TEHRAN, Iran – Iran reportedly
test-fired two ballistic missiles Wednesday with the phrase "Israel must
be wiped out" written in Hebrew on them, a show of force by the Islamic
Republic as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel.
Such phrases have been emblazoned on missiles fired
before by Iran, but this test comes as the country recently signed a
nuclear deal with world powers, including America, and conducted another
test the day before. Hard-liners in Iran's military have fired rockets
and missiles despite U.S. objections since the deal, as well as shown
underground missile bases on state television.
There was no immediate reaction from Jerusalem, where
Biden was scheduled to speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, who strongly opposed the nuclear deal.
The semiofficial Fars news agency offered pictures
Wednesday it said were of the Qadr H missiles being fired. It said they
were fired in Iran's eastern Alborz mountain range to hit a target some
870 miles away off Iran's coast into the Sea of Oman.
The U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which patrols that region, declined to comment on the test.
Fars quoted Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of Iran's
Revolutionary Guard's aerospace division, saying the test was aimed at
showing Israel that Iran could hit it.
"The 1,240-mile range of our missiles is to confront
the Zionist regime," Hajizadeh said. "Israel is surrounded by Islamic
countries and it will not last long in a war. It will collapse even
before being hit by these missiles."
Israel's Foreign Ministry declined to immediately
comment. Iran has threatened to destroy Israel in the past. Israel,
which is believed to have the only nuclear weapons arsenal in the
Mideast, repeatedly has threatened to take military action against
Iran's nuclear facilities.
Hajizadeh stressed Iran would not fire the missiles in anger or start a war with Israel.
"We will not be the ones who start a war, but we will
not be taken by surprise, so we put our facilities somewhere that our
enemies cannot destroy them so that we could continue long war," he
said.
The firing of the Qadr H missiles comes after a U.S.
State Department spokesman on Tuesday criticized another missile launch
that day, saying America planned to bring it before the United Nations
Security Council.
A nuclear deal between Iran and world powers
including the U.S. is now underway, negotiated by the administration of
moderate President Hassan Rouhani. In the time since the deal, however,
hard-liners in Iran's military have made several shows of strength.
In October, Iran successfully test-fired a new guided
long-range ballistic surface-to-surface missile. It was the first such
test since Iran and world powers reached a landmark nuclear deal last
summer.
U.N. experts said the launch used ballistic missile
technology banned under a Security Council resolution. In January, the
U.S. imposed new sanctions on individuals and entities linked to the
ballistic missile program.
Iran also has fired rockets near U.S. warships and flown an unarmed drone over an American aircraft carrier in recent months.
In January, Iran seized 10 U.S. sailors in the Gulf
when their two riverine command boats headed from Kuwait to Bahrain
ended up in Iranian territorial waters after the crews "misnavigated,"
the U.S. military said. The sailors were taken to a small port facility
on Farsi Island, held for about 15 hours and released after U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke several times with Iranian Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Donald Trump has absorbed more attacks in the last two weeks from his
opponents, their super PACs and the Republican establishment than any
candidate I've seen in my five decades around presidential politics.
The "shock and awe" attack of unfriendly fire seems
to have had minimum impact on his candidacy as he won two big victories
Tuesday night in Mississippi and Michigan. Big Don is still standing and
the establishment favorite, little Marco got routed -- finishing out of
money in both contests.
Ted Cruz, who came in second in both races in
Michigan and Mississippi and won Idaho, keeps fighting to remain
relevant. He is having a tough time reaching beyond the evangelical base
which he splits with Trump. But the finals of this election cycle could
come down to Trump versus Cruz.
John Kasich came in a distant second to Trump in his
neighboring state which may bode poorly for his showdown next week in
Ohio, the state he governs.
Rubio is on death watch and life support and can't
survive if he doesn't win his home state of Florida. Tuesday night's
poor showing is not going to encourage the money guys to bet more on him
and he faces a real uphill battle to beat Trump in the billionaire’s
adopted state of Florida.
Trump’s battle cry "I love Florida and they love me!"
will be tested in seven days in the first of the winner take all
states. There will be no more second place finishes or silver medals.
Win or lose is now the rule of the game.
We have now seen the travelogue of the Trump
properties and golf courses, suffered through a full display of all his
products from vodka to steaks and the men's accessories made in China.
Tuesday’s night’s Trump victory speech/press conference was like a lengthy sales pitch on Home Shopping Network.
I've never before seen a press conference in which
the press is hollering "Stop, please stop! No mas, no mas!" No more
questions, please!!”
Donald's hour long tirade and rambling speech was his
revenge for the assault on him by the billionaires and their political
consultants who have puffed and puffed but can't blow Donald's house
down.
Onward, reality show junkies. This show is a long way from being over!
Maybe the only thing that can slow the Donald down is
"House of Cards" Frank Underwood. Of course his presidency is in
trouble, too. But this reality show is stranger than fiction!
There’s a debate coming Thursday, America! And another big week coming…
Stay tuned!
Bernie Sanders pulled off a shocking upset in Michigan's Democratic
primary Tuesday night, beating Hillary Clinton in a race that most polls
had him trailing by double digits and eclipsing the front runner's
earlier win in Mississippi.
Republican front-runner Donald Trump, meanwhile,
regained any momentum lost last weekend against challenger Ted Cruz,
sweeping to convincing victories in Michigan and Mississippi while
sending a message to the Republican establishment to jump on board — or
get out of the way.
Cruz was projected to pick up a win in the Idaho GOP
primary, while Trump was projected to easily win the Hawaii Republican
caucus.
But Trump's earlier victories were more valuable in
terms of delegates. And Tuesday's results may also seal the fate of
Marco Rubio, who appeared once again to finish the night failing to gain
any delegates.
Cruz appeared to have beaten John Kasich for second
place in Michigan by approximately 8,000 votes. Kasich is counting on a
win in his home state of Ohio next week to salvage his campaign.
On the Democratic side, Clinton easily won
Mississippi’s primary earlier Tuesday, thanks in part to her
overwhelming support from black voters, and likely will pick up more
delegates in Tuesday’s contests than Sanders.
But the Vermont senator’s surprising Michigan win
could give him a bounce as he and the rest of the candidates charge into
the vital March 15 primaries in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and
North Carolina.
Michigan is the ninth and largest state that Sanders
has won so far in the Democratic presidential campaign. All 15
pre-election polls in Michigan this year showed Clinton leading Sanders
by double digits.
Sanders chief strategist John Weaver blasted out a
memo touting the Michigan performance, saying the state “provides a
springboard into the races on March 15, the day the race will officially
reset."
For his part, Trump is looking to March 15 to
sideline the rest of the GOP field for good – something he tried to
start doing Tuesday night. At a press conference at his golf club in
Juniper, Fla., he said of his remaining rivals, “They’re pretty much all
gone.”
Michigan was the biggest prize of the four states that voted Tuesday.
On the Republican side in Mississippi, Trump defeated
Cruz by 47 percent to 36 percent of the vote, with Kasich a distant
third at 9 percent and Rubio garnering just 5 percent of the vote.
Trump celebrated his wins at a lengthy press
conference Tuesday night, teasing the “special interests” and others
that ran ads against him.
“It shows you how brilliant the public is, because they knew they were lies,” Trump said.
He started his victory talk with a subdued and
conciliatory tone, appearing to take the first steps to patch up any
differences with the party brass. He noted House Speaker Paul Ryan
recently called him.
“He could not have been nicer,” Trump said.
But he soon slipped into his standard fare, making
cracks about his remaining rivals. He took a shot at Cruz, noting the
Texas senator positions himself as the only candidate who can beat him,
“but he never beats me.”
Both Trump and Clinton had a mixed performance this
past weekend where they effectively split the delegate field with their
top rivals.
The stakes on Tuesday arguably were higher for Trump,
whose delegate lead over Cruz shrunk on Saturday as they each won two
contests. Cruz has been pushing to consolidate conservative support on
the heels of those races, arguing Trump is not the candidate he claims
to be.
“He is pretending to be an outsider,” Cruz told Fox News.
But Trump used his wins Tuesday to downplay the
chances for his remaining rivals, as he and the rest of the field look
ahead to next week’s vital winner-take-all contests in Ohio and Florida.
“I think we’re going to do really well in Florida,” he said. “It’s my second home.”
Kasich, who campaigned in Michigan Tuesday, told Fox
News he was focusing on the Midwestern states – and repeated his vow to
win Ohio.
Rubio, too, is looking for a comeback win in his home
state next week, all the while battling calls from his rivals to drop
out. But Trump leads in the Florida polls, and Rubio endured another
disappointing night in Tuesday's contests.
Looking ahead, Rubio rallied a home-state crowd
Tuesday evening, saying: “I believe with all my heart that the winner of
the Florida primary next Tuesday will be the nominee of the Republican
Party. ... And I need your help. I need your vote.”
Clinton, meanwhile, is still trying to regain her
footing as Sanders has demonstrated his grassroots support in several
recent contests. Over the weekend, he claimed three victories to
Clinton’s one.
Thanks in part, though, to so-called “superdelegates”
– party leaders and officials free to support whomever they want –
Clinton maintains a huge delegate lead over Sanders. She had 1,221 to
Sanders’ 571, as of early Wednesday morning.
Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri
stressed Tuesday that their campaign’s strategy focuses on winning
delegates, and told Fox News they’ll pick up more delegates than Sanders
from Tuesday’s contests regardless of the Michigan results.
On the GOP side, Trump leads Cruz in the delegate
count 446 to 347, with Rubio trailing at 151 and Kasich at 54, as of
early Wednesday morning.
Senate lawmakers are renewing their request to question the State
Department staffer who helped set up Hillary Clinton's private email
server following revelations that he has been granted immunity by the
Justice Department, according to a letter obtained by The Associated
Press on Monday.
Republican senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron
Johnson of Wisconsin have asked Bryan Pagliano to appear before them to
discuss the server and to provide documents and communications about
Clinton's personal email account.
Pagliano last year invoked his Fifth Amendment right
against self-incrimination in declining to answer questions from the
lawmakers about the server and email setup.
But in their letter to Pagliano, the senators argue
that the immunity grant from the Justice Department -- which is
investigating the potential mishandling of sensitive information on the
server -- means that the "Fifth Amendment privilege is no longer
applicable."
"Because the Department of Justice has granted you
immunity from prosecution in this situation, there is no longer
reasonable cause for you to believe that discussing these matters with
the relevant oversight committees could result in your prosecution,"
wrote Grassley and Johnson, who respectively serve as chairmen of the
Senate committees on the judiciary and homeland security and
governmental affairs.
The letter is dated March 3, the day after news broke about Pagliano's immunity offer.
The senators have also asked Pagliano and the Justice
Department for copies of the immunity agreement, and they told Pagliano
that he holds "unique information about this matter that is otherwise
unavailable."
Mark MacDougall, a lawyer for Pagliano, declined to comment to the AP on Monday evening.
Clinton and her campaign have said that they are pleased that Pagliano was cooperating.
The Obama administration said Monday that it was "surprised" to learn
that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had canceled a planned
visit to Washington later this month, and denied an Israeli media report
that claimed the White House was unable to arrange a meeting between
President Obama and Netanyahu.
Netanyahu's visit had been planned to coincide with
the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee's annual conference. The
White House said Israel had proposed for the two leaders to meet on
either March 17 or 18 and the U.S. had offered to meet on March 18.
"We were surprised to first learn via media reports
that the Prime Minister, rather than accept our invitation, opted to
cancel his visit," National Security Council spokesman Ned Price told
reporters Monday. "Reports that we were not able to accommodate the
Prime Minister's schedule are false."
A report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz cited sources close to Netanyahu who claimed "no appropriate time" could be found to hold the meeting.
The Israeli Prime Minister's Office said Tuesday that
Israel's ambassador to the U.S. informed the White House last week
there was a "good chance" Netanyahu would not make the trip.
An Israeli official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly,
told the Associated Press Netanyahu wanted to avoid meetings with
presidential candidates.
The unusually pointed pushback from the White House
was the latest signal of ongoing tensions between the U.S. and its
closest Mideast ally, which have never fully recovered since Obama
incensed Netanyahu's government by pursuing and then enacting a nuclear
deal with Iran. The flare-up comes just days before Vice President Joe
Biden is set to meet with Netanyahu during a visit to Jerusalem.
This isn't the first time Obama had been caught off
guard by Netanyahu's travel plans. Last year, the White House accused
Netanyahu of a breach of longstanding diplomatic protocol when he
announced plans to speak to a joint session of Congress without
consulting or notifying the president. Netanyahu used that speech to
implore U.S. lawmakers to reject the Iran nuclear deal, which Israel
sees as emboldening its archenemy.
Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie
Sanders laid out some of their key differences Monday in a Fox News
Channel town hall event in Michigan -- including Clinton springing a
surprise alternative to Sanders' millennial-friendly,
free-college-tuition plan.
Please click here to watch the Democratic Town Hall Live
Sanders opened by defending his auto-bailout vote, which Clinton hit him on during their debate the night before.
“What I did not vote for was the bailout of Wall
Street. … She did vote for that,” Sanders said, referring to Clinton’s
time as a New York senator.
The front-running Clinton and the Vermont senator
made their cases in Detroit on the eve of Michigan’s Democratic and
Republican presidential primaries.
Most polls show Clinton with a double-digit lead in
Michigan, as she enters the primary with 1,130 delegates, compared to
499 for Sanders. Either needs 2,383 delegates to win the party
nomination. The two will also compete in the Mississippi Democratic
primary Tuesday.
Sanders on Monday night also hammered his message of economic equality and prosperity.
“There is no candidate in this race who has talked
more about poverty than I have,” he said. “In the richest country in the
history of the world, we have more income and wealth inequality than
any other major country. We have too many people living in poverty. We
have got to change our national priorities.”
He also repeated his calls for helping roughly 29
million Americans without health care, arguing the problem is in part
the result of pharmaceutical companies gouging the country.
“We have many more (Americans) who are underinsured,”
Sanders said. “And we are getting ripped off big time by the
pharmaceutical industry, which are charging us the highest prices in the
world.”
Clinton, meanwhile, was asked at the outset of the
event about the ongoing classified email investigation being conducted
by the FBI, claiming once again that she was not notified that she is a
subject of that investigation.
“Absolutely true,” Clinton responded to the question by Fox News’ “Special Report” host Bret Baier.
Clinton also said neither she nor her lawyers have
been informed that any members of her staff or former staff are targets
of the investigation, which focuses on her use of a private email server
while secretary of state.
Clinton also stood by decision, as part of the Obama
administration, to remove Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. But
she acknowledged the “deeply regrettable” aftermath, in which the
Islamic State terror group has flourished in parts of that country.
“If there had not been that intervention … we would be looking at something much more resembling Syria now,” Clinton said.
She also argued that the United States and its allies
saw more turmoil in “leaving a dictator in place,” like Russia has done
with Syrian leader Bashar al Assad. And she said the Libyan people have
since had two fair elections to "get themselves a better future."
Clinton also used the forum to introduce her answer
to Sanders’ popular free-tuition college proposal, unveiling the
outlines of a plan in which students will no longer have to borrow money
to attend a public college or university.
She said the New College Compact plan would also help with non-tuition costs.
“It is absolutely imperative that we make college affordable,” Clinton said.
Both candidates also explained their position on
abortion, amid continuing debate about stopping the procedure after five
months of pregnancy, with the exceptions for the life and health of the
mother and baby.
“I am very strongly pro-choice,” Sanders said. “That is a decision to be made by the woman, her physician and her family.”
Clinton said she objects to the recent effort in Congress to pass a law saying no such exceptions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
“Because although these (exceptions) are rare, they sometimes arise in the most complex, difficult medical situation,” she said.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump look to rebound from weekend
setbacks with victories in Tuesday's Michigan primary, the first big
industrial state to be contested in the 2016 presidential race.
Squeezed between high-profile Super Tuesday and
high-stakes primaries next week in Florida and Ohio, Tuesday's contests
are unlikely to dramatically reshape either party's primaries. But with
150 Republican and 179 Democratic delegates at stake, the races offer an
opportunity for the front-runners to pad leads and rivals to catch up.
In addition to Michigan's primaries, both parties
will hold their primary in Mississippi Tuesday, with Republicans also
caucusing in Idaho and voting in the Hawaii primary.
But Michigan is the night's crown jewel in terms of
delegates. Fifty-nine are at stake in the Republican race, while 147
will be awarded on the Democratic side.
While Trump has stunned Republicans with his broad
appeal, he's forged a particularly strong connection with blue-collar
white voters. With an eye on the general election, he's argued he could
put Midwestern, Democratic-leaning industrial states such as Michigan
and Wisconsin in play for Republicans.
A Monmouth University poll released Monday showed
Trump winning 36 percent of likely GOP primary voters, 13 percentage
points ahead of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who said
Michigan was part of his "home court" last week, polled a close third
with 21 percent of the vote, while Florida Sen. Marco Rubio placed
fourth with 13 percent of the likely vote.
Victories by Cruz in Kansas and Maine have threatened
to make the Republican race a two-man sprint to the finish. But Kasich
and Rubio are holding out hope they can win their winner-take-all home
states March 15.
Entering Tuesday, Trump leads the Republican race
with 384 delegates, followed by Cruz with 300, Rubio with 151 delegates
and Kasich with 37. Winning the GOP nomination requires 1,237 delegates.
"It's not just the whole country that's watching
Michigan — now the world's beginning to watch," Kasich said Monday
during a campaign stop in the state. "You can help me send a message
about positive, about vision, about hope, about putting us together."
Rubio sought a boost in Tuesday's contests from Mitt
Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee. Romney has recently become an outspoken
critic of Trump and recorded a phone call on Rubio's behalf in which he
warns Republicans that if the real estate mogul wins the nomination,
"the prospects for a safe and prosperous future would be greatly
diminished."
Romney has not endorsed a candidate in the GOP
primary, but clearly says in the phone recording that he's speaking on
behalf of the Rubio campaign. A Romney spokeswoman said the former
Massachusetts governor has offered to help Rubio, Kasich and Cruz in any
way he can.
During a stop at a catfish restaurant on Monday in
Mississippi, Cruz said the current vacancy on the Supreme Court means
Republicans can't take a chance on Trump.
"He's been supporting left-wing politicians for 40 years," Cruz said.
On the Democratic side, Clinton boosted her delegate
lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders over the weekend, as a win in
Saturday's Louisiana primary canceled out wins for Sanders in the
Kansas, Nebraska and Maine caucuses. The Monmouth University poll gave
Clinton a 13-percentage point lead over the self-described democratic
socialist among likely voters.
Ahead of Tuesday's two Democratic contests,
Clinton had accumulated 1,130 delegates and Sanders 499, including
superdelegates. Democrats need 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.
In an effort to boost his standing in Michigan,
Sanders has repeatedly accused Clinton of of being disingenuous when she
asserted that he opposed the bailout of carmakers General Motors and
Chrysler during the Great Recession.
Sanders defended his voting record on the issue again during a Fox News town hall in Detroit Monday night.
"What I did not vote for was the bailout of Wall
Street. … She did vote for that,” Sanders said, referring to Clinton’s
time as a New York senator.
Sanders and Clinton both voted in favor of a bailout
bill in 2008, but it failed to clear the Senate, prompting
then-President George W. Bush to announce about a week later that the
federal government would step in with $17.4 billion in federal aid to
help the carmakers survive and restructure. The last $4 billion was
contingent on the release of the second installment of the Wall Street
bailout funds.
Sanders did vote for a 2009 motion to block the
release of those funds, though the measure was defeated by 45 Democrats,
including Clinton, and a handful of Republicans.
Republicans hoping to halt Donald J. Trump’s
march to their party’s presidential nomination emerged from the
weekend’s voting contests newly emboldened by Mr. Trump’s uneven
electoral performance and by some nascent signs that he may be peaking
with voters.
Outside
groups are moving to deploy more than $10 million in new attack ads
across Florida and millions more in Illinois, casting Mr. Trump as a
liberal, a huckster and a draft dodger. Mr. Trump’s reed-thin
organization appears to be catching up with him, suggesting he could be
at a disadvantage if he is forced into a protracted slog for delegates.
And
vote tallies on Saturday made clear that Mr. Trump has had at least
some trouble building upon his intensely loyal following, leaving him
increasingly dependent upon landslides in early voting.
In
Louisiana, where Mr. Trump amassed a lead of more than 20 percentage
points among those who cast votes before Saturday, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas effectively tied him among voters who cast their ballots on Saturday.
Photo
Marco Rubio in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, on Saturday, a day before winning the primary there.Credit
Dennis M. Rivera Pichardo for The New York Times
“Trump
has to worry about the consistent late-voter rejection of his
candidacy,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and Republican
presidential candidate.
Mr.
Trump’s losses to Mr. Cruz in Kansas and Maine on Saturday, coupled
with closer-than-expected victories in Louisiana and Kentucky, have
heightened the prospects for a two-man race, though many Republican
leaders eye Mr. Cruz warily.
As
his rivals have despaired over the race’s vulgar turn, Mr. Trump struck
a subdued tone, by his standards, as returns came in late Saturday
night. He aborted his first attempt to take the stage and left the room
after asking reporters if the race in Kentucky had been called.
When
he finally did speak, some of his usual bombast was missing, even as he
insisted that it was time for Senator Marco Rubio to quit the race and
that Mr. Cruz cannot win more moderate northeastern or coastal states.
“Donald
Trump was uncharacteristically low energy,” Mitt Romney, the Republican
nominee in 2012, said in an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,”
taunting Mr. Trump with the insult Mr. Trump had employed against Jeb
Bush. Yet despite the renewed optimism of his opponents, the path to
deny Mr. Trump the nomination remains narrow and arduous.
Mr.
Cruz’s emergence as the most credible alternative to Mr. Trump has
proved both a boost and a complication for those seeking to derail the
New Yorker. Mr. Cruz has tried to undercut calls for a contested
convention to deny Mr. Trump the nomination, which Mr. Cruz says would
yield a “manifest revolt” among voters. But Mr. Cruz has done little so
far to threaten Mr. Trump’s lead in the delegate race.
Much
of Mr. Cruz’s late-breaking support on Saturday seemed to come at the
expense of Mr. Rubio, not Mr. Trump. And the Cruz campaign’s message of
ideological purity and religious faith is a less natural fit for many of
the delegate-rich Midwestern and coastal states that remain on the map.
“Saturday
proved that Trump can be contained and even beaten,” said Scott
Jennings, a longtime Republican strategist, who looked ahead to this
summer’s Republican convention in Cleveland. “The question is whether
the field is going to allow for it moving forward. The most likely
scenarios remain that Trump gets enough before Cleveland, or nobody
does. The latter moved a little closer to realistic Saturday.”
Mr.
Rubio’s path is much less certain, despite his lopsided victory in
Puerto Rico on Sunday. Even his supporters said that the results on
Saturday seriously undercut the premise of his bid: that he is the only
candidate who can unify the Republican Party and defeat Mr. Trump.
“Look,
I’m supportive of Marco; I’m very hopeful,” said Mel Martinez, the
former senator from Florida, who had supported Mr. Bush. “But it’s a
great concern that time has kind of caught up with this whole thing.”
The
Stop Trump forces are beginning to pour money into television ads, with
a particular focus on the big states voting on March 15. Four different
groups have reserved at least $10 million in airtime in Florida so far,
according to trackers of media spending. That number is expected to
grow, but television stations in Florida are already awash in such ads.
Two
from the American Future Fund, which has spent $2 million so far in
Florida and Illinois, show decorated veterans assailing Mr. Trump as a
poseur on military matters. Michael Waltz, a retired Special Forces
colonel, blisteringly calls Mr. Trump a draft dodger and, effectively, a
coward. “Donald Trump hasn’t served this country a day in his life,” he
says. “Don’t let Trump fool you.”
And
a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, Tom Hanton, bluntly questions Mr.
Trump’s toughness: “Trump would not have survived the P.O.W. experience.
He would have been probably the first one to fold.”
Separately,
Club for Growth Action, an arm of the anti-tax group that was the first
to run ads in Iowa against Mr. Trump, has placed $2 million in
commercials attacking him in Illinois on top of $1 million in Florida.
A
third group, Our Principles PAC, which was created to defeat Mr. Trump,
has reserved $3.5 million in Illinois and Florida and is also sending
direct mail to voters’ homes in Florida. A group supporting Mr. Rubio,
Conservative Solutions, is spending several million dollars in Florida
as well.
The
deluge of negative messages from a patchwork of groups — highlighting
claims by angry customers of Mr. Trump’s defunct educational company and
his history of shape-shifting positions — already appears to have hurt
Mr. Trump’s cause.
In
conversations with some of his allies, who insisted on anonymity to
relay those private talks, Trump campaign aides have expressed concern
about the money being spent against him on television. The Trump
campaign has no pollster, so it is governed by public polling and what
the candidate himself observes while watching cable news.
This
off-the-cuff approach, and a string of self-inflicted wounds — refusing
to clearly and immediately reject the support of the white supremacist
David Duke, boasting about his sexual endowment on the debate stage and
withdrawing from the Conservative Political Action Committee’s
conference over the weekend — have fueled days of unfavorable coverage
of Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
“Trump
has total disdain for the professional political class,” said Scott
Reed, a veteran Republican strategist. “He thinks they’re all about
making money. Pollsters are hacks. Organization doesn’t matter. Their
idea of a political organization is taking phone calls from some elected
officials who wanted to endorse and making it work in the schedule. And
that’ll catch up with you eventually.”
Still,
members of the Republican establishment have been left to grapple with
what was once unthinkable: rallying around Mr. Cruz, a senator who built
his reputation bashing them.
“Some
hope with Ted, no hope with Donald,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South
Carolina said on “Meet the Press,” summarizing the party’s dim view of
its remaining options. Neither, he suggested, would be likely to expand
the Republican tent: “We’re in a demographic death spiral.”
Less than two weeks ago, Mr. Graham joked about murdering Mr. Cruz on the Senate floor.
And
yet, Mr. Graham said, he received a phone call from Mr. Cruz after
Super Tuesday — part of efforts by the Cruz campaign to reach out,
discreetly, to donors and party officials who might be interested in
rallying around him.
With
Mr. Rubio faltering badly across the board on Saturday, Mr. Cruz is
moving to compete aggressively in Florida. He has also weighed the
merits of a significant push in Ohio, the home state of Gov. John
Kasich.
Both
states are winner-take-all, and the Cruz campaign insists it would only
dedicate substantial resources if it thought it could win outright. But
the effort is risky: It could boost Mr. Trump, if Mr. Cruz diminishes
his non-Trump rivals without a victory.
The
Cruz campaign says it can reach the requisite delegate threshold of
1,237 without winning Florida or Ohio, thanks to its superior
organization in later-voting states, many of which are closed to
non-Republicans.
But
several party strategists have disputed this math, even if the contests
on March 15 force some of Mr. Cruz’s competitors from the race.
A
moment of reckoning for Mr. Rubio will come Tuesday in Michigan, a
state that has concentrations of the kinds of voters he performs well
with: professional, younger, highly educated and upper-income. But a
poll released on Sunday by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal showed
Mr. Rubio trailing Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump received 41
percent, followed by Mr. Cruz at 22 percent, Mr. Rubio at 17 percent and
Mr. Kasich at 13 percent.
Despite
this, some Michigan Republicans say that Mr. Kasich may emerge as the
state’s establishment choice. And in a race that has often felt like a
reality television show, Mr. Kasich secured an apt endorsement on
Sunday: that of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who will replace Mr. Trump as the
host of “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
Correction: March 6, 2016
An earlier version of a picture caption with this article
misstated the location of a Conservative Political Action Committee
conference. It was in National Harbor, Md., not Alexandria, Va.
