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| (AP Photo/L.M. Otero) |
The scenario Karl Rove outlined was bleak. Addressing a luncheon of Republican governors and donors in Washington on Feb. 19, he warned that Donald J. Trump’s increasingly likely nomination would be catastrophic, dooming the party in November.
Paul Krugman at the NY Times writes that Trump has an 80% chance of getting the GOP presidential nomination, according to the Las Vegas gambling markets.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr. McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump’s loss as a given and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a President Hillary Clinton [NY Times ]
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| The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has laid out a plan that would have lawmakers break with Mr. Trump in a general election. Doug Mills/The New York Times |
GREG SARGENT,WASHINGTON POST
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If Trump can beat Cruz…in heavily blue-collar and evangelical states on one side, and top Kasich and Rubio in white collar, less culturally conservative states on the other, it will grow increasingly daunting for any candidate to coalesce a coalition large enough to stop the front-runner.
A new CNN national poll ...finds that Trump has expanded his lead among registered Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters nationally: He has 49 percent; Rubio has 16 percent; Cruz has 15 percent; Ben Carson has 10 percent; and John Kasich has nine percent. Two of the four days of polling were taken after last week’s GOP debate, which was supposed to be a dramatic game-changer for Rubio.
But perhaps Republicans should be even more alarmed about these findings,from the CNN poll’s internals:
— Trump is dominating among Republicans and GOP leaners who are college graduates, with 46 percent, to 19 percent for Rubio, 13 percent for Cruz, and nine percent for Kasich.
— Trump is dominating among suburban Republicans, with 51 percent, to 16 percent for Rubio, 13 percent for Cruz, and six percent for Kasich. As James Hohmann has reported, Rubio’s strategy is heavily focused on winning suburban areas in many Super Tuesday states and beyond.
— Trump is dominating among Republicans who make $50,000 or more, with 50 percent, to 16 percent for Rubio, 15 percent for Cruz, and eight percent for Kasich.
— Trump is dominating among Republicans who are under 55, with 47 percent, to 17 percent for Rubio, 14 percent for Cruz, and five percent for Kasich. (Unfortunately, the samples are too small to break out younger groups.)
These are very crude categories, to be sure. And it’s hard to know how much national numbers such as these tell us about upcoming state contests. But these findings raise at least the possibility that Trump’s appeal is proving much broader among Republican voters than expected. They also suggest the possibility that Rubio may not be able to beat Trump among more mainstream and more educated voters in the manner he must, in order to have any hope of catching Trump in the delegate count after a big Trumpian triumph on Super Tuesday.
[In the above mentioned CNN poll, about a quarter of Republicans overall said they would refuse to support Trump if he became the nominee.]
[In the above mentioned CNN poll, about a quarter of Republicans overall said they would refuse to support Trump if he became the nominee.]
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* TRUMP DOMINATING IN SOUTHERN STATES: NBC polls released over the weekend find Donald Trump leading Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in Georgia (30-23-23) and Tennessee (40-22-19). NBC re-contacted close to 30 percent of respondents after last week’s GOP debate, which was supposed to be a huge breakout for Rubio, and found:
Movement in the GOP horserace was negligible, according to the re-contact interviews: Trump, Rubio and Cruz kept about 90 percent of their supporters; Carson kept about 80 percent of his; but Kasich kept only about 60 percent of his backers.
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| Marco Rubio speaks in Minden, Nevada, yesterday. (Reuters/Chris Kean ) |
[ Rubio, meanwhile, will immediately pivot to his home state of Florida, where he will spend much of his time ahead of the do-or-die March 15 primary. With polls showing him badly trailing Trump, Rubio is expected to launch an all-out effort to win the state, where a defeat could be fatal. His top aides have vowed in unequivocal terms that they will not lose Florida, which awards its 99 delegates on a winner-take-all basis.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/donald-trump-super-tuesday-220008#ixzz41dqbaAqm ]
With Rubio [also] vowing never to quit the race and preparing to fight Trump and possibly other candidates for delegates at a brokered convention, Trump’s allies are trying to master party rules and are laying plans to organize delegates. Roger Stone, a Republican consultant and longtime Trump associate who does not work for the campaign, said Sunday that he has been reaching out to fellow alumni of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign about volunteering on Trump’s behalf at the convention.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/donald-trump-super-tuesday-220008#ixzz41dqbaAqm ]
With Rubio [also] vowing never to quit the race and preparing to fight Trump and possibly other candidates for delegates at a brokered convention, Trump’s allies are trying to master party rules and are laying plans to organize delegates. Roger Stone, a Republican consultant and longtime Trump associate who does not work for the campaign, said Sunday that he has been reaching out to fellow alumni of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign about volunteering on Trump’s behalf at the convention.
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The GOP has become consumed by a crisis over its identity and core values that is almost certain to last through the July party convention, if not the rest of the year.
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| DAVID DUKE PHOTO BY BURT STEEL/AP |
A campaign full of racial overtones and petty, R-rated put-downs grew even uglier Sunday after Trump declined repeatedly in a CNN interview to repudiate the endorsement of him by David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Trump had disavowed Duke at a news conference on Friday, but he stammered when asked about Duke on Sunday.... As the campaign-trail rhetoric grew noxious over the weekend, a sense of fatalism fell over the Republican firmament, from elected officials and figureheads to major donors and strategists.
“For many Republicans, Trump is more than just a political choice,” said Kevin Madden, a veteran operative who advised 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. “It’s a litmus test for character.”Madden, like some of his peers, said he could never vote for Trump. If he is the nominee, Madden said, “I’m prepared to write somebody in so that I have a clear conscience.”
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| LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS |
Some Republican leaders, however, are making far different calculations. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie enthusiastically endorsed Trump on Friday, and the two looked like running mates as they campaigned together across the South for two days. But directly associating himself with Trump has been problematic for Christie. He stumbled through an interview Sunday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos as the anchor questioned him over Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the country. Christie also drew public scorn from one of his top backers, Hewlett Packard chief executive Meg Whitman, who issued a scathing statement condemning Christie for an “astonishing display of political opportunism” and calling Trump “a dishonest demagogue” who would “take America on a dangerous journey.”
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The challenging task of uniting the party falls to the RNC, which oversees the convention. Sean Spicer, the committee’s chief strategist, said the prospect of a Clinton presidency would serve as a unifying force. “There’s a strong possibility that Trump is going to be the nominee, and a lot of Republicans are ready to accept that even though they’ve not been supporters of him,” Wadhams said. “The penchant to defeat Hillary Clinton will transcend any concerns about the way Trump has conducted himself.”
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| Hillary Clinton appeared at a get-out-the-vote rally at the Old South Meeting House in Boston on Monday. Doug Mills/The New York Times |
* HILLARY DOMINANT AS SUPER TUESDAY LOOMS: The new CNN national poll also finds that Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders among Democrats and Dem-leaning independents by 55-38. Note this:
Men, younger voters, independents and liberals are all about evenly split between Clinton and Sanders, while Clinton’s lead rests on large advantages among women, older voters, Democrats and moderates.
If Clinton is now splitting younger voters with Sanders, that might mean she is improving among a demographic that had been elusive for her and could matter in the general.