It was obvious that Donald Trump would win the South Carolina Republican Primary tonight. Polls are never that far off. Still, it’s a shocking result. In the build-up to the vote, Trump did almost everything a Republican candidate is not meant to do: he blamed George W. Bush for 9/11, he spoke well of Planned Parenthood, he came out in support of a healthcare mandate, and picked a fight with the Pope. And he still barnstormed the Palmetto state.
The news of the night is Marco Rubio, who scraped second place. He now looks like the only hope of stopping Trump. There will be a strong establishment and GOP donor push to try to ensure that he mops up votes from the rest of the field in order to take down Trump. Rubio will now outspend Trump in every state, and, with Jeb gone, he should have the might of the party machine and mainfold endorsements behind him.
But it’s a big ask for Rubio. Don’t forget that the party machine is broken. Trump’s rise proves that. Moreover, Rubio has a number of deep flaws as a candidate — not least his flip-flopping record on immigration, the issue on which Trump has enjoyed most success. No candidate has ever failed to win the Republican nomination after winning in New Hampshire and South Carolina, as Trump has now done. Trump looks increasingly strong ahead of the Nevada caucuses on Tuesday, according to the polls. This means he can go into Super Tuesday, on March 1, as frontrunner with a whopping delegate and poll lead.
Rubio may well win over a majority of the supporters of Bush, Kasich and Carson in a three person race. But it is fair to assume that Trump and Ted Cruz, who only finished a few hundred votes behind Rubio last night, will gain a fair proportion, too.
Cruz could still, in theory, push the Trump Train off its tracks. But he has been losing momentum since the turn of the year. He remains unlovable and disliked. Still, his campaign looks sufficiently well-organised and well-funded to keep make it a three-way race all the way to the GOP convention in July. And unless somebody can stop the Trump Train – or the Donald finally hits self-destruct – that means Trump wins.
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