“A lot of (Republican) establishment figures are going to at least nominally, if not enthusiastically, support Trump, not because they love Trump more, but they loathe Hillary Clinton more”, said American University presidential historian Allan Lichtman. A victory in his home state primary Tuesday gave Kasich’s campaign new life and he hit the campaign trail in Pennsylvania with the aim of contrasting the Trump campaign with a more positive vision he is offering voters. “And if there’s no hope for Ted getting in, as I understand it I can pledge my votes to somebody else, and I would hope Ted would understand”, he said.
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Finally, none of this matches the eyeball test. There’s no question Trump has some support in the Republican Party, and it seems to span all levels of education, income and geography. “We have something happening that actually makes the Republican Party probably the biggest political story anywhere in the world”, Trump said. The fecklessness of the whole endeavor was encapsulated by Mitt Romney’s performance earlier this month: He told voters why they should not vote for Trump, but stopped short of endorsing an alternative.
Even Republicans who are no fans of Trump admit it may be possible.
Trump won the biggest prize – all 99 Florida delegates – as well as winning North Carolina and IL, and was locked in a tight race with Cruz in Missouri. I understand that Kasich is seen as too moderate and has not demonstrated much appeal to the base.
It also left the door open to potentially supporting a third party race if Republicans are unable to stop Trump. But Ryan quickly took himself out of the mix, saying through a spokeswoman that he would “not accept a nomination and believes our nominee should be someone who ran this year”.
Tuesday’s votes in five states had been viewed as a pivotal moment in the Republican presidential campaign.
The GOP is earnestly praying for Trump’s failure to win 1,237 delegates–the magical number required to win the nomination. But it will be close, and he may end up with just a strong plurality, not a majority. “I mean, if it were you or me… we’d already be doing a perp walk outside of some courthouse somewhere”, Cornyn said, apparently alluding to the legal scrutiny surrounding her decision to use a personal email server to conduct State Department business, some of which has been shown to contain classified information.
Republican National Committee Communications Director Sean Spicer said Wednesday that a chance for a brokered convention still remains. It might be the right thing for the nation as a whole, but it would fracture the GOP and all but ensure defeat in November. Trump would have to start losing state after state, consistently, in order to fall behind Cruz. The first suggestion was laughable: “Change your tone”.
David Plouffe, who was President Obama’s former chief strategist, told Politico’s Glenn Thrush recently that Trump is still a wild card.
Cruz’s “focus is on drawing a contrast with Donald Trump for the nomination and with Hillary Clinton for the general election”.
That would be an abdication of responsibility. “We can’t lose what made America great in the first place”. But here we are.
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Looking again at the current presidential election cycle, Trump had received 39.5 percent of the total national Republican primary vote as of March 16, while Clinton had received 58.6 percent of the Democratic vote. But there is always some degree of risk.
