Former Utah Gov. and Republican White House aspirant Jon Huntsman‘s reference to Gen X troubadour Kurt Cobain fell flat during Monday’s GOP debate in Tampa.

Now Huntsman is launching an appeal for 18- to 35-year-old “GenH” voters with Jeb Bush Jr. as chairman.

Huntsman’s campaign today announced the GenH program has 139 campus chapters in 42 states and is “the most broad-based youth program in the Republican field.”

During a discussion of Social Security in Monday’s CNN/Tea Party Express debate, Huntsman mentioned rival Mitt Romney‘s 2010 book No Apology and quipped: “I don’t know if that was written by Kurt Cobain or not.”

The allusion to All Apologies, a Cobain-penned song that charted for Nirvana in 1993, did not seem to register with the other GOP candidates or the tea party audience.

Grunge icon Cobain died in an apparent suicide in 1994, the year Romney ran as a moderate Republican against Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts.

Jeb Bush Jr. sent a fundraising note out this morning asking for people to support Republican Marco Rubio for U.S. Senate and included this dig at Rubio’s primary oppoonent, Gov. Charlie Crist:

Governor Crist has been crisscrossing his way across Florida one $2,000-a-plate dinner at a time, taking money from people who don’t care if this election is won by Republicans or Democrats as long their interests are protected.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Marco Rubio received an endorsement this morning from Jeb Bush Jr. and is expected to receive another from former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, according to CNN.

The Huckabee endorsement comes a year after Rubio endorsed the former Arkansas governor in his presidential campaign. (The photo above includes – from left to right – Rubio, Huckabee and state Rep. David Rivera at a 2008 presidential campaign event.)

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