CNN) Jeb Bush took an off-handed jab at women’s health funding and quickly found himself in the middle of a culture clash with Hillary Clinton.
In the midst of the former Florida governor’s attack on Planned Parenthood at an evangelical conference Tuesday afternoon, he said: “I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues.”
Clinton sought to make the most of his remark, knocking Bush at a Denver event Tuesday evening, saying the comment provides a window into what “Republican candidates really believe.”
“I would like to ask him, ‘Gov. Bush try telling that to the mom who caught her breast cancer early because she was able to to get screening in time. Was her health not worth the money?” she said. “Tell it to the teenager who avoided an unintended pregnancy because she had access to contraception. Tell it to everyone who was protected by an HIV test.”
Shortly after Bush’s initial remark, his team sought to mitigate the potential political fallout. The campaign issued a statement on Bush’s behalf attempting to explain his remark — and then, realizing that they’d sent a draft that hadn’t included the words “I misspoke,” followed up 25 minutes later with a second version.
But in the immediate aftermath, Bush and Clinton took to trading jabs on Twitter.
From Clinton’s official account, her campaign tweeted Bush’s remark, tagged the former Florida governor and said: “You are absolutely, unequivocally wrong.”
That led Bush to respond in an attempt to shift focus onto Democrats’ support for Planned Parenthood.
“.@HillaryClinton what’s absolutely, unequivocally wrong is giving taxpayer $ to an org whose practices show no regard for lives of unborn,” Bush tweeted.
Bush’s comment came at a major gathering of evangelicals in Tennessee that’s in part sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention. He called for a halt to the $500 million in federal health care dollars that flow to Planned Parenthood to pay largely for low-income women’s health services.
“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 extraordinarily fine community health organizations that exist to provide quality care for women on a wide variety of health issues,” Bush said.
The remark drew applause at the convention, which event organizers said 13,000 people attended, but proved much more controversial outside it.
One Clinton aide, spokesman Josh Schwerin, tweeted to wonder whether any Republican would criticize Bush’s remarks, “or will they all stay quiet since they agree?”
One of Bush’s GOP presidential rivals, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, provided Bush with some cover.
“.@HillaryClinton is proud to stand with Planned Parenthood. For that she ought to be ashamed,” tweeted Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
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