“I don’t get it. How could you not have been ready for this question?” said conservative activist Grover Norquist, who has clashed with Bush over taxes. “The answer was odd, but the lack of preparation was odd and unusual.”
GOP hawks are also alarmed by Bush’s muddled responses and wonder whether he will be able to make a full-throated case for the interventionist foreign policy they favor.

Former diplomat John Bolton — who may announce his own 2016 Republican bid Thursday — said Bush could have pushed back harder on his interviewers and sounded more coherent about one of the most controversial foreign policy decisions of recent decades…

James Mann, who has written two books about George W. Bush’s foreign policy team, said the issue allows the GOP field to isolate Jeb Bush.

“It’s a way to let Bush be out front on an issue where he’s uncomfortable,” Mann said. “They get to treat the war as history and let Jeb be the only one who has to squirm on the details of it.”