Jeb Bush, struggling to gain traction in a 2016 race moving away from him, argued on Thursday that he could easily beat Hillary Clinton on Election Day.

“If I win this nomination, I will take it to Hillary Clinton and I will whup her,” Bush said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s candidate forum in Washington.

The former Florida governor urged this group of security-minded Republicans to look in the past for evidence of his qualifications. He promised he would lean on his brother, former President George W. Bush, as a top adviser on Middle East policy and argued that a third Bush

presidency would protect America’s interests worldwide. 
“A Bush administration will forcefully restore America’s leadership in the world,” Bush said, outlining proposals to impose a no-fly zone in Syria and reiterating his openness to sending some ground troops to battle ISIL. 

But Bush is far from securing the nomination; he has been stuck in the mid-single digits in polling despite establishment support and an early cash advantage. And in head-to-head matchups against Clinton, Bush tied for the second-lowest mark among all Republicans in the most recent Fox News poll. Quinnipiac University's most recent survey didn't even bother to test Bush against the likely Democratic nominee.

(That hasn’t stopped his team from thinking ahead: His son, George P. Bush, this week listed the women who Bush could choose as running mates.)

Bush criticized the GOP’s poll leader, Donald Trump, though not by name, as a “big personality” who “pushes people down” hours after Trump insulted the same crowd with Jewish stereotypes. 

“The next president better have a servant’s heart. A person with a heart, a person with a brain a person with a backbone,” Bush said.

Chris Christie, whose recent bump in New Hampshire comes at Bush’s expense, made the same case against Trump.

“People need to be more careful when they are selecting their words,” Christie said. “Sometimes the harshest words are the most entertaining, sometimes the harshest words make us laugh, but when you are a leader you need to be blunt and direct but you need to know where the line is. There have been some in our party… who have gone for the entertainment value over being a leader.

“Any time we use language that generalizes too much, we diminish ourselves as a people and as a party.”

The New Jersey governor, who shared his personal recollections of 9/11 when his wife escaped one of the World Trade Center towers after it was hit, delivered a sober message to the RJC. He argued that Wednesday’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif. is further evidence the United States is “in the midst of the next world war.”

“From the time I began to watch the events unfold last night, I am convinced that was a terrorist attack,” Christie said. “If a center for the developmentally disabled in San Bernardino, Calif., can be a target for a terrorist attack, then every place in America is a target for a terrorist attack.”

California authorities said Thursday the San Bernardino attack was carried out by an American man born in the United States to immigrants from Pakistan and his Pakistan-born wife who had lived in Saudi Arabia.

Christie, who last week won the coveted endorsement from the New Hampshire Union Leader, is hoping to engineer an unlikely political comeback—just last month, he was relegated to the undercard debate.