“He is a stupid person”, the 2016 Republican front-runner said of the party’s 2012 nominee.
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Further complicating matters? Ballots still list 11 Republican at-large presidential candidates and up to 10 district candidates.
Reuters/Ipsos polling last month showed Carson supporters would mostly likely be split if he dropped out between Trump and U.S. Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas.
They’re motived by a belief that Trump would lose a general election to Clinton and hurt down-ballot candidates in competitive races, and a fear that his nomination would split the party so deeply that it could take decades to make it whole again.
But none of that mattered in this debate, even as candidates spent two hours piling on Trump.
Trump then noted that Rubio had mocked his hands as small, widely viewed as an insult about Trump’s sexual prowess, and declared, “I guarantee you, there’s no problem” in that area. As anyone who’s followed the 2016 campaign knows, it started when Trump, angered by Kelly’s question at the August Fox News debate about past sexist comments, complained in an interview that she had “blood coming out of her wherever”.
“Many people had hoped one Trump alternative would emerge from Super Tuesday, and that simply did not happen”.
Mitt Romney’s broadside against Trump got a lot of traction nationally, but locally… the sentiment seems to be that he went too far, and is alienating potential voters.
Rubio responding after Trump said it was important for leaders to be flexible: “There is a difference between flexibility and telling people whatever you think you need to to get them to do what you want them to do”.
Romney advisers have recently sought information on a contested convention, though there appeared to be no concrete planning for that possibility and it was unclear whether their efforts signaled Romney’s own interest in becoming the GOP nominee through a floor fight, according to a Republican familiar with the efforts. “If I say, ‘do it, ‘ they’re going to do it. That’s what leadership is all about”. Marco Rubio: “This little guy has lied so much about my record”. The one constant? Donald J. Trump was the focal point then, and he certainly was Thursday night. John McCain. It also came on a day when a group of prominent conservative national security experts warned darkly that Trump was not qualified to be president. He sticks to policy, drawing any contrasts with other candidates in fairly mild terms.
With time running out to stop Trump, Mitt Romney – who ran unsuccessfully against Barack Obama in 2012 – on Thursday offered up some of the harshest criticism yet, lambasting Trump as unfit to be president.
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s bombast has been a hallmark of the 2016 campaign, but he stooped to a new level at the GOP debate in Detroit, Michigan.
“Donald Trump’s whole idea and message is the establishment is afer me and I’m not establishment”. “But wait, you say, isn’t he a huge business success that knows what he’s talking about? Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud”, Romney was quoted as saying by Raw Story, urging primary voters in states that have not yet chosen a nominee to vote for Trump’s opponents.
Trump was joined on stage at the Fox Theatre by his three remaining rivals, Rubio, Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich. “The Republican nominee can not be somebody who is totally clueless on so many issues, including his signature issue”, he said. All four said they would.
“The way this campaign is unfolding”, said Hallowell, “I think is a disservice to voters and also to young people and people we want to be involved in the process”. To the suggestion that he might be small elsewhere, Trump said: “I guarantee you there is no problem”.
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Trump, for his part, said he’d do the same even if he doesn’t win.
