Donald Trump dominates in Super Tuesday GOP primaries
Trump — the billionaire developer who has never held public office — took a major step toward becoming the Republican nominee for president by tapping into angry white voters from Massachusetts to Alabama to dominate the Super Tuesday contests.
By snagging the vast majority of delegates across the 11 states where Republican voters cast ballots, Trump not only showed he could attract support in different parts of the country, he left his challengers little hope of intercepting him en route to the nomination.
Even Sen. Ted Cruz’s winning the night’s biggest delegate prize — his home state of Texas, as well as neighboring Oklahoma — was good news for Trump.
“The best thing to happen to Trump is that Cruz won his home state because that means he’s going to stay in the race,” said Dave Brady, a professor of political science at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
[...] Brady, who has been studying the attitudes of the same 3,000 voters since last June for the online site YouGov, said, Make no mistake:
Trump started to assume a general election posture during his acceptance speech at his glitzy Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla.
Standing in front of 10 American flags, Trump was introduced by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who recently endorsed him after previously ripping Trump with such shots as: We are not electing an entertainer-in-chief.
Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Obama who was watching the speech, tweeted: He’s already sanding off the rough edges, moderating the tone, and focusing on economic populism.
Places like Massachusetts and Virginia, “that have been won by moderate Republicans — the people who voted for (2012 GOP nominee Mitt) Romney or (former President) George W. Bush,” said Jeremi Suri, a professor of public policy at the University of Texas at Austin.
[...] Rubio won the Minnesota caucus Tuesday night, which inspired him to tell Fox News that not only is he not leaving the race, but that “I’ll campaign in all 50 states even if I have to get in my pickup.”
Cruz had two wins, but his campaign and the super PACs and other outside groups supporting him spent $6.2 million in TV advertising in Super Tuesday states.
Cruz’s path to victory was supposed to be gilded by evangelical Christian support through the Deep South, including many of the states that went for Trump Tuesday.
Only Trump — with zero political experience — can offer them that now that Carson’s campaign has tanked.