A surprisingly restrained Donald Trump used the latest presidential debate to send a none-too-subtle message to Republicans still wary of his insurgent candidacy: “Be smart and unify”.
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Trump directed more broadsides at Kasich than “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” and “Little Marco” Rubio. Marco Rubio listens, during the Republican presidential debate at the University of Miami on Thursday.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by more than 600 delegates (when you include superdelegates), 1,194 to 569. But none of Trump’s rivals made the explicit case why the GOP frontrunner should be stopped.
But ultimately he explained that ‘I really wanted to see if we could all – and this isn’t just me, it was the Republican Party – we wanted to see if we could have a strong, substantive debate’.
Obama, whose White House tenure has been marked by steady resistance to most of his policies by Republicans in Congress, has said previously he regretted not being able to reduce the polarisation between the two parties in Washington.
Cruz, however, was the most effective in pressing Trump for more details, particularly on addressing the deficit.
When it was over, Trump pronounced it an “elegant” discussion.
Trump on Thursday appeared to begin an attempt to appear more presidential.
Johnson said Trump took a page from the playbook of Woody Hayes, the legendary Ohio State football coach known for his “three yards and a cloud of dust strategy” of winning games by taking the lead, playing defense and not making mistakes on offense. The Florida senator knows that if he can’t win in the Sunshine State, his campaign will go dark – fast. “And then now, suddenly, we’re shocked that there’s gambling going on in this establishment”.
“I think it probably accents where the race is, which is a two-man race between Trump and Cruz with slogans versus solutions”, said Cruz campaign manager Jeff Roe.
Conservative news outlets on television, radio and the Internet had convinced the Republican political base for seven years that cooperation with him was a “betrayal” and that “maximalist absolutist” positions were advantageous, Obama said. “I’m interested in being correct”. “I’m interested in being correct”. Cruz and Rubio got the best of Trump in those exchanges.
“I think I’m going to have the delegates, OK?”
Polls, and the candidates’ travel schedules, suggested that Kasich’s chances in OH may be better than Rubio’s in Florida. If he can scrape along until the end of the race, helping to dilute Trump’s delegate count, he could find himself as the alternative to Cruz within the GOP establishment, where the Texas senator is not exactly a beloved figure.
“The worst problem the United States has today is the economy”, he said. He added there are plenty of primaries left so “let’s not get ahead of ourselves”.
During his final stop of the day at a large pump manufacturer in Mansfield, Kasich said, “When it comes to Tuesday, the country’s watching what’s happening here in Ohio”.
Trump, in contrast, said he’d do “everything within my power not to touch Social Security, to leave it the way it is”.
Cruz, who has been Trump’s closest competitor thus far, returned several times to the difference between talking about problems and knowing how to solve them.
Trump was questioned about whether he had set a tone at his rallies that fueled violent encounters between supporters and protesters.
Trump, Obama said, is a monster they created.
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Neither Rubio nor OH governor John Kasich would admit the extreme narrowness of his path to the nomination. There are 367 delegates at stake in Tuesday’s multistate nominating contests, including the biggest test in Florida, which has 99 delegates up for grabs.
