Reid said Republicans were afraid to withdraw their support publicly because the Trump “millions” might turn on them.
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Sen. John McCain, a Republican Party elder who ran against Barack Obama in 2008, meanwhile decried Tuesday the contest for his party’s presidential nomination that at times has devolved into childish taunts. “The Supreme Court vacancy, if nothing else, ought to cause people to reach that conclusion, so whatever people need to do in their individual races on order to maintain that majority, I wholeheartedly support”, Cornyn said.
To avoid this, he said, the party should consolidate around an opponent to Trump instead of diffusing the opposition among so many candidates. Jon Tester of Montana, who heads the Senate Democrats’ campaign organization. David Duke endorsed me? OK. But he declined to weigh in on questions about Trump, saying, “I’m not going to talk about it any further than that”, quipping on his way into a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans, “I’m going in here because if I don’t say something stupid to these questions, I might win”. The South Carolina Republican joked just last week he could murder Cruz on the Senate floor but no one would convict him.
And Sen. Mark Kirk of IL bluntly broke with Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric: “In a typical Chicago way, to my Mexican-American friends, I would say, “Donald Trump callate” – shut up”.
“I intend to support the nominee”.
“He doesn’t want to dive into the fight that’s going on out on the campaign trail, but felt compelled to” in light of the David Duke controversy, Zwillich says.
Trump, however, suggested Tuesday night that he would “get along great with Congress” – but that he would pursue his agenda regardless of whether he had their support. I disavowed him every time I speak to somebody virtually and you know, they just keep it going.
“We’re going to be a much bigger party”.
But Trump, who claims to have the “world’s greatest memory”, seemed to have forgotten this by February 28. Now he says the candidates have to start fighting Trump, and “never stop fighting”. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona. Toomey can’t win without making inroads among Democrats and independents in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but that task will be monumentally harder with the volatile Trump at the top of the ticket.
“Some of us feel like we have a responsibility to speak out when he makes outlandish, insane statements like the Muslim ban or a number of others”, said Sen. “It seems inconceivable to the people of my state that the Republicans would respond to that by nominating a fundamentally dishonest NY liberal”, said Sen. Lindsey Graham of SC, who also sought the Republican nomination for president before dropping out. Fifty-five percent of the whites in Louisiana voted for him.
California Republican Party Vice Chairwoman Harmeet Dhillon said she expects to see “a lot of hand-wringing” after Super Tuesday, but she still expects many leading Californian Republicans to back Trump if he is running against Clinton.
McConnell sidestepped a question on whether it was true, as reported over the weekend by The New York Times, that he had told fellow Republicans in private that they could drop Trump “like a hot rock” if he becomes the party’s presidential nominee. “John Kasich has run a good race”, Gardner said.
CNN’s Larry KING: “Did the David Duke thing bother you?” Marco Rubio for president, reiterated his position that he would back whoever the Republican nominee is.
“I think it’s up to us to make it clear that we don’t tolerate those types of racist organizations and I don’t know many people who would believe that we do”. I certainly wouldn’t want his endorsement. I don’t know anything about him.
A day after Donald Trump’s strong Super Tuesday finishes, nervous congressional Republicans grappled with how to deal with the brash billionaire’s growing momentum towards winning the GOP presidential nomination.
“Are you from Mexico?” the presumptive Republican front-runner asked the protester.
“If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasions and no games”, said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
There was some shrinking of the field on Wednesday after retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson issued a statement saying he didn’t see “a political path forward” for his candidacy following Tuesday’s results.
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“He called your response ‘disqualifying and disgusting, ‘ says your ‘coddling of repugnant bigotry is not in the character of America.’ Your response?”
