Jeb Bush

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — His new campaign slogan tested in his home state of Florida, Jeb Bush is pushing his “Jeb Can Fix It” presidential campaign tour into early voting South Carolina and New Hampshire to reintroduce himself as the lone Republican who can right what’s wrong with Washington.

But the pithy slogan could apply as much to his effort to steady the campaign as it does to his sense of confidence about handling the nation’s problems.

“This is not about big personalities on the stage. It’s not about talking. It’s about doing,” the two-term Republican Florida governor told supporters in Jacksonville, the last of three stops on Monday. He will hold a town hall in Lexington, S.C., Tuesday before embarking on a three-day bus tour throughout New Hampshire.

The remarks, repeated earlier in Tampa and Orlando, were obvious jabs at rivals Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, and a nod to his flat performance in the Colorado.

Bush’s reset comes as a populist surge has propelled the outsider campaigns of bombastic developer Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson — and created an opportunity for Rubio, a freshman senator from Florida and former Bush protégé, to make his appeal to the party establishment.

Bush and Rubio spent Monday jockeying for establishment credentials. Bush announced the backing of soon-to-be Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran, who was chief of staff to Rubio when he was speaker. Rubio countered with an endorsement from U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, who took a veiled swipe at the Bush legacy by saying the nation needs a “new generation” of leaders.

What seemed last summer like the right slogan to carry Bush into the final months of the pre-primary campaign now has an off-key ring, underscored by a cascade of criticism in online forums, including Twitter.