While Trump supporters contend that the businessman/TV personality is broadening the Republican platform, traditional party leaders are more of the mind that he’s breaking it.
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Sensing a window closing fast, GOP leaders and elder statesmen toggled through a menu of scenarios but landed on none. That showing bolstered his case to be the party’s Trump alternative, even as rival Florida Sen.
Adam Goodman, a Republican media consultant in Tampa, warns that “the party would never recover from a convention where the frontrunner was denied the nomination – especially when the base of that frontrunner is so passionate and committed”. So there is not an acceptance or a satisfaction of him as there was with Romney, McCain, Bush, etc….
Tonight marks the first Republican presidential debate since Donald Trump dominated Super Tuesday, as the “Stop Trump” effort is now in full force. They believe it will show Trump does not back his own immigration policy. He has won 46 percent of the delegates awarded so far, and he would have to increase that to 51 percent in the remaining primaries.
Many senior figures in the deeply divided party looked on in despair and horror as the billionaire won seven of 11 states, establishing a runaway lead and threatening to make victory inevitable.
Neither of the leading presidential candidates delivered a knockout punch on Super Tuesday, but Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Donald J. Trump are looking more inevitable as their parties’ nominees. Her campaign portrayed Sanders as facing a steep, uphill battle.
Mitt Romney, their nominee four years ago, suggested he might try to fill that role. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.
Among the cable news networks expected to cover Romney’s remarks, CNN has been teasing the speech with a graphics like the one reading “Next Hour: Romney Speaks on 2016 Race”. The party hasn’t faced a contested convention since 1976, and it was resolved on the first ballot, Putnam said.
“It was a watershed moment”, said Dave Carney, the New Hampshire political consultant who has advised Gov. Greg Abbott and former Gov. Rick Perry. Of the 59 respondents, slightly fewer than half could not commit to backing him in November. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office said the Trump campaign had reached out but the two men had not connected.
Katie Packer, a Republican strategist who founded the anti-Trump group Our Principles PAC, agreed that the most viable strategy may be to defeat him at the convention. Cruz also beat Donald Trump in the Iowa caucuses and claimed the top spot in the Alaska caucuses Tuesday. In Sitka, 68 people chose Trump, 55 for Cruz, 44 for Rubio, 22 for Carson and 12 for John Kasich.
Kasich is planning to campaign exclusively in MI this week, though his campaign has lowered expectations for winning the state if the field remains at five candidates. Rubio trails by double digits in most polls in Florida. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson all but ended his bid Wednesday, saying he would skip the debate and declaring he did “not see a political path forward”. Even if he’s winning states, he might be kept short of the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination.
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“Yesterday was one for the history books”, she said of Super Tuesday, adding that her campaign went “nationwide” yesterday. Others in the party express concern about the image of the GOP establishment using arcane rules to thwart the will of voters. “It would require a whip operation to keep track of the individual delegates, and to understand who and how to influence them and to get their votes will be something really unprecedented”.
