Jeb Bush was practically shouting, his voice booming inside a dimly lit wooden barn at an evening barbecue in the coastal town of Rye.
“We’re Americans, damn it!” Bush told the crowd of roughly 100 who had gathered over hot dogs, beers and soft drinks to see the former Florida governor speak. “The government is a parasite – we’re the host.”
It would be the first of several times Bush uttered the phrase “damn it” as he spoke with a sense of urgency that characterized not only his view of the next election but also the state of his presidential campaign.
It was also the first of many stops along a bus tour across New Hampshire, a critical early voting state where voters seemed largely unfazed by media reports that the man standing before them is facing an impossible comeback.
Bush arrived in the state on Tuesday after an especially bruising couple of weeks in his bid for the White House – news of 40% across-the-board pay cuts for staffers to his campaign, compounded by an inferior showing in the third presidential debate.
But Bush looked as determined as ever to steer his juggernaut campaign – which still boasts of a record war chest in outside spending – back on course. Most notably, he showed the kind of energy his critics have found lacking in an election driven by personalities.
And voters took notice.
“By the way, good energy tonight,” one man told Bush at one of his town halls, in a reference to Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s repeated taunts that the son and brother of two US presidents is a “low energy” candidate.
“I actually have good energy every night,” Bush quipped in return.
While running through a stump speech that drew on his experience as a two-term governor of Florida, his message was mostly unchanged. Casting himself as the candidate with the most experience to take on the role of commander-in-chief, Bush fielded questions ranging from housing affordability to school choice to fighting abortion with a touch of “I know, because I did it in Florida.”
The three-day campaign swing coincided with new polls showing Bush struggling more than ever before, a fact his own campaign spokesman had warned of in the hopes of pushing back against a 24/7 news cycle that had already declared the once-presumed frontrunner finished after the last debate.
“FYI political press corps. Jeb’s going to have a few weeks of bad polls. Comebacks take time, we recognize and are prepared for that,” Bush spokesman Tim Miller tweeted earlier this week.
Scott Brown, the former senator from Massachusetts who hosted the barnyard meet-and-greet with Bush, sounded a similar note.
“The election’s not tomorrow,” Brown said, while citing the reception other Republican candidates have received at his Q&A series.
“I love Lindsey Graham – he’s my guy!” Brown recalled an attendee saying after hearing the South Carolina senator speak, before going on to add that the same voter had previously said the same of Ohio governor John Kasich, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina.
His point: as many as 15 Republican presidential candidates are flocking in and out of New Hampshire every week, and the idea that primary voters have already made up their mind is less reflective of the electorate and more the musings of a political press obsessed with the horse race.
Conversations with voters supported that theory, with three months to go until they cast their ballots.
“We’re too soon,” said David Hoelzel of Raymond. “Jeb has always been a favorite of mine. I realize that the frontrunners right now and the candidates that are running are not of a political background, but I’d like to see someone that knows their way around and has the ability.”
Anne Hoening, a resident of Rye who has also seen several Republican candidates in person, said she was “very impressed” by Bush and remained undecided.
“I found him to be very authentic and forceful,” she said. “He had a lot more fire in him than I think that I’ve seen.”
Bush has nonetheless found himself spiraling from a once-presumed nominee to languishing in single-digits, as his former ally Marco Rubio has risen as a viable alternative for the Republican establishment. Rubio, a senator from Florida, was also campaigning in New Hampshire this week while seemingly coasting off the positive buzz surrounding his candidacy.
A confrontation between the two men was one of the most prolific moments of the last debate, when Bush suggested Rubio should resign his Senate seat over a growing number of missed votes. In New Hampshire, both men continued to take veiled jabs at each other with messages that effectively pitch the candidates as opposites despite an overwhelming overlap in their proposed policies.
“I’m a doer, not a talker,” Bush said at an event in Wolfeboro, reviving digs he has taken at senators for spending more time delivering floor speeches than passing meaningful legislation.
Rubio, who has built his candidacy as a generational contrast to both Bush and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, pulled out a sharper version of his own stump speech line arguing against passing the presidency on to the same names of the past.
“The time has come for us to turn the page, both as a nation and as a party,” Rubio said twice at a town hall on Wednesday evening.
Recent momentum has favored Rubio, who has shone on a crowded debate stage and generated the kind of fear among his opponents that has resulted in both Democrats and Republicans jockeying to exploit his weaknesses on any given day.
But more than 400 people who packed into a town hall in Nashua on Wednesday, some having to settle for watching the senator from outside on a chilly fall evening, embraced even what was being portrayed as Rubio’s liabilities.
When a voter asked Rubio why he wouldn’t just retire his Senate seat, given his low attendance to votes and committee hearings, the senator launched into his usual defense that the job had more to do than just showing up to vote. Rubio further added that he did not “hate” the Senate, as a recent Washington Post story suggested, but was merely frustrated by its gridlock.
The crowd broke into applause.
Given Rubio’s success at parrying attacks into a net positive, at least among Republican primary voters, it was not surprising that Bush was more muted in his criticism of a candidate his own campaign dubbed in recent weeks as a “GOP Obama”.
Unless pressed by reporters, Bush did not mention Rubio by name and at one point shared with the press a more positive story about how he encouraged Rubio to run for the Senate in 2010 even though the Republican establishment was against it.
By and large, Bush appeared intent on returning to the “joyful” campaign he set out to create at the start of his candidacy. The word he repeatedly emphasized was “heart”, at times placing his hand over his chest while vowing to be the candidate who would go to bat for conservative causes even if he wasn’t able to sum it up in the ideal debate sound byte.
“You guys elect presidents, and that’s why I’m here,” Bush told several crowds.
Bob Thorn, a resident of Manchester who remained undecided, said this was the Bush he believed would captivate audiences. And he hoped Bush intended to keep it that way, as opposed to sparring with other Republicans like Rubio and Trump.
“It just doesn’t fit,” Thorn said. “It’s like watching someone who’s very adept at chess in a boxing ring.”
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