Circus smackdown: A campaign about small hands, big ears and endless insults

Marco Rubio says he “had hoped this would be a campaign only about ideas.”
But now, as the voting begins on Super Tuesday, it’s about sweating and shortness, small hands and big ears, spray tans and bad makeup and, well, pants-wetting.
Two weeks ago, Rubio told CBN’s David Brody: “I don’t do the personal stuff. I don’t do the personal attacks primarily because it’s not who I am, because I think it’s beneath the office that I’m seeking but also because I don’t want to embarrass my kids.”
But now he’s mocking Trump’s makeup and “sweat mustache” after the last debate, and saying this:
"He's like 6'2'' which is why I don't understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5'2". Have you seen his hands? You know what they say about men with small hands? You can't trust them."
And this: “He asked for a full-length mirror. I don’t know why, the podium only went up to here. Maybe to make sure his pants weren’t wet, I don’t know.”
It’s not that I blame Rubio. Trump now routinely refers to him as “Little Marco.” He does a whole routine in which he mocks Rubio for sweating bullets and then gulps from a water bottle. Plus, Trump could emerge from today’s most delegate-rich day of the primary campaign as the all-but-certain nominee.
In presidential campaigns, you do what you gotta do.
But now the level of discourse has sunk pretty low. Forget taxes and terrorism, it’s becoming the Yo Mama election, more like a high school locker room than a race for the White House.
Entertainment and humor are part of any election. I don’t wring my hands when candidates land low blows. But the scale seems to have tilted toward the mockery side, even as everyone agrees the country is facing huge issues.
I’m not sure it’s wise for Rubio to engage in mud-wrestling with Trump, for he’s not likely to win that battle. He shows himself to be a fighter, but there’s a whiff of desperation as well. It will be fascinating to see whether the top-tier guys pull back a bit at the Fox News debate in Detroit on Thursday night.
Trump, meanwhile, finds himself in some hot water over David Duke. Now in fairness, I was watching last Friday when, at the Chris Christie press conference, Trump was asked about Duke backing him and said he would “disavow” it.
But when CNN’s Jake Tapper repeatedly asked him about this on Sunday, Trump seemed to sidestep the questions. When Tapper said he was just talking about Duke and the Ku Klux Klan, Trump said, “Honestly, I don’t know David Duke.”
On “Today” yesterday, Trump blamed a faulty earpiece as he conducted the remote interview from his house in Florida: “The question was asked about David Duke and various groups, and I don’t know who the groups are. I said would you do me a favor and tell me the groups? He was unable to tell me that.”
Joe Scarborough, who’s given Trump his due and interviewed him many times, went off on The Donald yesterday.
“That’s disqualifying right there,” he said on MSNBC. “It’s breathtaking, that’s disqualifying right there. To say you don’t know about the Ku Klux Klan? You don’t know about David Duke?”
Scarborough was reacting in part as a southerner who wants no party of the ugly legacy of segregation. And he tweeted yesterday, "Public (and media) perception has been that if you correctly predicted Trump's viability, you must be a supporter."
My own theory, and it’s just that, is that having disavowed Duke’s endorsement, Trump didn’t want to generate another headline about it that would overshadow his message two days before Super Tuesday. But his failure to issue a forthright denuciation has gotten plenty of media traction.
All this could quickly fade if Trump wins most or all of the states in play today. Then all the candidates will have to reassess whether trading insults is the right path: Trump because he’ll be looking ahead to a general election, and Rubio and Cruz because they will have failed to dent his huge lead.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. 

Super Tuesday prizes: Candidates in fierce fight for Texas, other delegate goldmines

The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are charging into Super Tuesday in a coast-to-coast battle for delegates across 11 states -- but while they're looking for as many wins as possible, a few select states stand out as the crown jewels.
At the top of that list, in both primary contests, is Texas. The Lone Star State has the biggest cache -- 222 Democratic delegates and 155 for Republicans.
And perhaps no candidate is fighting harder for that prize than Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. The senator went all out on Monday, holding rallies in voter-rich Dallas, Houston and San Antonio in hopes of at least defeating national front-runner Donald Trump in Cruz's home state.
“We are going to have a very good Super Tuesday,” Cruz assured the Dallas crowd. Cruz has maintained a polling lead in the state, but knows a surprise loss there could doom his campaign.
For Republicans, the second-biggest prize is Georgia, with 76 delegates at stake. Both Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio put in face time with voters Monday in the final hours before polls open, while Cruz stayed rooted in Texas.
On the Democratic side, too, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have focused their efforts.
While Clinton declared Saturday night after her decisive win in the South Carolina primary that the campaign was going “national,” the former secretary of state was concentrating Monday on two delegate-heavy states -- the Democratic-stronghold of Massachusetts (91 delegates) and Virginia (95 delegates).
Solid wins there and beyond on Super Tuesday could give her a nearly insurmountable delegate count toward the nomination.
Clinton to date leads Sanders in the delegate count 543-to-85, including so-called superdelegates. They will compete for 865 delegates on Tuesday and a total of roughly 1,800 delegates over the next two weeks, with 2,382 needed to win the nomination.
The delegates on the line in a dozen states Tuesday represent a third of those needed to clinch the party nod.
And on the GOP side, 595 delegates are on the line Tuesday across 11 states -- nearly half the number needed to secure the nomination.
Sanders is focusing on Minnesota and Colorado, progressive states where he hopes his message of social and economic equality will translate into votes.
“Americans don’t need crumbs, they need the whole loaf,” Sanders said at a rally in Minneapolis.
He is expected on Tuesday to win his home state of Vermont, which has 16 Democratic delegates. Minnesota is worth far more, with 77 delegates.
Still, many of these contests divide delegates proportionally, and so Sanders is poised to walk away with some, even where he loses. His strategy appears to be to at least survive Tuesday, with hopes of a resurgence later this month in Maine and Rust Belt states like Michigan and Ohio.
On the Republican side, Trump has won three straight -- the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, and the Nevada Republican Caucus -- garnering 82 delegates.
Cruz kicked off the 2016 balloting by winning the Iowa Republican Caucus. He has 17 delegates, ahead of Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio with 16.
Though trailing in Texas, Trump holds big leads in other delegate-rich Super Tuesday states.
The billionaire businessman leads by double-digits in Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia, according to RealClearPolitics poll averages. Rough 53 percent of the GOP’s 595 delegates on Tuesday are in those states.
Those polls were released before Trump over the weekend initially declined to disavow the backing of former KKK leader David Duke, which Rubio says makes him “unelectable.”
Trump has since disavowed the support and blamed a supposedly faulty earpiece for his original handling of the question.
The tough race is taking a toll on the candidates. Rubio, barnstorming the South to take hold of the GOP establishment mantle, temporarily lost his voice at a rally outside of Atlanta and needed South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has endorsed him, to take the microphone.
The two other GOP candidates, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, have six and four delegates, respectively.

Bernie Sanders Cartoon

Sanders: After Clinton’s big win, Super Tuesday, beyond will be 'tough fight'

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders conceded that his campaign was “decimated” by Hillary Clinton's campaign in this weekend’s South Carolina party primary but expressed optimism about keeping alive his White House bid.
“We got decimated, that’s what happened,” the Vermont senator told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “No question, Secretary Clinton won that state and she won it big. … I think it’s going to be a tough fight, (but) I think we can pull it off.”
Clinton beat Sanders 73-to-26 percent, with exit polls showing nine in 10 African-Americans voting for her. The numbers strongly show that Clinton’s recent Nevada Caucus victory, followed by her South Carolina win Saturday, proves she has a southern “firewall” against the insurgent Sanders’ campaign.
In looking for a bright spot in the South Carolina defeat, Sanders said he did well with younger voters, whom he hopes will support him on Super Tuesday, when 11 states hold votes and roughly 880 Democratic delegates are up for grabs.
Sanders, who won the New Hampshire primary, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he thinks he can win in Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma and his home state of Vermont and “do really well” in Massachusetts.
"I think we do have a path to victory," he said, adding that California and New York later in the primary season are also potential wins.
But if Sanders loses the African-American vote by similar margins in the upcoming Southern states, like he did in South Carolina, Clinton would likely take a delegate lead difficult for him to overcome.
Sanders said he and his campaign found his lack of support among older African-American voters in South Carolina “pathetic.”
Clinton suggested in her victory speech Saturday night that she’s now shifting her focus to the national election, which unofficially starts after the party convention, this year in July in Philadelphia.
“Tomorrow, this campaign goes national,” she said.
On Sunday, Clinton church-hopped across Memphis, Tenn., to mobilize African-American voters ahead of Tuesday's primaries.
At two churches in the city, Clinton asked worshippers to reject "the demagoguery, the prejudice, the paranoia.”
She never mentioned GOP front-runner Donald Trump's name, but the comments appeared directed at him, and she seemed to reference his campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again."
"American has never stopped being great, our task is to make American whole," Clinton said at Greater Imani Cathedral of Faith.

Cruz, Rubio reveal tax info, Cruz hints Trump tied to mob biz

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Sunday pushed the call for front-running GOP rival Donald Trump to release his tax returns, suggesting the IRS documents might show connections to “mafia” businesses, donations to Planned Parenthood and other items that would ruin his White House bid.
“Maybe those business deals are more extensive that reported,” Cruz told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Primary voters deserve to know before the nomination because Hillary Clinton will.”
Cruz, who has released five years of returns and two-page summaries for the past four years, repeated 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s suggestion last week that Trump’s returns could include a “bombshell.”         
He said Trump’s real estate ventures reportedly have been tied to mafia-run S&A Construction, "which was owned by 'Fat Tony' Salerno, who is a mobster who is in jail.”
He also suggested on ABC’s “This Week” that the returns might show the billionaire businessman has exaggerated his wealth.
“A lot of media outlets have reported that he doesn't make nearly as much money as he says he does. We don't know. But he's clearly hiding something,” said Cruz, who, with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, is Trump’s closest rival going into Super Tuesday -- in which the GOP primary field of five will compete for 595 delegates across 11 states.
Cruz also tried to turn into a tax issue Trump’s support for the help Planned Parenthood provides to women, though the billionaire businessman doesn’t back abortions.
“At every debate, it seems, he praises Planned Parenthood,” Cruz said. “Maybe he's written them a bunch of checks.”
Trump told “Fox News Sunday” that he’s filed “voluminous” paperwork and that information about his income is available in Federal Election Commission filings.
He declined to reveal his gross income or effective tax rate and didn’t respond to a remark that the IRS says he can disclose his records, despite an audit, which Trump has cited for the delay.
“I think it's very unfair,” said Trump, despite making promises to release his tax records. “I've been singled out.”
Rubio, like Cruz, released summary pages of their recent tax filings on Saturday, seeking to capitalize Trump's refusal to release similar information.
Romney released tax records in 2012, and Clinton did last year.
Rubio and Cruz produced the first two pages of their filings to the Internal Revenue Service, which don't include key details about subjects such as their tax deductions.
They have left the door open to releasing more information, with Cruz essentially daring his opponents to go first.
"If Marco wants to release the complete thing for the recent years, I'm happy to do so as well," Cruz said. 
Every major party candidate since 1976 has released his full tax returns at some point during the campaign, according to Joseph Thorndike, a tax historian and contributing editor to Tax Notes, an accounting trade publication.
But while Thorndike faulted Trump for backing away from releasing his tax returns, he called partial releases such as those by Rubio and Cruz "fake transparency."
The tax returns released by the two lawmakers, combined with their previously released personal financial disclosures, offer an overview of their financial lives since arriving in the Senate.
Rubio released portions of his 2010 through 2014 returns, adding to 10 years of tax documents he had previously made public.
Since winning election to office in Washington, they show Rubio's income has ranged from $276,059 to $938,963, and he has paid between $46,500 and $254,894 in federal income tax. Most of the income came from a business that collected royalties on two books: Rubio's memoir, "An American Son," and a pre-campaign tract, "American Dreams."
Cruz released portions of his 2011 through 2014 returns. They show he and his wife Heidi brought in an annual average of $1.13 million with large amounts of their income coming from Cruz's work in 2011 and 2012 at the law firm Morgan, Lewis and Bockius, and his wife's work at Goldman Sachs.
Cruz also reported $190,000 in income coming from a book advance from Harper Collins in 2014.
The returns show that Cruz and his wife reported more than $5.2 million in income in those years and paid an average effective tax rate of 37.6 percent.
The summary returns yield few details on either candidate's charitable giving, but they indicate that the Texas senator, who has banked on the support of evangelicals and appealed to voters on matters of faith, hasn't tithed a full 10 percent of his income.

Gabbard quits DNC to back Sanders, after criticizing small debate schedule

Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard resigned Sunday as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee to support presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The Hawaii Democrat told NBC's "Meet the Press" that she trusts the Vermont senator to consider the consequences of any military action.
"I think it’s most important for us, as we look at our choices as to who our next commander in chief will be, is to recognize the necessity to have a commander in chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgment," Gabbard said.
Her announcement follows months of discord with committee members, including Chairman Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Gabbard has been critical of the committee’s small debate schedule, which critics say is designed to protect Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Wasserman Schultz on Sunday issued a statement accepting the resignation that in part stated Gabbard is “a role model who embodies the American ideal that anyone can dream big and make a difference."
Gabbard, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a military veteran who served in Iraq, also has been critical of President Obama’s strategy for stopping the Islamic State.
She has called for a more comprehensive approach and has criticized the president for not saying the group is engaged in “Islamic terrorism.”

Rubio, Cruz and Clinton aim attacks at Trump following KKK endorsement

Presidential candidates from both parities turned their rhetorical fire against Republican front-runner Donald Trump Sunday, with his GOP rivals attempting to claw back into the race and Democratic favorite Hillary Clinton tuning up for a possible general election run.

Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz stepped up their personal and policy-based barrage against Trump Sunday, warning that the real estate mogul's nomination would be catastrophic for the Republican Party in November and beyond.

"We're about to lose the conservative movement to someone who's not a conservative and (lose) the party of Lincoln and Reagan to a con artist," Rubio told "Fox News Sunday".

Trump fired back, beginning his “Fox News Sunday” interview with an extended, uninterrupted attack on Rubio, calling him a political “lightweight” and “little,” adding that the first-term senator "couldn't get elected dogcatcher."

Meanwhile, Cruz warned the "Trump train" could become "unstoppable" if he rolls to big victories in this week's Super Tuesday primaries. Cruz cast Trump as a carbon copy of Clinton and suggested that not even Trump "knows what he would do" as president.

“The only campaign that has beaten Donald Trump is mine,” said the Texas senator, arguing that 65 percent of GOP voters don’t support Trump. “The only way to beat Donald Trump is to stand behind our campaign on Super Tuesday."

Cruz later became upset over continued questions by "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace about the integrity of his campaign, following allegations about so-called dirty tricks that resulted in the forced resignation of spokesman Rick Tyler. Cruz accused Wallace of using Trump opposition research to frame questions and ended the interview in silence.

Later Sunday, Rubio mocked Trump's physical characteristics in addition to his policy positions, telling a heavily college-age crowd of around 3,000 at Roanoke College in Salem, Va. that Trump "has these small hands."

"You know what they say about a man with small hands," Rubio said as the crowd laughed. "You can't trust them."

Rubio also mocked Trump for his complexion, as he has before, accusing him of having a bad "spray tan."

"Donald is not going to make America great," said Rubio, again drawing cheers and laughter. "He's going to make America orange!"

In the wake of Trump's endorsement this week by retired Ku Klux Klan Grand wizard David Duke, Cruz suggested on “Fox News Sunday” that a hate group supporting Trump was making recorded calls – known as “robo-calls” -- telling potential voters not to pick a Cuban candidate. Cruz and Rubio are both of Cuban descent. 

In an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union", Trump was repeatedly asked about Duke's support, finally saying, "Just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, OK? I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. Did he endorse me, or what's going on?”

During a campaign event in northern Virginia, Rubio "refused" to repudiate Duke -- "a well known white supremacist racist" -- despite being asked repeatedly.

"We cannot be a party that nominates someone who refuses to condemn white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan," Rubio said. "Not only is that wrong, it makes him unelectable."

Trump reportedly knew Duke in 2000 and cited him, Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani when explaining why he stopped considering a presidential run under the Reform Party.

"The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke, a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan, and a communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not company I wish to keep," Trump said, according to The New York Times.

Meanwhile, Democratic frontrunner Clinton, fresh off a convincing victory in Saturday's South Carolina primary, all-but-ignored Bernie Sanders, her rival for the nomination, and turned her attention to the Republican field.

Cops Are Evil Cartoon