Washington:US Senator Ted Cruz struck first in Saturday’s handful of presidential nomination contests decisively winning Kansas and ME and boosting his claim as the most viable alternative to billionaire frontrunner Donald Trump.
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Sanders won Democratic contests on Saturday in Kansas and Nebraska, but Clinton’s overwhelming victory in Louisiana enabled her to add to her commanding lead in delegates to the party’s national nominating convention.
In all four states Saturday, Republicans beat 2012 and 2008 turnout – and by a lot, more than double in Kansas, almost double in Louisiana, triple in the smaller caucus in Maine.
Asked if it was a mistake for Cruz, Rubio, and Kasich to commit to supporting whoever becomes the Republican nominee, Graham defended the candidates. It takes 2,383 delegates to win.
On the Democratic side, Clinton has opened up a big delegate lead and Sanders might have a tough time making up the difference.
Overall, Clinton had at least 1,123 delegates to Sanders’ 484, including superdelegates – members of Congress, governors and party officials who can support the candidate of their choice.
Mr Cruz dealt Mr Trump a bloody nose on Saturday when he snatched victory in Kansas from Mr Trump – a state he was expecting to win. Staffers with a number of the campaigns have said this weekend could prove pivotal to their respective candidate’s building momentum ahead of March 15, when several big states, including Florida and OH, will hold contests, the outcomes of which will be winner-take-all, in terms of delegates.
Hillary Clinton holds a comfortable double-digit lead over Bernie Sanders, helped – as in many Super Tuesday states last week – by strong support from African American voters.
“Here’s my message to the Republican Party and conservative movement: I’d rather risk losing without Donald Trump than try to win with him because it will do more damage over time”, said Graham. Trump picked up at least 49, Rubio at least 13 and Kasich nine. Now, Cruz has climbed to a more than two-to-one advantage over Rubio in the total delegate race.
Failure to hit that number would result in a Republican nominating convention in July that could require multiple rounds of voting by delegates, something not seen in decades but which could conceivably throw the race to someone other than Trump. Rubio, however, has said he has no intention of abandoning his campaign.
“Oh, do I want to run against Ted”, said Trump, ticking off a list of large states where he said Cruz had no chance. Florida’s 99 delegates are up for grabs on that state’s February 15 primary.
The latest results could be seen as a reprimand of Trump, who backed out of a scheduled Saturday morning appearance at CPAC in order to campaign in Kansas, which was holding Republican and Democratic caucuses Saturday. Marco Rubio had a very, very bad night, and personally, I’d call for him to drop out of the race.
“I don’t think anyone in our party should say, ‘Oh no, even if the people in the party wanted me to be the president, I would say no to it, ‘ ” Romney said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press”. “There are clearly states in which some of my opponents do better than us because it fits the profile they’ve targeted”.
But he did say he expects to win the state, and he harkened back to his 2010 Senate race against then-Gov.
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“We’re building up numbers that are incredible in the Republican party”, said Trump during an interview on CBS’s Face The Nation.
