• Donald Trump Notches More Wins, but Ted Cruz’s Victories Promise Long Race

GOP businessman and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton both maintain leads

 

Donald Trump struck a more diplomatic-sounding tone in his victory speech after winning the most states on Super Tuesday, but did fit in several shots at Marco Rubio. Photo: Getty Images

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, Oklahoma and Alaska, ensuring that the race for the GOP nomination will stretch into the spring.
The Republican front-runner won contests in at least seven states—Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia—bolstering his claim on the nomination. Still, the pockets of resistance in others gave a glimmer of hope to detractors desperate for another candidate to take on likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who rolled to a series of her own victories on Super Tuesday.
The problem for Mr. Trump’s rivals—as it has been since the voting began—is that there are too many of them for voters to coalesce behind a single alternative. In the past week, opponents have dramatically intensified their attacks on the New York billionaire after he steamrolled rivals in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

Tuesday’s results, however, reinforced Mr. Trump’s argument that he is building a durable coalition of GOP primary voters fed up with politics as usual that may bolt the party if he isn’t the nominee. “We have expanded the Republican Party,” Mr. Trump declared Tuesday night at a rally at his resort Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. “I am a unifier.”
He promised that he would work with some of the same GOP leaders in Congress, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, who have been skittish about his rise. “I’m sure I’m going to get along with him, and if I don’t, he’s going to pay a big price,” Mr. Trump said of the Wisconsin lawmaker.
In the race for the Democratic nominee, front-runner Mrs. Clinton swept the delegate-rich states of Massachusetts and Texas, as well as key Southern states. Her rival, Bernie Sanders, won in four states—Minnesota, Vermont, Oklahoma and Colorado—which offered much less of a delegate haul.
Mr. Trump’s victories Tuesday are all the more impressive because, for the first time in the race, he faced concerted attacks from his chief Republican rivals. He continues to defy the laws of presidential politics, courting controversies that few other politicians could survive.
Republicans who appreciate his candor continue to give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt even when he lands in hot water, as he did over the weekend when he seemed reluctant to reject the support of a former Ku Klux Klan leader

“I know Donald’s going to make some mistakes when he gets to Washington, but who hasn’t?” said Ducky Wall, 77, a retired golf pro from Georgia who voted for Mr. Trump. “I think he can shake things up.”
But a handful of close contests Tuesday exposed some fissures in that support, as rivals, elected officials and some of the party’s most prominent donors ganged up on the Republican who has spent much of the race insulting influential figures in the party. An anti-Trump group hosted a fundraising call Tuesday that drew some of the party’s biggest donors, including hedge-fund titan Paul Singer, a supporter of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Tuesday’s results give Mr. Cruz new grounds to argue he is the leading alternative to Mr. Trump, beating the front-runner in Alaska, Oklahoma and the Lone Star State, a month after his victory in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses. The wins reinforced Mr. Cruz’s argument that he is the only Republican who can topple Mr. Trump. But Mr. Rubio did win one state, topping Messrs. Cruz and Trump in the Minnesota GOP caucuses.
“After tonight we have seen that our campaign is the only campaign that has beaten, that can beat and that will beat Donald Trump,” Mr. Cruz said at his victory party.
Mr. Cruz benefited from voters skeptical about Mr. Trump. “I’ll weep, if he is the nominee,” said Cruz supporter Julie Earl, of McKinney, Texas, referring to Mr. Trump. Added Terry Sauls of McKinney, “He’s a Democrat in Republican boots.”

After winning the Republican primaries in Texas and Oklahoma on Super Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz says that his campaign is the only one that can beat Donald Trump. Photo: Getty Images

Tuesday marked the first chance for the remaining GOP contenders to test their strength across different segments of the electorate. Roughly 60% of Republican voters in Virginia graduated from college and support legal status for immigrants in the country illegally. In Alabama, 54% of GOP primary voters said undocumented immigrants should be deported.
The rules of the GOP nominating contests could muddy the results because most of Tuesday’s states divide delegates proportionality. The rules differ in each, but candidates that clear certain thresholds will qualify for delegates. And no candidate had yet to clear the 50% threshold in statewide balloting to claim the bulk of any one state’s delegates. The complex delegate math made it too tough to determine what share each candidate won on Tuesday.
The race now turns to a pair of swing states that are home to two of Mr. Trump’s remaining rivals—Mr. Rubio in Florida and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Mr. Trump may be able to knock either from the race by beating them on their home turf.
Questions arose late Tuesday about the viability of Messrs. Kasich and Rubio’s campaigns. On Tuesday, Mr. Rubio’s campaign manager told donors in Washington, D.C., that they were committed to going all the way to the Republican convention in Cleveland in July.
For the first time in this race, Messrs. Cruz and Rubio over the past week took on the front-runner at the same time. The two senators, along with Mr. Kasich, are trying to outlast each other to set up a head-to-head match up with Mr. Trump. Time is dwindling for a candidate other than the former reality TV star to collect enough delegates to win.
Mr. Trump’s February winning streak triggered a backlash from his rivals and other elected GOP officials petrified by the prospect of the brash billionaire topping the ticket. His detractors are desperately trying to hatch strategies to deny him the nomination, including a bruising convention fight that could alienate his supporters.

GOP Splinters Over Trump

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No Republican has been more vocal than Mr. Rubio. After spending much of the past year trying to avoid direct confrontations with his rivals for the nomination, Mr. Rubio has resorted to calling Mr. Trump a “con artist,” questioning his wealth and even suggesting the front-runner urinated on himself during the most recent candidates’ debate last Thursday night.
Mr. Trump has responded to the broadsides by referring to Mr. Rubio as “Little Marco” and dismissing his digs as a feeble attempt to claw his way back into the race. In an interview with Fox News Tuesday, Mr. Trump called on Mr. Rubio to exit the race. “I think he has to get out,” he said.
Mr. Trump found himself embroiled in a potentially more serious controversy over the weekend when he hesitated to disavow the support of David Duke, a former Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Trump eventually rejected Mr. Duke’s support and blamed his initial response on a bad earpiece during his CNN interview.
But the episode underscored Republicans’ fear that Mr. Trump may imperil GOP candidates at every level of the ballot, if primary voters make him the nominee.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton used the David Duke episode to tell a Minneapolis crowd she was “very disappointed” Mr. Trump didn’t immediately disavow the former Klan leader’s support. “I’m just speaking out against bigotry and bullying wherever I hear it,” she said. “And I hear a lot of it from the Republican candidates.”
Mr. Trump’s Republican detractors have grown louder and more strident as the front-runner gets closer to clinching the nomination. A pair of retiring GOP congressmen—Reps. Reid Ribble of Wisconsin and Scott Rigell of Virginia—joined South Carolina Rep. Mark Sanford and Florida Rep. Carlos Curbelo in vowing not to vote for Mr. Trump, even if he becomes the nominee. They followed former Republican National Committee Chairmen Mel Martinez and Ken Mehlman, among other current and former elected and party officials.
“Trump is a bully, unworthy of our nomination,” Mr. Rigell wrote his constituents on Monday night. “To live with a clear conscience, I will not support a nominee so lacking in judgment, temperament and character needed to be our commander-in-chief.”
Mr. Trump entered Super Tuesday with 82 delegates, following wins in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and a second-place finish in Iowa. Mr. Cruz was his next-closest rival, with 17, and Mr. Rubio was right on his heels, with 16. Mr. Kasich has six, and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson has five.