Cruz has claimed a number of them will back him on a second ballot and beyond, but Rubio could have a huge influence if he urges his delegates to vote a certain way.
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“I don’t see how you can manipulate voters that way – they know what’s going on”, Atkeson said, adding that preventing Trump from locking up the GOP nomination simply by defeating him in IN is a longshot. “But in politics, because it’s a rigged system, because it’s a corrupt enterprise, in politics you’re allowed to collude”. He acknowledged that Trump would make significant gains Tuesday in states like Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
What kind of impact does the Cruz-Kasich pact have on New Mexico’s primary?
In what gives new meaning to the phrase “food fight”, Trump mocked Kasich at a rally in Rhode Island Monday, saying that Kasich “has a news conference all the time when he’s eating”.
One person being vetted for the No. 2 position is former Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, an aide to Fiorina said.
“What’s the big deal?” he told reporters there in a diner visit.
The announcement marks a sharp reversal for Cruz’s team, which aggressively opposed coordinating anti-Trump efforts with Kasich as recently as late last week. And almost half those IN delegates are winner-take-all, meaning they are awarded en masse to whoever finishes No. 1. “I understand why they would say something like this, but I don’t think it will change anything”. In Alabama, where Trump won 36 delegates with 43 percent of the vote, the state’s delegation is bound by the results until two-thirds of the delegates agree to release themselves and vote how they want.
“Folks, they ought to both drop out of the race so we ought to unify the Republican Party”, Trump told supporters in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. “They get it”, John Weaver tweeted.
The governor himself brushed off the interest in the two campaigns’ sudden decision to map out a mutually beneficial course – and criticism that it was an inappropriate alliance. He said the deal is “not something I expected, but at the same time, I do see Trump as a being a total failure as a president and also as the nominee and if that’s what has to be done, I feel like that’s a strategy (Cruz) has to take to get across his vision”.
Anything less, though, would open the door even wider for Trump, effectively guaranteeing him the GOP nod by the last day of voting on June 7. I think that’s absolutely a disaster …
Clinton eyed victories in four or five of Tuesday’s contests, which would all but cripple Sanders’ White House bid. And like Kasich, Cruz rejected the idea his campaign’s maneuvering signaled a “Hail Mary”.
WSLS 10 Political Analyst and Hollins Professor Ed Lynch said a majority of the delegates could once again go to Republican front runner Donald Trump.
Trump says his two rivals are colluding in a way that would be illegal in many industries.
“I only care about the first”, he said. “Lyin Ted Cruz will lose so badly to Crooked Hillary it will be one of the great defeats ever, and Kasich will also as soon as they put up the negative ads”. While many congressional Republicans are planning on skipping what could be an unruly convention to worry about their own reelection campaigns, others are poised to play an outsized role if no candidate can secure the 1,237 delegates to clinch the nomination before July.
Recent polls have shown Trump leading in the state, ahead of Cruz and then Kasich.
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The Cruz-Kasich deal was announced on Sunday before a handful of primary elections in several mid-Atlantic states.
