Nevada has weighed in.
Donald J. Trump scored big. Yuuuuge! He won the state’s Republican caucus last night. He’s now being touted by some in the media as the “presumptive” GOP presidential nominee.
Not so fast.
We’ve got a big election date coming up. I won’t predict how it all shakes out, but this could turn out to be the “last stand” of the party’s brass that seeks to derail the Trump Express.
Twelve states are going to the polls. Republicans are taking part in all the primaries. They’re going to award a huge trove of delegates to this summer’s GOP convention in Cleveland.
Oh yeah. Texas is one of them.
The states are mostly scattered through the south and east. Alaska’s voting, too.
So, what happens if Trump runs the table on March 1?
Game over. That’s what the “experts” say.
An interesting debate occurred this morning on one of the cable news shows. It involved discussion over why U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — one of the three leading contenders for the nomination — won’t unload on Trump. He instead aims his political fire at U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. The question being kicked around was whether Rubio is either afraid of how Trump would respond or if he’s angling for a vice-presidential spot in the event that Trump actually wins the presidential nomination.
I cannot pretend to get into the mind of the young man from Florida.
It’s do or die for two other candidates: Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. That’s a given and hardly qualifies as a huge scoop here.
As an interested observer of these things, though, I am going to await the GOP result with decidedly mixed feelings.
I told a friend of mine this morning in an e-mail message that I shudder to think that Republican primary voters have devalued the “essence of the presidency” so much that they actually would nominate a crass, callow, foul-mouthed blowhard to represent their party in an election to elect our head of state.
I won’t predict what they’ll do next Tuesday. Whatever it is, we’d better prepare ourselves for a major political eruption.