“Marco Rubio won’t be endorsing Ted Cruz during the Republican presidential primary, but he’s likely to back the Texas senator at a contested convention — if it gets the far,” Politico reports.
“The de facto plan, Rubio’s backers say, is designed to help Cruz. It also, however, protects Rubio’s political future, including if he decides to make another run for the White House.”
A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll in Indiana finds Donald Trump leading the GOP presidential race with 49%, followed by Ted Cruz at 34% and John Kasich at 13%.
“If that margin in Indiana holds on Tuesday, Trump would be on a glide path towards obtaining the 1,237 delegates he needs to win the Republican nomination on a first ballot at the GOP convention in July.”
An earlier poll shows Cruz leading by a wide margin.
HuffPost Pollster avergages show Trump leading Cruz by 7 points.
Donald Trump shrugged off Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s endorsement of rival Ted Cruz, arguing that Pence wasn’t all that enthusiastic about backing the Texas senator, Politico reports.
Said Trump: “A lot of pressure was put on him by his donors, and he had to do it. But he was nicer to me. I mean, everyone thought he gave me the endorsement because he started off ‘Donald Trump, I really want to thank him,’ and then he finished with me. And somewhere in between, he said he’ll vote for Cruz.”
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“Even as Donald Trump trounced him from New Hampshire to Florida to Arizona, Senator Ted Cruz could reassure himself with one crucial advantage: He was beating Mr. Trump in the obscure, internecine delegate fights that could end up deciding the Republican nomination for president,” the New York Times reports.
“But it turns out that delegates — like ordinary voters — are susceptible to shifts in public opinion. And as the gravitational pull of Mr. Trump’s recent primary landslides draws more Republicans toward him, Mr. Cruz’s support among the party’s 2,472 convention delegates is softening, threatening his hopes of preventing Mr. Trump’s nomination by overtaking him in a floor fight. With each delegate Mr. Trump claims, he gets closer to the 1,237 he needs to clinch the nomination outright, and Mr. Cruz’s chances of stopping him — even if he pulls out a victory in Tuesday’s Indiana primary — shrink.”
A new Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics poll shows Ted Cruz leading the GOP presidential race with 45%, followed by Donald Trump at 29% and John Kasich at 13%.
Politico: “In interviews, several aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity, expressed growing alarm that Cruz would lose Indiana’s primary on Tuesday — an outcome that would be a major blow to his hopes of holding Trump below the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination on the party convention’s first ballot. The aides concede that, without a win in an Indiana primary where 57 delegates are at stake, Cruz’s shot at the nomination would significantly narrow.”
“And while the Texas senator has closed the gap in Indiana in recent days, he still trails Trump and his decision to tap Carly Fiorina as a running mate has provided only a modest boost in the state, according to sources familiar with the campaign’s internal deliberations.”
“I don’t think Ted Cruz is Lucifer.”
— Sen. Marco Rubio, quoted by the Palm Beach Post.
“Donald Trump’s campaign got burned again Saturday in the hunt for loyal delegates to the Republican national convention — this time on turf where he’d recently trounced his rivals in primary elections,” Politico reports.
“Though the mogul’s campaign showed more muscle than ever in this shadow primary, he walked away in defeat in Arizona — losing about 40 of the 55 delegate slots that were up for grabs on the day. That’s despite a dominant primary win there on March 22 and a furious attempt by supporters to guarantee the election of allies to the national convention.”
New York Times: “A remarkable range of leading Republicans, including Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, have been emphatic publicly or with their advisers and allies that they do not want to be considered as Mr. Trump’s running mate. The recoiling amounts to a rare rebuke for a front-runner: Politicians usually signal that they are not interested politely through back channels, or submit to the selection process, if only to burnish their national profiles.”
“Several Republican consultants said their clients were concerned that Mr. Trump’s unusually high unfavorable ratings with all voters and his unpopularity among women and Hispanics could doom him as a general election candidate and damage their own future political prospects if they were on his ticket.”
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that he thinks his party will win back the majority in the Senate this year, The Hill reports.
Said Reid: “We only need four (seats) to take the majority. With the numbers I’ve given you, it’s going to be a fairly certain thing that we can do that.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) told the Palm Beach Post that he’s not making an endorsement but will support Donald Trump if he’s the Republican nominee in the general election.
He added Trump’s “performance has improved significantly” in recent weeks.
“President Obama poked fun at Hillary Clinton’s lack of appeal among young people Saturday night, joking at the annual White House press corps dinner that Mrs. Clinton was like an aging relative who cannot figure out how to use Facebook,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Obama also needled Mrs. Clinton for paid speeches she gave for Goldman Sachs… But the president reserved his most biting commentary for the Republicans running for president, repeatedly turning to the party’s chaotic nominating contest for comedic fodder.”
Politico has Obama’s top ten jokes from last night.
John Sides: “The longest-running measure of American attitudes about the economy is the Index of Consumer Sentiment. Before I had looked at these data, I was sure I’d find that sentiment was only a bit more positive than it was when Obama took office. But in fact, the upward trend — with the exception of the drop during the 2011 debt ceiling crisis — is striking. This upward trend is also reflected in data from Pew and Gallup.”
“As of the first quarter of 2016, even with a slight downturn in the second and third quarters of 2015, consumer sentiment was as positive as it had been since the mid-2000s. It was also as positive as it had been in the mid-1980s during the recovery from the recession of 1981-1982. For example, the value of consumer sentiment at the end of 1983, as Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign was gearing up, was 91.6. In the first three months of 2015, it was almost exactly the same: 91.5.”
“In other words, consumer sentiment is as positive as it was at the beginning of the election year when Reagan argued that it was ‘Morning in America.'”
“I have a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak… I’m not going to deal with their temper tantrums or their bullying or their efforts to try to provoke me…He can say whatever he wants to say about me, I could really care less.”
— Hillary Clinton, quoted by CNN, on how she’ll deal with Donald Trump’s insults.
Donald Trump “mocked his conservative critics and his current and former rivals as dumb, ‘disgusting’ and losers,” the New York Times reports.
“He claimed at least twice that he could win even if the party did not come together. And with some conservatives still uneasy about his beliefs, he breezily dismissed questions about his principles.”
Said Trump: “Folks, I’m a conservative, but at this point, who cares? We got to straighten out the country.”
“Hillary Clinton flatly dismissed Donald Trump’s suggestion that he can win over supporters of rival Bernie Sanders in the fall election, arguing that the Republican’s views on a range of issues would repel them,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Said Clinton: “I don’t think that’s very appealing… I’m going to be very aggressive in…reaching out to Sen. Sanders’s supporters, but we have so much more in common. And we have far more in common than they do with Donald Trump or any Republican.”
Nate Silver: “Indiana Gov. Mike Pence endorsed Ted Cruz on Friday, which may not be enough to help Cruz win Indiana, where he currently trails Donald Trump in polls, let alone the Republican nomination. Nevertheless, the endorsement is part of a pattern: With the exception of a single congressman from Western New York, no Republican who faces a competitive gubernatorial, Senate or House election this November has endorsed Trump.”
“There are 11 Republican senators and 34 Republican members of the House who face competitive races, according to Cook. The only one to have endorsed Trump is Tom Reed, the incumbent from New York’s 23rd Congressional District, a Republican-leaning swing district that covers much of the rural, western part of the state.”
Eugene Robinson: “As Clinton’s running mate, Warren could erase this potential weakness with the Democratic base. She has spent her Senate career becoming known as the scourge of Wall Street. No political figure is more closely identified with efforts to curb the excesses of the financial system.”
“Warren would also help address another potential vulnerability. If the general-election matchup is Trump vs. Clinton — and that seems increasingly likely — it is becoming clear that on the question of U.S. military involvement around the world, Trump will position himself to the left of Clinton.”
“Clinton is a foreign policy traditionalist. As secretary of state, she was more hawkish than President Obama — she pushed for more vigorous intervention in Syria, for example. She has long since apologized for her vote to authorize the Iraq War, but Sanders continues to attack her for it. Trump would surely do the same. Warren wasn’t in Congress when the Iraq War began, and national security isn’t the issue with which she is identified. But her views fit squarely with those of the party’s progressive wing.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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