Jeff Greenfield: “There are any number of primary campaigns that saw a significant shift of fortunes, but they provide cold comfort for the anti-Trumpeteers. Why? Because 1) they happened a relatively long time ago, 2) they all happened in two-candidate races and 3) none of them resulted in a victory for the come-from behind candidate.”
Trump Heads to Nevada
“As for the Republicans, it is their turn to head to Nevada, where Donald Trump owns a hotel and has a commanding lead. Caucuses did not favor Mr. Trump in Iowa, where organization mattered a great deal and where his campaign was not well prepared. Nevada, as well as the Super Tuesday states, will be another big test of his ability to organize,” the New York Times reports.
Los Angeles Times: “As elsewhere, the Manhattan billionaire will capitalize on the free media exposure he attracts as a reality television star. Fox News is giving him an hour Monday night on Hannity. Trump’s only other scheduled stop in Nevada is a lunchtime rally at a casino outside Reno on Tuesday, the day of the state’s Republican caucuses.”
Jon Ralston: “Donald Trump is going to win Nevada easily.”
Not Much Excitement for Bloomberg Bid
Politico: “The multi-billionaire media mogul has held out the possibility of an independent candidacy as a tonic for centrists fearful of a Trump presidency. But even as Trump bolstered his chances for the Republican nomination with a solid win in South Carolina, Bloomberg’s trial balloon has yet to gain much altitude, even among those most likely to favor his candidacy.”
“Only if the self-avowed Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders were to cop the Democratic nomination and square off against reality-TV star Trump could these would-be Bloomberg supporters imagine him making the race — and even then, there were doubts.”
Behind the Fall of Jeb Bush
Mike Murphy, the chief strategist for Jeb Bush’s super PAC, told the Washington Post where the campaign went wrong.
Said Murphy: “Our theory was to dominate the establishment lane into the actual voting primaries. That was the strategy, and it did not work.”
“Three other problems led to Bush’s downfall. First, the candidate and his team misjudged the degree of Bush fatigue among Republicans… Second, Bush and his team miscalculated the role and power of money and traditional television commercials in the 2016 race… Third, Bush ran a campaign that, whether deliberate or not, was rooted in the past.”
Rubio and Cruz Target Pockets of Delegates
Washington Post: “In a clear admission of Trump’s dominant standing following decisive back-to-back primary victories, his top two rivals — Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — are not even pretending they can best the billionaire mogul on March 1, or ‘Super Tuesday,’ when 11 states hold primaries or caucuses.”
“Cruz hopes to win his home state of Texas, but otherwise he and Rubio, as well as John Kasich and Ben Carson, are charting strategies to accrue convention delegates by surgically targeting slivers of the states.”
New York Times: Cruz and Rubio vie to become top rival to Trump
One Way Rubio Could Win
Join now to continue reading.
Members get exclusive analysis, bonus features and no advertising. Learn more.
How Scalia Looked Backward
Jeffrey Toobin: “Antonin Scalia, who died this month, after nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, devoted his professional life to making the United States a less fair, less tolerant, and less admirable democracy. Fortunately, he mostly failed. Belligerent with his colleagues, dismissive of his critics, nostalgic for a world where outsiders knew their place and stayed there, Scalia represents a perfect model for everything that President Obama should avoid in a successor.”
“The great Justices of the Supreme Court have always looked forward; their words both anticipated and helped shape the nation that the United States was becoming. Chief Justice John Marshall read the new Constitution to allow for a vibrant and progressive federal government. Louis Brandeis understood the need for that government to regulate an industrializing economy. Earl Warren saw that segregation was poison in the modern world. Scalia, in contrast, looked backward.”
Trump and Cruz Have the Deepest Pockets
New York Times: “A seven-month, $220 million surge of spending on behalf of mainstream Republican candidates has yielded a primary battle dominated by Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, two candidates reviled by most of the party’s leading donors.”
“Now, as they approach a pivotal and expensive stage of the campaign, the two insurgent candidates — who have won the first three contests — appear to be in the best position financially to compete in the twelve states that will vote on ‘Super Tuesday,’ according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission on Saturday.”
Cruz Is In Big Trouble
Amy Walter: “From the beginning, Cruz’s strategy was based on putting together a strong showing among conservative and evangelical voters that would help muscle him through South Carolina and the SEC primary states. Yet in South Carolina, a state where 73 percent of the electorate defined themselves as evangelical, and where Cruz attacked Trump for his past support of abortion rights, Cruz lost the evangelical vote to Trump by six points!”
“If Cruz can’t win in South Carolina, a state tailor-made for a conservative, evangelical candidate, what makes him think that he can win in similar-looking southern states that vote on March 1? And, as I wrote earlier this week, losing out on South Carolina’s 50 delegates puts a major – perhaps insurmountable – roadblock in his path to winning the delegate race.”
Nevada GOP Braces for Caucus Mayhem
“Unlike in Iowa, where the state parties recruited Microsoft to build a high-tech caucus results reporting system, or New Hampshire and South Carolina, where state elections officials conduct the primaries, in Nevada county GOP officials have responsibility for holding local caucuses, counting ballots and reporting results,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Republican volunteers at each of the 36 caucus locations will count ballots by hand, write the results on an envelope, take a photograph of the envelope and text the photo to Ed Williams, the Clark County Republican Party chairman, and to state GOP officials. The state party is also allowing the Associated Press to monitor the results as they come in from precincts; in 2012 the party announced results itself on Twitter.”
Sanders Says Lower Turnout Led to Loss
Bernie Sanders acknowledged that he “failed to turn out as many people in the Nevada caucuses as he hoped he would, a factor the Vermont senator suggested contributed to his loss on Saturday to Hillary Clinton,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Sanders: “What I’ve said over and over again, we will do well when young people, when working-class people come out. We do not do well when the voter turnout is not large. We did not do as good a job as I had wanted to bring out a large turnout.”
Will Anyone Go After Trump?
“Party leaders are now openly questioning how Mr. Trump’s remaining Republicans rivals have approached his unusual candidacy and demanding that they have to let go of their restraint and take him on,” the New York Times reports.
Said GOP strategist Stuart Stevens: “It’s crazy that’s nobody else is trying to win except Trump. Rubio is not going after the person who is winning. I’ve never seen a campaign that seems as satisfied to not go after the leader.”
Trump Now Favored to Win Nomination
Nate Silver: “A reasonable person might adjudicate the case as follows: Yes, if the Republican nomination becomes a two-man race between Trump and Rubio, it could be pretty close. But that might not happen, or it at least might not happen for a while, not until Trump is off to a pretty big head start in delegates. What happens in a three-way race between Trump, Rubio and Cruz is a little murky. This reasonable person would concede that Rubio had a chance. But who’s the favorite? Trump!”
“Betting markets, weighing all of this information, see the Republican race thusly: Trump at about 50 percent to win the nomination, Rubio at 40 percent, and the rest of the field at 10 percent. I might quibble here and there, but that seems like basically a sound assessment.”
Trump Quote of the Day
“I really don’t even know what I mean, because that was a long time ago, and who knows what was in my head.”
— Donald Trump, in an interview with NBC News, when asked about a 2002 Howard Stern interview in which he voiced support for the Iraq War.
Quote of the Day
“I’ve seen fallible men rise up to the challenges of our time with humility and clarity of purpose to make our nation safer, stronger and freer… I firmly believe the American people must entrust this office to someone who understands that whoever holds it is a servant, not the master, someone who will commit to that service with honor and decency.”
— Jeb Bush, in a speech announcing he was suspending his campaign.
Romney to Endorse Rubio
In a major development in the Republican presidential race, 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney will endorse Sen. Marco Rubio for president, the Huffington Post reports.
“Romney spent the day in Utah on Saturday and could potentially be in position to bestow his blessing upon Rubio before Tuesday’s Nevada Republican caucuses–a contest that Romney won easily in both 2008 and 2012.”
“Romney’s backing will provide Rubio with the highest-profile endorsement of the 2016 race and is the clearest signal yet that the party’s establishment is ready to coalesce around the Florida senator as its last best chance to defeat GOP front-runner Donald Trump.”
It’s Trump’s Party Now
New York Times: “For the past year, party leaders who had pleaded with Mr. Bush to run and armed his campaign with a record-shattering war chest of $100 million had consoled themselves with assurances that Mr. Trump’s popularity in the polls would never translate into victory at the ballot box.”
“Mr. Trump, it turned out, knew their voters better than they did. Mr. Trump’s commanding back-to-back primary wins in two disparate regions of the country have forcefully shaken the Republican firmament out of a prolonged state of self-denial.”
Rick Klein: “Donald Trump now owns the Republican party. The only question left is whether what’s left of the GOP establishment can winnow the field fast enough to take it back.”
Cruz Not Bringing Home the Evangelical Vote
Politico: “A disappointing showing in Saturday’s primary complicates Cruz’s gameplan for March 1, a day that he has built up as the cornerstone of his primary strategy. It also calls into question his long-held claim that he is the evangelical standard-bearer: Exit polls showed Trump beating him out for evangelical support.”
