaposition of immigration reform and laying down with his wife, a native of Mexico.

“When I get to spend the night with my lover, it’s my wife who was born outside the United States,” Bush said. Quickly noting the presence of TV cameras, he added: “By the way, did I mention that my lover is my wife?”

This was his way of getting at how his own family demonstrates the immigrant heritage of the U.S. He went on to mention granddaughter Georgia, her mother Canadian of Iraqi descent, and implied she might one day be the nation’s 52nd president (his father and brother were Numbers 41 and 43) — her nickname, ”52.”

Bush’s colorful language to describe his marriage goes back a ways.

Consider this from a 1986 profile in The Miami Herald. Bush, then a 33-year-old Miami-Dade County Republican Party chairman and eight years away from his first run for office (his first, failed bid for governor in 1994) spoke of when he and Columba first met. They met in Mexico. They were young.

“I don’t know, maybe it was just raw animal magnetism,” he said then. “I just fell in love with her. It’s just one of those indescribable things. It’s only happened to me once so far. I don’t know how to describe it. I can tell you the symptoms. Not being able to sleep. Not having an appetite. She was the first girl I ever felt that way about.”

Columba Bush has here own penchant for the personal: This from a 2003 story in The Washington Post:

“During the 1994 campaign, a reporter asked Columba Bush the name of the Spanish language book she was reading. ‘It is called ‘Secrets About Men That Every Woman Should Know,” she replied. ‘We’ve been together 20 years and you stay that way by keeping the romance going.”’

Original post is Jeb Bush’s Latin ‘Lover:’ R-Rated by Political Capital.

Photograph by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images

Republican supporters gets ready to hold a South Carolina Faith & Freedom Coalition Event in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on January 16, 2012.

Gary Bauer will be here.

That will take us back to the presidential campaign of 2000, when the former president of the Family Research Council sought the Republican Party’s presidential nomination with a fervent anti-abortion campaign.

Sarah Palin is on the roster. That will take us back to 2008, when the former Alaska governor was the Republican nominee for vice president.

And so are Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Georgia businessman Herman Cain (“9-9-9”) and retiring Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, which will take us back to 2012, when all of them sought the Republican presidential nomination.

Yet the ones to watch at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference getting under way in Washington this morning are the ones who may take us to 2016.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have the lunch hour slot today at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is on this evening. And former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is on the roster Friday morning.

Paul and Cruz already have made some intentions about a 2016 presidential campaign known with forays to Iowa and South Carolina. Rubio is viewed by many as another possible contender. And Bush is the party’s equivalent of a one-man bull pen — they could put him in at any time and he’d become an instant front-runner.

This is a gathering of the base, featuring some, such as Cruz, who want nothing to do with the immigration reform that is putting Rubio front and center in his party’s bid to reach a broader audience in 2016. This is a crowd traditionally warm to the words of a Bauer or Bachmann, the religious right.

It will present a challenge for the likes of Bush or Rubio to demonstrate their fealty to the most conservative members of their party while articulating a vision that plays beyond a Republican Party primary — if they have such intentions.

Original post is Rubio, Paul, Cruz, Bush: Together Again by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

A Chinese immigrant is fingerprinted during her “biometrics” appointment to receive a green card at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Queens office on May 30, 2013 in the Long Island City neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City.

Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, the nonprofit founded with the help of Republican strategist Karl Rove, is spending $100,000 on print ads to get its points across while the Senate debates immigration legislation.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of the Republican-leaning American Action Network, and former national party chairman Ed Gillespie are among the prominent Republicans lending their names to the effort.

The ad calls for making border security a top priority, for excluding immigrants from obtaining health care under the new Affordable Care Act, and for trying to attract “the world’s brightest entrepreneurs, technologists and scientists.” It is silent on offering a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, though it does call for eventually offering permanent legal status.

The ad calls for “good-faith amendments and debate” to the bipartisan Senate bill as it says failure to enact new immigration legislation “will only perpetuate an unacceptable status quo.”

“The Senate immigration bill needs an ‘extreme makeover’ before we can say it really protects our borders and our workers, but it’s important that Congress move forward on it and not just throw up its hands,” Crossroads GPS chief executive Steven Law says. “This isn’t just about politics; it’s about taking responsibility for solving a critical national problem.”

Crossroads GPS spent $71 million on the 2012 elections to elect Republicans, without disclosing its donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That was more than any other nonprofit. The American Action Network, another nonprofit, spent $12 million and also kept its donors secret.

Original post is Crossroads GPS, $100,000 on Immigration: Bill Needs ‘Makeover’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Capitol Hill on January 23, 2013 about the security failures during the September 11 attacks against the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that led to the death of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

Fresh evidence here that, for Republicans, Benghazi is all about Hillary:

While the former secretary of state is potentially the Democrat to beat in a 2016 presidential contest, her handling of the fatal assaults on a U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, may already have taken a toll on her formidable popularity — which may well be the motivation behind the relentless Republican congressional drumbeat on the Obama administration’s handling of an ambassador’s slaying.

Clinton, also a former senator from New York and first lady, left the State Department with commanding numbers: 61 percent favorable ratings in a February Quinnipiac University survey. That compared with a 34 percent negative rating.

Today, Quinnipiac reports a 52 percent favorability rating for Clinton in its latest national survey — and a 40 percent negative rating.

“Her score is down substantially from her all-time high,” says Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute. “One reason for her drop may be that 48 percent of voters blame her either a little or a lot for the death of the American ambassador in Benghazi.”

Envoy Chris Stevens was among four Americans killed in the Sept. 11 attack by terrorists — an act of terrorism which Republicans maintain the Obama administration was slow to acknowlege. The White House’s recent release of emails following the attack show that it was not 1600 Pennsylvania so much as the CIA and State Department which were torn over the “talking points.”

Obama has called the continuing congressional focus on the episode a “circus.” House Speaker John Boehner pledges “more hearings” to come.

While losing some of her luster in the past few months, the survey also shows that Clinton holds a strong position in which to consider a possible 2016 presidential campaign. Matched against a couple of the Republican Party’s big names — Republican Jeb Bush of Florida and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — Clinton holds an eight percentage point advantage in a hypothetical matchup. Vice President Joe Biden, on the other hand, trails either Republican.

“Clinton remains the queen of the 2016 hill at this point, but the wide gap between her and some of the leading Republican contenders on favorability may be closing, as her overall favorability has taken a hit,” Brown says.

Original post is Hillary Clinton’s Slide: Benghazi Toll? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

George P. Bush

George P. Bush, fourth generation of a family whose political lines have run through Connecticut, Texas and Florida, is coming to Washington to help raise money for “the Donkey Whisperer.”

That’s first-term Texas Rep. Roger Williams, billing Bush as a “special guest” at Thursday’s fundraiser — credit Paul Bedard’s Washington Secrets with this tip.

Bush is running for land commissioner back home — an office considered a gateway to greater statewide office, and perhaps more in the case of a family that counts two presidents, one U.S. senator and a governor in its lineage.

George Prescott Bush is the first-born son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, nephew of former President George W. Bush, grandson son of former President George H.W. Bush, great-grandson of Connecticut Senator Prescott Bush.

And the Donkey Whisperer ad is worth the watching — ask the other 2 million people who have viewed it.

Seems Williams also was first to endorse Bush’s own campaign:

Big day for @teamgeorgep yesterday with our first endorsement from @rogerwilliamstx and two swell events in DFW twitter.com/georgepbush/st…

— George P. Bush (@georgepbush) April 3, 2013

Original post is George P. Bush Raising Money for Texas’ ‘Donkey Whisperer’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush autographs his new book ‘Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution’ before speaking at the Reagan Library on March 8, 2013 in Simi Valley, California.

“The success of conservative principles is the best kept secret in American politics,” Jeb Bush writes. And it’s all a matter of communication, he says.

If what the Republican Party has here is a failure to communicate, the former Florida governor points to some talking points:

“Four of the most popular governors in the country – Chris Christie of New Jersey, Bob McDonnell of Virginia, Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada – are from states that supported President Obama last year,” he writes today at Rare.US — “red in the center.”

There are 30 Republican governors, Republican majorities in 26 state legislators, he notes, and the Southeast is leading “a renaissance in American manufacturing” — Boeing Dreamliners built in South Carolina (the batteries are another story.)

Indiana’s Mitch Daniels, one of Bush’s favorite former governors, and Michigan’s Rick Snyder, one of his favorite sitting ones, have made the right-to-work an advantage. His own Rick Scott has “a job-creating juggernaut” in Florida, challenging Texas’ Rick Perry to “ friendly jobs-race.”

“As Republicans,” he writes, “we must focus on a positive message about our success and our vision. Instead of spending all our time and resources saying why President Obama and the Democrats’ ideas are wrong for Americans, we must provide clearly articulated alternatives… Not only must we pursue reform, we must do a much better job communicating how these reforms protect and promote the genius of America.”

Of course, his own family has some work to do in its own communications. His older brother, former President George W. Bush, suggested last week during interviews surrounding the dedication of his presidential library in Texas that Jeb Bush should run for president in 2016. But their mother, wife of another former president, said flatly: ``We’ve had enough Bushes.”

The former two-term governor has said he is “open” to the idea.

“Sure, he’d be terrific, he’d be a wonderful president,” former first lady Laura Bush said of Jeb Bush in 2016. “But who knows? We don’t know, and we’re just letting him decide.”

Original post is Jeb Bush’s ‘Best Kept Secret’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney greets Asian American supporters as he campaigns at Van Dyck park in Fairfax, Va., on Sept. 13, 2012.

Jeb Bush has called Asian-Americans the canary in the Republican Party’s coal mine.

Look past the 71 percent of Hispanic voters who sided with President Barack Obama in November, the Florida Republican has suggested, and one will find the 74 percent of Asian-Americans supporting the Democrat.

Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman who has commissioned an autopsy of his party’s poor performance last year — not only in the national race, but also in Senate contests in which it could have challenged the Democrats for control of the Senate — is putting some of its findings into play.

As he and the rest of the Republican National Committee head to Los Angeles for their spring meeting  later this week — what the Los Angeles Times calls “a visit meant to illustrate the party’s commitment to broadening its reach even in the bluest of states” — Priebus has announced two new party hires to step up the RNC’s engagement with voters in Asian and Pacific Islander communities.

 The L.A. Times notes: Stephen Fong as national field director and Jason Chung as a national communications director — “the first in a series of changes that will be announced this week as the party’s members debate actions intended to reverse their losses in the 2012 presidential race.”

Fong, a California native, will lead party activists “rooted in the communities they serve to engage people where they live, work, and worship.” Chung, who has worked with Republican candidates in Connecticut, Maryland and Virginia, will oversee outreach to Asian and Pacific Islander media, the Times’ Maeve Reston reports.

“We’ve made a commitment to being a party for every state, every community, and every neighborhood,” Priebus told the Times. “This is one of many steps toward keeping that commitment.”

Original post is RNC’s Asian-American Outreach: Hires by Political Capital.