Bush compares Clinton's avoidance of questions to 'The Simpsons'

DUBUQUE, Ia. – Jeb Bush invited Iowans to "ask whatever you want."

And they did — about how he feels about his brother's mistakes in Iraq and why he backs controversial education standards and other hot topics.

"We're probably around 800 to 900 questions asked and hopefully answered," Bush, a Republican who will make up his mind "pretty soon" about whether to run for president, said at the start of his town hall meeting at Loras College in Dubuque Saturday morning.

Bush said Democrat Hillary Clinton has been a candidate for a month and has answered only 13 questions from the press.

"She's had 33,000 ... minutes where she hasn't answered a question. For those that really follow TV, 33,000 minutes is two times the number of 'Simpson's' shows that existed in the 25 years," he said to laughs from an audience of a little more than 100.

The Dubuque event kicked off Bush's second trip to Iowa of the 2016 election cycle. Clinton makes her second trip here next week.

Bush is making hops around Iowa in a private plane – to two fundraisers in Iowa City for Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, to private meetings in the Des Moines area, and then the Iowa GOP's Lincoln Dinner Saturday night. His wife, Columba, and son Jeb Jr. are traveling with him.

Bush, who is struggling to gain favor with likely GOP caucusgoers in Iowa, told the Dubuque audience he hadn't been there since he campaigned for his father, George H.W. Bush, in 1979 and 1980.

"I'll just remind everybody that's interested in political history. He started here in Iowa as an asterisk, literally an asterisk, and he won the Iowa caucuses," he said.

Bush took questions for nearly an hour, from 11 people in the crowd.

The first questioner asked about education, but made brief mention of Bush's interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly on Monday. Bush has taken heat all week for telling Kelly he would've authorized the Iraq War "knowing what we know now." Bush later said he misinterpreted the question. His answers varied until Thursday, when he said: "I would not have gone into Iraq."

In Dubuque Saturday, Bush said: "I misstepped for sure. I answered a question that wasn't asked."

Another Iowan, 30-year-old Jeff Lenhart, a Dubuque Democrat who works at a homeless shelter, asked Bush how he feels about his brother being responsible for the deaths of 6,000 Americans in Iraq.

"Look, I'm proud of my brother," Bush answered to loud applause.

Bush continued: "The facts that were there for the president and in a bipartisan way approved – bipartisan in every way – was grounded on faulty intelligence. And they made mistakes along the way that related to not focusing on security first. My brother acknowledges that. I acknowledge that. Those were mistakes. ... My brother did something that I thought was pretty heroic and courageous. Against all odds politically, he rectified this by a that surge created a significantly more stable Iraq than he left."

Another questioner, Les Feldmann of Rickardsville, grilled Bush on common core education standards. Bush said he favors state-driven standards, and that the federal government should be expressly prohibited from getting involved.

When Feldmann persisted in questioning him, Bush said, to applause: "I'm just for higher standards, man. ... What we shouldn't have is low standards or no standards. That's the problem."

Later, Feldmann told the Des Moines Register he thinks what Bush did with education standards in Florida was "excellent." But Bush has been promoting the Common Core Education Standards, which are "copyrighted and patented," and involve the federal government hanging money over state officials' heads, Feldmann said.

Bush wrapped up his speech by saying that converting from the Episcopalian faith to Catholicism was "one of the smarted things I've ever done in my life." Dubuque has a disproportionately heavy Catholic population, and Loras is one of three Catholic colleges in the Dubuque diocese.

Elsewhere Saturday morning, GOP presidential candidate Rand Paul attracted about 160 in Burlington and Donald Trump, who is weighing a bid, drew nearly 200 in Sioux City.