Trump looks to extend dominance as GOP starts to panic
Donald Trump won primaries in Virginia,
Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Massachusetts, claiming the first five
Republican victories on Super Tuesday as the New York businessman extends his
dominance in the 2016 primary. With no wins so far, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio
were fighting to emerge as the leading Trump alternative.
Contests in Vermont, Oklahoma and Arkansas
were too close to call as the first polls closed, while voting continued across
four other states.
Trump's first five victories came as the GOP
front-runner looked for a sweep on a Super Tuesday marked by panic from
Republican leaders.
Fearing Trump may build an insurmountable
delegate lead, top Republican officials lashed out at the billionaire
businessman's command of the issues and "seeming ambivalence" over
white supremacists as voting began. But having won three consecutive primary
elections before Tuesday, Trump tightened his grip on the GOP nomination in
primary elections across the country.
"These are challenging times for the
Republican Party," said Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who wanted to stay
neutral in the GOP primary but endorsed Rubio last week.
Early results of exit polls conducted by
Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks showed large
majorities of Republican primary voters in six states said they support Trump's
proposal to temporarily ban all non-citizen Muslims from entering the United
States.
The results followed a wild prelude to Super
Tuesday that featured a dispute over the Klu Klux Klan and extraordinary
criticism from several Republican governors and senators who refused to say
whether they would support their party's front-runner should Trump win the
nomination.
A confident Trump brushed off his critics
early Tuesday, suggesting that he's growing the party and even attracting
Democrats to the GOP.
"We're getting people into the party
that they've never had before," he told ABC's "Good Morning
America." ''I can tell you the one person Hillary Clinton doesn't want to
run against is me."
A Trump sweep across the South would be a
massive blow for Cruz. The Texas senator long expected the South to be his
firewall, but now simply hopes to emerge with a victory in his home state.
Rubio's goal on Super Tuesday was more modest
— to stay competitive in the delegate count while eyeing a win in his home
state of Florida on March 15. Republican officials have rallied behind Rubio
over the last week, but he's failed to win a single state so far.
Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired
neurosurgeon Ben Carson remain in the race, but neither is expected to be a
major factor on Super Tuesday.
Trump jumped to a big delegate lead on
Tuesday. He won 100 delegates on the night so far, with Rubio winning 12 and
Cruz just five. There are 595 Republican delegates at stake in 11 states on
Super Tuesday.
Overall, Trump leads with 182 delegates.
Rubio has 28, Cruz has 22, John Kasich has six and Ben Carson has five.
It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican
nomination for president.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on
Tuesday blasted Trump's "seeming ambivalence about David Duke and the
KKK," joining House Speaker Paul Ryan's earlier call for the Republican
front-runner to reject racism.
They were referring to a weekend interview on
CNN in which Trump refused to denounce the former KKK grand wizard or racist
groups. Trump had disavowed them and did so again after facing criticism for
wobbling.
Tyler Murphy, a 26-year-old Boston resident
who works as a project manager for a construction company, said he voted for
Trump.
For better or for worse, he said, the
controversial candidate is the "wake-up call" the country needs.
