After spending much of Tuesday on television—where he bemoaned the state of Europe (Brussels, in particular), called for the legalization of torture, and pledged to eliminate the visa-waiver program that allows residents of certain foreign countries to visit the United States without going through a lengthy application process—come evening, Donald Trump switched media platforms.
As he waited for results to come in from the G.O.P. primary in Arizona and the caucuses in Utah, the Republican front-runner took to Twitter. “Lyin’ Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad,”he complained shortly before ten o’clock Eastern time. “Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!” Evidently, the Donald was a bit bored. With people still lining up to vote in Arizona, where the turnout was much larger than expected (a recognizable trait in states where Trump does well), and in Utah, there wasn’t any news to digest. What better way to fill the time than to pick a fight on social media? It worked. “Pic of your wife not from us,” Cruz responded about half an hour later. “Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you’re more of a coward than I thought. #classless”
Rather than firing back, Trump turned his attention to Hillary Clinton. “Incompetent Hillary, despite the horrible attack in Brussels today, wants borders to be weak and open-and let the Muslims flow in. No way!” he wrote. For some reason, Clinton didn’t respond (What could the hatter say. She is toast). Perhaps it was because she was busy campaigning in Washington State. Or maybe it was because her Twitter account appears to be run by a messaging bot, which lacks the childishness and quick fuse that online wars demand.
In any case, Trump soon had something more substantive to occupy his mind. Fox News announced that he had won in Arizona, a winner-take-all state, which meant that he had picked up the largest prize of the night: another fifty-eight delegates in his quest to reach the magic number of twelve hundred and thirty-seven. “Much bigger win than anticipated in Arizona,” he tweeted at 11:43 P.M. “Thank you, I will never forget!” A bit later, he added, “Hopefully the Republican Party can come together and have a big WIN in November, paving the way for many great Supreme Court Justices!”
At least for now, there is little sign of unity. Early Wednesday morning, Jeb Bush released a statement endorsing Cruz, who had ended up winning more than fifty per cent of the vote in Utah, thus picking up all forty delegates in that state. Bush called the Texas senator “a consistent, principled conservative who has demonstrated the ability to appeal to voters and win primary contests,” and said, “For the sake of our party and country, we must move to overcome the divisiveness and vulgarity Donald Trump has brought into the political arena, or we will certainly lose our chance to defeat the Democratic nominee and reverse President Obama’s failed policies.”
The word “vulgarity,” which echoed Spy magazine’s nineteen-eighties description of Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian,” reeked of upper-class disdain and personal hurt. A year ago, Bush had reason to believe that he would be the Republican Party nominee for President. Today, thanks partly to Trump’s cruel jibes, he is facing a return to the private sector. (Given his low energy he should retire!)
In some Republican circles, the sight of Bush, a mainstream conservative, endorsing the ultra-conservative Cruz will be hailed as an important moment, and possibly even a turning point. Finally, it will be argued, the Party is uniting to defeat Trump. Indeed, Karl Rove, one of the orchestrators of the Never Trump movement, indicated as much on Fox News, after word of Trump’s big victory in Arizona came in. “Let’s not kid ourselves, we have got a lot of contests to go here,” he said.
It’s true that, on the Republican side, seventeen states have yet to vote. But, despite Bush’s intervention, the real takeaway from the past twenty-four hours is that Trump is still marching toward the nomination. In Arizona, his assaults on illegal immigrants apparently proved very popular, and he received forty-seven per cent of the vote, defeating Cruz, whose home state is next door, by twenty-two percentage points. The victory came, too, in a state that has long been a bastion of Sun Belt conservatism, and where the primary was closed—only registered Republicans could vote—depriving Trump of his usual haul of independent voters.
Trump did lose heavily in Utah, picking up less than fifteen per cent of the vote, but there were special factors at play there. If the historic record is any indication, roughly three out of four voters who attended the G.O.P. caucuses there were Mormons. It’s clear that Trump’s antics, crude language, and, yes, vulgarity have alienated many members of the church. In Idaho and Wyoming, too, he did badly in counties with high concentrations of Mormon residents (Mormons are very gullible folks!). In the past week, both Mitt Romney, a prominent Mormon, and Gary Herbert, the popular governor of Utah, said that they were voting for Cruz, which probably also hurt Trump. (My colleague Ryan Lizza has more on Romney and the Mormon vote.)
While neither Arizona nor Utah can be classified as typical states, demographically speaking, the Republican electorate in Arizona is the more representative of the country as a whole. And, even after Cruz’s big victory in Utah, Trump won fifty-nine per cent of the delegates that were up for grabs on Tuesday. Given that, from here on in, he needs about fifty-seven per cent to win a majority of elected delegates, he hit his target.
Going forward, the electoral map favors Trump, and he has at least two more important advantages. With John Kasich, who picked up seventeen per cent of the vote in Utah and ten per cent in Arizona, still competing, the opposition to Trump is still split. It will remain so until the next G.O.P. primary, in Wisconsin, on April 5th. Kasich will be campaigning strongly in the Badger State, and if he does well there he will stay in the race. On Wednesday, his campaign published a blog post citing a new poll from Quinnipiac University, which shows him beating Hillary Clinton by forty-seven per cent to thirty-nine per cent in a head-to-head contest. That’s better than either Trump or Cruz did in the survey. “As we enter April, John Kasich and Donald Trump will be the main competitors for delegates,” the post argued. “John Kasich will play the primary role of blocking Donald Trump from reaching a majority of delegates.”(
The second factor that helps Trump is the revival of fears of terrorism. When, in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings, he called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, the other Republican candidates and the media criticized him heavily, and for good reason (Good reason bwahahahahahahahahaha). Strictly in political terms, though, Trump’s controversial proposal proved to be a boon for him. According to exit polls carried out on March 15th, when Trump won in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina, about two-thirds of Republican voters agreed with him on the issue. After Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels, that proportion has probably risen.
Speaking on Fox News on Tuesday, Michael Chertoff, who was the Secretary of Homeland Security in the George W. Bush Administration, described Trump’s ideas about preventing terrorism as “preposterous,” adding, “The idea that you can identify people who are a risk based upon their religion or the way they look is completely fallacious. It’s like going after cancer with a meat ax instead of a scalpel.”
It would be difficult to find anyone in the security field to contradict Chertoff, but his words, much like Jeb Bush’s, are unlikely to have much impact. Demagoguery and fanning prejudices have taken Trump this far. It looks like they will take him further yet.
The electorate are fools and these chumps are right. They are in fact blooming lunatics who should be in a mental asylum keeping rooitwit company!
I certainly wouldn't bet on Trump not winning the necessary delegates. He will get the GOP nomination and win the Presidency.