USA ... Presidential Politics
The campaign ... end February 2016

The Republican Party’s implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy has arrived

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

The Republican Party’s implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy has arrived

Super Tuesday is March 1. Get caught up on the race here.

Hillary Clinton's Super Tuesday goals

Hillary Clinton is trying to assume a sheen of inevitability as her party’s presumptive nominee. And no state is better suited to help her do that than Texas, the largest of 11 states that will hold Democratic nominating contests on Super Tuesday. With 222 delegates at stake, Texas could significantly boost her overall delegate count — even without the party officials who have pledged to support her as superdelegates. It would make Sanders’s path to the nomination nearly nonexistent.

In Texas, the largest of Super Tuesday’s prizes, Clinton hopes to secure her fate

“I don't know. Did he endorse me? Or what's going on? Because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists.”

Donald Trump, on CNN. The implosion over his candidacy arrived so virulently that many party leaders vowed never to back the billionaire and openly questioned whether the GOP could come together this election year.

The Republican Party’s implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy has arrived

The upcoming voting schedule

March 1 It's Super Tuesday: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas Vermont and Virginia hold primaries or caucuses for both parties.

March 5 Both parties vote in Kansas and Louisiana. Maine and Kentucky hold GOP caucuses; Nebraska holds a Democratic caucus.

March 6 It's the Maine Democratic Caucus and the Puerto Rico Republican primary.

Upcoming debates

March 3: GOP debate on Fox News, in Detroit, Mich.

March 6: Democratic debate on CNN, in Flint, Mich.

March 9: Democratic debate on Univision, with The Washington Post in Miami, Fla.

Trump captures the nation’s attention on the campaign trail

MADISON, Ala. — The implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy that Republicans had hoped to avoid arrived so virulently this weekend that many party leaders vowed never to back the billionaire and openly questioned whether the GOP could come together this election year.

At a moment when Republicans had hoped to begin taking on Hillary Clinton — who is seemingly on her way to wrapping up the Democratic nomination — the GOP has instead become consumed by a crisis over its identity and core values that is almost certain to last through the July party convention, if not the rest of the year.

A campaign full of racial overtones and petty, R-rated put-downs grew even uglier Sunday after Trump declined repeatedly in a CNN interview to repudiate the endorsement of him by David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Trump had disavowed Duke at a news conference on Friday, but he stammered when asked about Duke on Sunday.

During appearances on network television Feb. 28, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump repeatedly declined to refuse the endorsement of David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. While Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz both took aim at Trump. (TWP)

Marco Rubio, who has been savaging Trump as a “con man” for three days, responded by saying that Trump’s defiance made him “unelectable.” The senator from Florida said at a rally in Northern Virginia, “We cannot be the party that nominates someone who refuses to condemn white supremacists.”

The fracas comes as the presidential race enters a potentially determinative month of balloting, beginning with primaries and caucuses in 11 states on Tuesday. As the campaign-trail rhetoric grew noxious over the weekend, a sense of fatalism fell over the Republican firmament, from elected officials and figureheads to major donors and strategists.

“This is an existential choice,” said former senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who is backing Rubio. Asked how the party could unite, Coleman said: “It gets harder every day when you hear things like not disavowing the KKK and David Duke. It’s not getting easier; it’s getting more difficult. . . . I’m hopeful the party won’t destroy itself.”

The choice for voters is not simply one of preference but rather a fundamental one about the direction they want to take the country, with the insurgent Trump promising utter transformation.