For a guy who hasn't decided if he's running yet, Jeb Bush sure is raising gobs of cash. And that's pretty much all he can count as a campaign win at the moment, other than beating the entire field to the first
campaign shakeup. Apparently, his aides didn't
find that particularly prestigious.
His aides, trying to deflect attention from the reshuffling, said Monday that Mr. Bush would raise $100 million in the first six months of the year, a figure that they once waved off as unrealistic and that almost certainly will be higher than any other Republican contender.
$100 million for someone who's still considering his options. Pretty plush. But now that the expectation has been set, aides are trying to walk it back,
reports Matea Gold:
A super PAC backing former Florida governor Jeb Bush is likely to fall short of collecting $100 million by the end of this month, despite widespread expectations that the group would hit that record-breaking sum, according to people close to the operation. [...]
But any figure short of $100 million will probably be seen as a sign of weakness by senior party strategists and donors, many of whom now expect the group to greatly exceed that total.
Ruh-roh. Plus, Jeb's getting
a little touchy over the whole campaign shakeup thing.
“It’s June, for crying out loud, so we’ve got a long way to go,” he said during a news conference held outside his hotel here on the second and final day of meetings and speeches in the German capital. “I just urge everybody to be a little more patient about this.”
Wait—"we've got a long way to go"—was that a campaign announcement?