Eric Cantor: Jeb 'Clearly the Serious Candidate in the Room'

Jeb Bush had a strong performance on Tuesday night's GOP debate stage and was 'really the serious candidate on stage" with his command of domestic and international policy, former Rep. Eric Cantor said Wednesday.

"Clearly Jeb was back," the one-time House Majority Leader told CNN's "New Day" program.

"Jeb clearly was prepared. He was the one most focused on identifying where conservative policies play out and benefit working people of this country. And was prepared to take on Hillary and did so last night more so than anybody."

Bush believes in commonsense conservative policy, Cantor continued, versus what's become the "new norm" under President Barack Obama and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, and the "antics" that candidates like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz engage in concerning immigration are leaving "Hillary Clinton high-fiving in her green room."

"I think that Jeb's clearly focused on winning this campaign, will win this campaign and I think his position on immigration is where most Republicans are and certainly most of the country is," said Cantor. "You can't sit here and assume that 11 million people are somehow going to get rounded up and deported. Jeb talked about ripping apart families and that we don't want to do that."

But meanwhile, it's still very early in the election process, but Tuesday night's debate was substantive while the candidates spoke about policy, said Cantor. The debate also allowed Bush to put speculation to rest that he will be dropping out of the race, said Cantor.

"I think he put that to rest last night," said Cantor. "He was in the debate, he was a solid and strong performer in the debate. I know that much better than ten days ago in the last debate."

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