Trump said that his great America would “create jobs like you’ve never seen,” would provide some relief for the middle class, and would lower the burden on American business and thereby bring “trillions of dollars” home. Recent endorser and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie introduced and stood behind him, which provided a fun moment. Trump said that companies used to move from high tax states to low tax ones but are now leaving the country because of America’s high corporate taxes. It used to be that companies would move from New York to Florida, “or they’d move from New Jersey to someplace else, Chris,” prompting Christie to vigorously shake his head. But now, of course, they go to Mexico. He’ll build a wall to stop that, or something.
“I ask you to prayerfully consider our coming together” to defeat Trump, Cruz said in his Texas victory speech to his fellow non-Trump candidates. That’s going to be a tall order, based on the vigor of Trump’s exchanges with the press. He again disavowed any KKKish endorsements, said “radical Islamic terrorism, big big problem,” promised “I’m going to be really good for women,” and talked to journalists about watching not only Fox, but also CNN and even MSNBC. “See? I’m becoming diplomatic” said the clear Republican frontrunner to the press. To his supporters, he said, “We’re going to be a much biggger party. Our party is expanding.” Cheers all around.
03.23 FG: As the death knell sounds on Rubio’s candidacy, might he finally win a state? He’s well ahead in Minnesota with about a third of the vote reporting. 03.18 FG: Ted Cruz ‘prayerfully’ asks the Republican Party to unite with him against Donald Trump. ‘For that to happen, we must come together.’ And goes hard after the Donald: ‘America shouldn’t have a president whose words would embarrass us if our children were to repeat them’. 03.13 MV Looking forward in time, most of the future states in the GOP primaries are closed primaries. An important factor because it tends to favour the base. 03.00 FG: Trump asked about Paul Ryan’s critique of him earlier today. ‘I’m going to get along well with Paul Ryan and if I don’t, he’s going to pay a big price ok.’ Wow. He sounds more like Scarface every day. 02.51 FG: Trump on Rubio: ‘He has a right to be nasty. He didn’t win very much.’ Trump on KKK:’I put out a tweet and on Facebook that I totally disavow …. How many times do you have to disavow?’ 02.46 FG Rubio under the threshold in the following: GA: 21.9% VT: 19.6% TN: 19.5% TX: 18.8% AL: 15.7% 02.41 JL: My favourite laugh of the night, so far, came care of a CNN discussion of an anti-Trump fusion ticket. Friend and National Post columnist Colby Cosh tweeted, “These CNN guys are talking about a Cruz-Rubio ticket and NOT calling it a Cuban sandwich. This is why I hate television.” 02.40 FG: Christie makes for a weird warm up for Trump. He looks very unhappy. Trump speech strangely low-key, too. Is he trying to reign in the madcappery and sound like a president? Doesn’t work for him. MV: People are more looking at Chris Christie’s weird ”get me the hell out of there” face rather than Trump! 02.29 FG: Cruz now projected winner in Oklahoma. It has to be him versus Trump, now. We finally have a two-horse race. But the second horse is not the animal that the GOP elite wanted. Not by a long way. 02.15 JL: Good on the voters of Oklahoma for giving Hillary heartburn tonight by going for Bernie, and perhaps rebuffing Donald Trump as well. 02.10 JL: Is Hillary Clinton channeling Donald Trump? “What a Super Tuesday!” she said in her victory speech in Miami, Florida, one of the key states she’ll need to win come November. She barely mentioned primary challenger Bernie Sanders in her campaign speech but instead delivered a speech that alternatively attacked and stole from Donald Trump. “America never stopped being great,” she said. Also: “Instead of building walls, we’re going to break down barriers and build ladders of opportunity and empowerment.”She wondered what the original Tea Partiers would have to say about corporations that have “no loyalty” to country but instead ship jobs to Mexico and other countries. “Now they’re turning their backs on America,” she warned. Her speech, which struck a lot of Bill Clinton-like notes, claimed to be uniting while at the same time dividing. She talked of how the “middle class needs a raise and more good jobs,” and praised President Obama a few times. “We saved the auto industry thanks to President Obama,” Hillary said (even though George W. Bush had quite a bit to do with it) and said that Democrats need to be “standing with President Obama when he nominates a strong, progressive justice to the Supreme Court.”
02.07 FG: Rubio so weak in Texas. Under the 20 per cent threshold he needs to get any delegates. Same story in Tennessee. Looks like goodbye Marco. His campaign now has to resort to the argument that his eminent electability is proven by the fact that he can’t seem to win. 02.02 MV: So Cruz wins Texas. Can he at last be accepted as the anti-Trump candidate? He’s the only non-Donald to have won a state so far. And Texas means lots of delegates. 01.57 MV: Trump won by a landslide in Georgia. According to exit polls he won every demographic/income group among GOP primary voters. 01.55 FG: Clinton does her new schtick against Trump in victory speech. ‘America never stopped being great. We need to make America whole.’ Expect to hear that a lot. It sounds like a winning line. ‘Trying to divide America between us and them is wrong, and we are not going to let it work.’ This is a good night for her. She looks depressingly like a president. 01.50 Dissing the Pope didn’t hurt Trump with left-footers. He won 52 per cent of the Catholic vote in Massachusetts. 01.44 MV: An interesting pattern in Texas. Trump is doing remarkably well in counties near the US-Mexico border with a very high Hispanic population. Ted Cruz is however winning the Texan heartland. Rubio is currently winning in Travis County – one of the most liberal part of Texas, which is where the city of Austin is located. 01.38 FG: The Republican Party’s decision to revise the primary schedule to stop an insurgent candidate dragging the race on has backfired. Now the frontrunner can’t be caught. Oh, the irony. 01.37 MV: Hillary has been doing well where she is supposed to win. But she still has problems in states where they are many white Democratic voters like Oklahoma and Minnesota. 01.34 JL: Ted Cruz’s Texas celebration tonight is at a place called the Redneck Country Club, whose website advertises it as “a place where good people can relax and have a beer, a bourbon or some whiskey, and some simple vittles, while listening to a musician croon his heart out, around other like-minded people.” Also, the sink basins are shaped like the silhouette of Texas.01.32 FG: I agree Mat. But Hillary’s delegate count surely insurmountable now? Bernie needed a shock tonight. Not happening.
01.31 MV: By looking at the results tonight, Hillary has been doing well where she is supposed to win. But she still have a problem in states where they are many white Democratic voters like in Oklahoma and Minnesota.
01.25 FG: Rubio doing very well in DC suburbs. The elite Nevertrumping ripples out. 01.21 JL: Public service announcement: When television talking heads make reference to “exit polls” rather than actual vote counts, ignore them. They’re just about never right. 01.08 JL: If Ohio Governor John Kasich manages a surprise win in the Super Tuesday Vermont Republican primary, perhaps chalk it up to his promise that he would get Pink Floyd back together. 01.00 FG:CNN declares Trump wins Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. He is from New York, and he’s a liberal-values billionaire, remember. Cruz campaign will be disappointed with Tennessee. 00.59 JL: Bernie Sanders looks set to win an overwhelming majority of the Super Tuesday vote, in his home state and perhaps nowhere else. He’s just took a victory lap at a rally in Essex Junction, Vermont, yelling in his rough Brooklyn register about how it’s time to “have the courage to stand up to the billionaire class and tell them they can’t have it all.” He railed against the “one percent” who cannot “buy townhalls,” lumped Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in with “many of the establishment people” and warned his supporters they should not “allow the Donald Trumps of the world to divide us.”Near the end, the famously private candidate added a “personal note,” telling the Vermont crowd that their support and love “have sustained me.” The former hippie said he was “so proud to bring Vermont values all across this country” and said that he wanted to “say hello to so many old friends.” For supporters outside of the state, he reminded them that these things are not winner-take-all and that “by the end of tonight, we are going to win many hundreds of delegates.” It was a winning performance, reaffirming Sanders’s status as most amusing and likeable candidate of both parties. If we could have Bernie without the socialism, I’d take him.
00.57 FG: Trump and Clinton win big in Georgia. 00.52 FG: Clinton ‘not expecting a knockout night’, say the Clinton spinners. Give her campaign one thing: they can manage expectations. 00.42 FG: Exit polls suggested that Virginia was neck-and-neck between Rubio and Trump. Early results, however, show Trump up 8 per cent. But most Rubio friendly states not showing. In Vermont meanwhile, Bernie wraps his victory speech; will he have much more to celebrate? 00.30. FG: Vermont GOP result looking very tight. Kasich springing a surprise. He’s on 31%; Trump is on 30%. If Kasich wins there, the Rubio-Kasich will start to look like the most credible stop-Trump option. 00.26 MV: According to Fox, seems that Arlington County in Virginia ran out of ballots for the primary. Arlington County is quite importantbecause it’s part of an area near Washington DC which is very rich with lots of people working for the federal government. Could this high turnout help or hurt Trump in this close state?
00.11 MV: Seems that according to a CBS estimate that Virginia is too close to call between Trump and Rubio for the GOP Primary.
00.08 FG: Bernie Sanders wins home state of Vermont. Surprise, surprise. 00.01 FG: The expectations for Donald Trump are so high tonight that anything short of absolute triumph will be interpreted as a setback for his campaign. And already the exit polls have suggested it won’t be a trouble-free night for him. In the Democratic race, Hillary is also expected to consolidate her delegate lead. But here too, the early results suggest that the frontrunner will be not things all her own way. 23.03 JL: The first thing to know about Republican Super Tuesday returns is, Donald Trump is going to win. Oh, not everywhere. Texas Senator Ted Cruz is at least going to win his own state and handily if the night goes well for him. He also has a shot at winning Arkansas, because of the close cultural ties between the bordering states. Mike Huckabee may be popular with evangelical Christians nationally but an awful lot of Arkansas Republicans remember him as a tax-and-spend governor who liked to preach at them about how Jesus would have them pay higher taxes to hire more school teachers to placate the state Supreme Court. He has praised Trump, which only seems to have boosted Cruz there, if polls are to be believed. Of the eleven states holding Republican primaries or caucuses, Trump should carry at least eight, unless the latest flaps over the KKK or Mussolini or the Great Wall of Mexico – and yes, all of these are real controversies – convince primary voters to have second thoughts. Several Republican pundits and a few politicians have started with the
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