As Trump decried the rise of organizations and new television ads created to derail his march to the presidential nomination, rivals Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and John Kasich seek to block him by racking up more convention delegates in four contests Tuesday.
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The other two Republicans in the race, Marco Rubio and John Kasich, had poor performances, with Mr Rubio’s hopes of being the establishment alternative to Mr Trump now lying in tatters.
“We’re going to win Florida”, Rubio said Friday on ABC.
A major South Florida newspaper’s editorial board says it can’t endorse any of the 2016 Republican candidates – a rebuke that especially stings Florida Sen. “Let us make a difference, let us build tomorrow”, Clinton said at a recent campaign stop.
“Is (keeping Trump from clinching) mathematically possible?”
Still, his conundrum is on full display.
Here are takeaways from a big weekend in politics.
Rubio tells the story of his 2010 Senate bid, when he “took on” the “Washington establishment” by running against prohibitive favorite and then-Gov.
Only registered Republicans could vote in Louisiana’s GOP primary.
Yet the senator also touts his 15 years in government – what he pitches as “taking conservative principles and turning them into conservative action”. “And standing as one behind this campaign”.
In Idaho, which hosts its primary Tuesday, Sen.
Trump is casting aside any doubt about his position on torture: He’s in favor of it because “we have to beat the savages”. But the Florida senator insisted he was still fixing to win his home state of Florida on March 15. Yes, the free media time devoted to him might dwarf his competitors, but it’s unlikely the rest of them would still be in the race if they were subjected to the level of negativity, criticism and attacks that he endures from the media on a daily basis, not to mention the Super PAC money being thrown at him in negative commercials. He did so surrounded by Puerto Rican power players.
A notably restrained Trump, addressing supporters and reporters in West Palm Beach, called on Rubio to withdraw from the race.
“Florida is definitive; If Rubio loses I don’t see how he has any credibility if he can’t win in Florida”.
In Kansas, he offered a more ominous warning. But if Cruz does become the anti-Trump consensus candidate, he may want to quickly consolidate this vote and assuage party leaders about his own nomination.
Cruz contends the Trump bubble is beginning to burst. “I don’t think that’s going to keep (an endorsement) from happening”, the former campaign official said.
“There was a substantial shift in the tenor of the Republican campaign in the wake of the Thursday night debate”, Couvillon said of Fox News’ GOP debate that came after early voting but two days before the election.
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Cruz, a favourite of the ultra-conservative tea party movement, attributed his strong showing to conservatives coalescing behind his candidacy, calling it a “manifestation of a real shift in momentum”. With about 2 million people projected to vote, that’s at least one in four Florida GOP voters who can’t be persuaded to change their minds. There are nearly twice as many caucuses and closed primaries as fully open ones, with a few mixed cases in between.
