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Barbara Bush Hits Campaign Trail for Another Son

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DERRY, N.H. -- Presidential candidate Jeb Bush is pulling out all the stops in New Hampshire. And on this day that meant his famous, feisty mother Barbara.

As the two walked into a diner together, Jeb quickly asked a woman sitting in the first booth inside the door, "Hello, have you met Barbara Bush?"

A few seconds later, a man walked up to Mrs. Bush and said, "Hi. I'm Steve. Can I get a hug?"

"Sure," she said, giving him a big embrace.

Jeb Bush needs all the help he can get. The once front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination is now way back in the pack. And support can be hard to come by.

In the same diner, Bush walked up to a table and shook the hand of a young man in a hunting cap.

"Love to have your support," Bush said.

The young man just said, "Yeah, uhhhh…" and never really answered.

The next table Bush said to three men, "Love to have your support."

As they sat there not answering, he added, "I'm running for president." Still no offers to vote for him came from the gentlemen.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the diner, Mrs. Bush was chatting her way from one table to the next.

At one table with two teenage boys, Matthew and Christian Kuechler, Mrs. Bush and their mother Cathy talked about Mrs. Bush raising four sons.

Mrs. Kuechler said to Mrs. Bush,

"You were braver than I was," Kuechler told Mrs. Bush.  

"Thinking back on it, that a was a LOT of boys," she replied.

The matriarch of the Bush clan now needs a walker and is showing the years, but the fun and feistiness she's always been known for hasn't waned.

Mike Bender of Bloomberg News, asked her if this was different from campaigning in New Hampshire for her son George W.

"Well, I don't think I campaigned for George up here. I may have. I've forgotten. I'm 90, you know," she said.

At another table, a mother said to her daughter about Mrs. Bush, "Her husband was the president and her son was the president."

Mrs. Bush quickly added, "And my next son's going to be."

GOP front-runner Donald Trump, who's aimed his acid-laced tweets at just about everyone, recently let loose with both barrels at the Bush mother and son after Barbara Bush did an ad for Jeb called "A Message from Barbara Bush."

In it she said, in what most everyone took as a reference to Trump, "When push comes to shove, people are going to realize Jeb has real solutions, rather than talking about how popular they are, how great they are."

Trump tweeted in reply, "Just watched Jeb's ad where he desperately needed mommy to help him. Jeb - mom can't help you with ISIS, the Chinese or with Putin."

Mrs. Bush has called Trump "abominable." But she's not letting that dust-up stop her from campaigning.

And from his position in the present polls, Jeb Bush needs all the votes she can bring him.

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About The Author

Paul
Strand

As senior correspondent in CBN's Washington bureau, Paul Strand has covered a variety of political and social issues, with an emphasis on defense, justice, and Congress. Strand began his tenure at CBN News in 1985 as an evening assignment editor in Washington, D.C. After a year, he worked with CBN Radio News for three years, returning to the television newsroom to accept a position as editor in 1990. After five years in Virginia Beach, Strand moved back to the nation's capital, where he has been a correspondent since 1995. Before joining CBN News, Strand served as the newspaper editor for