Jeb Bush was forced to walk back a statement he made questioning federal spending on women’s healthcare as he appealed to evangelical voters, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Said Bush: “You could take dollar for dollar — although I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues — but if you took, dollar for dollar, there are many extraordinary fine organizations, community health organizations, that exist, federally sponsored organizations, to provide quality care for women on a variety of health issues.”

“As Democrats pounced on the statement, Bush quickly said he misspoke and was referring only to the $500 million in federal funding for Planned Parenthood.”

New York Times: “Bush promised to be candid and unscripted in his joyful run for president. Now he’s paying the price.”

“I’m playing the rules of the game, the way it’s laid out. And if people don’t like it, that’s just tough luck.”

— Jeb Bush, quoted by Time, on using a super PAC to raise so much money.

“The single largest donor to Right to Rise, Mike Fernandez, didn’t hand over a check for a sum that seems obtainable only though some form of global dominion. Fernandez wrote a check for $3 million.  Fernandez, a Miami-area businessman who runs a health-care industry-focused private equity firm, doesn’t agree with Bush on at least two issues that have already come up in the 2016 campaign,” the Washington Post reports.

“Many health-care executives across the country — including in deeply red states — have been generally if not vocally supportive of the Affordable Care Act. That support includes the Medicaid expansion that has been rejected by some Republican-controlled state governments. Bush opposes the Medicaid expansion.”

“Fernandez, a Cuban American who fled Cuba with his family following Castro’s takeover, is also a vocal and on-the-record supporter of Obama’s move toward normalizing relations with Cuba. Bush is not. Softening sanctions against Cuba strengthens the Castro regime, Bush said this month.”

Rick Klein: “This hectic week-plus before the first Republican debate may be remembered for Mike Huckabee’s Auschwitz memoires, Lindsey Graham’s new cell phone, and maybe even Donald Trump’s trip across the pond to catch some golf. It might also be remembered as the period in time that Jeb Bush found the campaign groove he’s long promised – the one where he shows, in his words, a willingness to ‘lose the primary to win the general.'”

“Bush gave a Spanish-language interview denouncing Trump, jabbed at a certain former candidate famous for ‘self-deportation,’ and embraced a centrist’s vision of bipartisanship, as the New York Times’ Jonathan Martin documents. More interestingly, perhaps, he chose to engage and respond to Huckabee’s comments on the Iran deal – a deal, of course, that he harshly opposes: ‘The use of that kind of language, it’s just wrong,’ Bush said. Attacking fellow Republicans isn’t by itself a path to a nomination, as Bush and his team know. But it’s a calculation that there’s room for a grown-up in the chaos that is the nomination fight right now.”

“I’m the tortoise in the race. Slow and steady progress each and every day.”

— Jeb Bush, quoted by the Washington Post.

Larry Sabato: “Most presidential candidates have a streak of ruthlessness in them—even the nice guys. Make that especially the nice guys. They’re mild-mannered and courteous in public, so someone else has to do the dirty work of winning for them.”

“Jeb Bush will prove this again. It’s an easy prediction that he’ll follow his brother and father in bushwhacking any opponent standing between him and the presidency. With the Bushes, do not take too seriously their assertions of personal sweetness.”

National Journal: “Jeb Bush is a fundraising powerhouse among the Republican Party’s biggest donors, but he is struggling among smaller donors. Of the $11.4 million his campaign raised during its first two weeks, only 3 percent came from donors who gave less than $200.”

“Small contributors gave Bush only $368,023, the campaign’s federal filings show. Donors who gave the legal maximum of $2,700 accounted for more than 80 percent of Bush’s total haul.”