Some voters said they’re still absorbing the news, realizing that the primaries in Florida have yet to come and they still expect to have their say at the ballot box.
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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is once again casting doubt on a Cuban American rival’s eligibility to run for the White House – only this time, he’s leveling his citizenship questions at Florida Sen.
Rick Mullaney, works at the Public Policy Institute at Jacksonville University and is a former GOP mayoral candidate in Jacksonville, said the Republican establishment will start coalescing around a candidate who’s not Trump, and this race will drag on.
The Republican candidates were fanning out Sunday to Nevada, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia and beyond as the race spreads out and speeds up after the kickoff trio of contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and SC. Both Huckabee and Santorum fared better in SC than Cruz, but both still fell behind other candidates when the race broadened to larger states with fewer religion-centric voters.
After several nail-biting hours, final results showed Florida Senator Marco Rubio in second place in the Republican contest with 22.5 percent of the vote, narrowly ahead of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who had 22.3 percent. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vermont) rising popularity in the Democratic primary. Tim Scott, and Gov. Nikki Haley.
Nevada doesn’t stand up to, say, OH as a bellwether, but it’s far more representative of the rest of the country – and, in particular, of Democratic voters – than New Hampshire.
That will be followed a week later by Super Tuesday, when more than a dozen states vote.
Trump’s victory in SC on Saturday was vindication for political mavericks whose hunger for an outsider has defined this year’s campaign. Then we’re just a little more than a few days away from Super Tuesday.
He said the race has a “different dynamic now”, with three real contenders – Trump, Cruz and himself.
“I want to begin by thanking the people of SC”.
Even so, Trump acknowledged that winning the GOP nomination would not be easy. “Frankly, if she gets indicted, that’s the only way she’s going to be stopped”. It is tough, it’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s vicious.
“Donald ignores everyone else because I think he views the rest of the field as not a meaningful threat and for that matter…”
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“It’s lovely. When you win, it’s handsome”, he told his cheering supporters.
