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Donald Trump not only beat Marco Rubio last night, he beat the expectations game as well. He crushed Rubio by almost 20 points in the Floridian's home state. He took Illinois by 10 points over Ted Cruz and 20 points over John Kasich, and in Missouri, he edged out Cruz by the narrowest of margins. Trump also extended his dominance of Cruz in the South, beating him in the final race in the region that was to be Cruz's launching pad to the nomination. The New Yorker won 11 of the region's 12 contests, losing only in the Texan's home...

Ever since they became the two leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination last fall, there was speculation that perhaps U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and businessman Donald Trump could form an anti-establishment "dream team" for the November general election. Just hours before the first returns came in, proving that polls were right the GOP front-runner would have another big night, the Texas senator put any talk of a Trump-Cruz ticket to bed. Appearing on the nationally syndicated "Hugh Hewitt Show," Cruz said he had "zero interest" in being Trump's running mate. "Donald Trump loses to Hillary, and the answer,...

What's that famous saying? "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." It's time for Ted Cruz to wake up and make the phone call that changes history, changes the GOP, changes the course of America. It's time to face reality. Donald Trump will be the 2016 GOP presidential nominee. Only Trump has a path to the nomination. Ted Cruz is delusional if he thinks he can win the nomination...or deserves to win the nomination. He was shut out on Tuesday night. Shut out as in zero, zilch, zip, nada. It was Trump 4, Kasich 1, Cruz 0, Rubio cut from...

Polling begun and completed after the March 10 debate shows radical changes in Ohio and Illinois ahead of their March 15 primaries. In both primaries, Ted Cruz is surging, on the strength of a strong debate performance. In Ohio, a winner take all primary with 66 delegates on the line, the latest poll by CBS, conducted from March 9-11, shows Trump and Kasich tied at 33% each with Ted Cruz surging to 27% up from his pre-debate showing of 19%. Easy to dismiss as an outlier? Not if you also look at CBS' Illinois poll that has Trump leading by...

DEARBORN, Mich. -- It is here in the industrial Midwest, not in the South, where Ted Cruz's audacious theory of the 2016 race was supposed to be put to one of its most important tests. Michigan's primary on Tuesday -- and especially what happens that day in the Detroit suburbs that in 1980 were ground zero for a new political species, "Reagan Democrats" -- will answer this question: Can Cruz locate and motivate legions of recently nonvoting conservatives, millions of them nationwide, especially whites without college experience, who can be pulled back into voting in numbers sufficient to determine the...

BALLWIN, Mo.--While Ted Cruz suggested on Friday night that Donald Trump's campaign "affirmatively encourages violence," he said on Saturday that he would still support Trump if the New Yorker wins the GOP nomination. "My answer is the same," Cruz told reporters here at a suburban St. Louis high school. "I committed at the outset, I will support the Republican nominee, whoever it is." "Ted Cruz is going to be the nominee," interjected Carly Fiorina, a former GOP presidential candidate who is now backing Cruz. But pressed again on whether Cruz stands by his decision to back Trump if he is...

It was not much more than a week ago that Republican insiders were having animated public discussions about how Donald Trump could be deprived the GOP nomination. The consensus was straightforward. Unlike the consensus a few weeks earlier--that Kasich and Cruz needed to drop out of the race to clear the field for a Trump-Rubio death match--the new consensus was that that they should all stay in the race. This time, the goal was not finding someone who could beat Trump to the 1,237 delegates needed for a first ballot victory in Cleveland in July, but instead simply to deny...

In a press availability last night in Chicago, Ted Cruz laid it all out there. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) We need to learn to have disagreements without being disagreeable. To have disagreements while respecting human beings on the other side. Earlier today over thirty people were arrested at one rally. And then tonight, as violence broke out, the rally was canceled all together. Now, the responsibility for that lies with protesters who took violence into their own hands. But in any campaign responsibility starts at the top. Any candidate who is responsible for the culture of the campaign. And when you have a...

In theory, Ted Cruz's best states are behind him. But at the Detroit debate, Cruz was clearly the class of the field and it's clear that no one should count him out as the delegate race moves into its next phase. The delegate math is complicated, but the basic gist goes something like this: Donald Trump has a commanding lead at the moment, but it is not a given that he will reach the 1,237 threshold he needs to clinch a majority. Simply put, Trump has failed to break through the ceiling of support he's held since New Hampshire even...

The results of last night's Super Tuesday primary elections would have, in a normal Republican Primary cycle, made Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee for President and most certainly driven the also-rans, Dr. Ben Carson and Ohio Governor John Kasich from the race. But in case you hadn't noticed, this isn't a normal Republican Primary election cycle. Normally in Republican politics the stronger a candidate for the nomination gets the more the self-interested powerbrokers in the professional political class come around to supporting him. However, this year the GOP appears to be fracturing into three segments: the "vote for Trump...

BATON ROUGE - After a poor showing in the Super Tuesday primaries, Marco Rubio quietly canceled his plans for a Baton Rouge event scheduled for Friday. Individuals who signed up for tickets to see Rubio received an email Wednesday that the event was canceled. "In order to use Marco's time as efficiently as possible before Saturday's contests, Marco will not be making a stop in Louisiana Friday night," the email read. Rubio originally announced he would visit the capital city on Feb. 29. The event was planned for 5:45 p.m. at North Boulevard Town Square. The Rubio campaign's Eventbrite page...

Yep, says Philip Klein. I hope he's right, but I'm not sure the takeaway from a blowout win for Trump in New Hampshire is that it's now Ted Cruz's race to lose. Though Trump's victory in New Hampshire was no doubt impressive, the electorate of independent voters and super high turnout was tailor-made for him, whereas Cruz didn't put substantial effort into winning the state -- where very conservative candidates don't typically do as well. He is currently in position to win third here, with votes still outstanding. As the race moves to South Carolina, however, Cruz has a ground...

New York businessman Donald Trump won Republican primaries Tuesday from the Deep South to New England, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz took his home state and Oklahoma, ensuring that the race for the GOP nomination will stretch into the spring...

A new CNN/ORC national poll (full pdf below) is being highlighted in the media discussion based on the top-line results: Donald Trump 49% ! However, that’s not the real headline in the data. The real lead story should be the damage Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have done to themselves as they continue a scorched-earth campaign. The first signals of a backlash appeared over the weekend’s polling when it became clear Senator Rubio and Senator Cruz where losing support at an exponential rate the longer they continued to make unfounded accusations. Donald Trump and Ben Carson are benefactors of the...

Link only: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-12-22/why-trump-and-cruz-aren-t-forbes-or-cain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vExmqVkv1ds

Bangor Daily News ‏@bangordailynews 1h1 hour ago BREAKING: LePage, Christie endorse @realDonaldTrump for president http://bdn.to/xzxr #mepolitics Michael Shepherd ‏@mikeshepherdME 2h2 hours ago LePage calls Rubio and Cruz "two of the people who create the gridlock" in Washington. #mepolitics 23 retweets 14 likes

At an unhinged moment in the 2016 presidential primary season, the Republican candidates turned in a fine set of unhinged performances at Thursday night's critical debate. Let's begin with Donald Trump, far and away the strongest contender, be it in Ted Cruz's backyard or Marco Rubio's home state. For the first time, he met his rhetorical match in a surprisingly vitriolic Rubio. The Florida senator devoted himself to going shout-for-shout with Trump, dragging out old scandals and unseemly details that put the mogul's present-day promises in an unflattering light. But even when Trump visibly ground his gears, he stayed characteristically...

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham thinks his party has gone "bats---" crazy, and joked Thursday that it's possible to get away with murdering Ted Cruz if it happened in the Senate. "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you," the former presidential candidate said at the Washington Press Club Foundation's 72nd Congressional Dinner, referencing the Texas senator's unpopular reputation on Capitol Hill. CNN has reached out to Cruz's presidential campaign for comment. While Graham teased Democrats and other politicians in the room -- at one...

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are set to huddle in private in New York City on Wednesday, but Trump claims that he’s not sure why he even agreed to the meeting. “I don’t know why I’m meeting him, to be honest, but I do have respect for him,” the real estate mogul said of his fellow White House hopeful during an MSNBC interview Wednesday. “I respect the fact that … he came out and he came out very strongly and agreed with what I said on illegal immigration. And he came out very strongly and he came out early, and...