Donald Trump solidified his status as the likely GOP Presidential nominee after a series of big wins last night, and establishment Republicans couldn’t be more worried.
According to Politico:
“Donald Trump greeted his dominant Super Tuesday wins with triumphant confidence, promising to unify the Republican Party and handily beat Hillary Clinton in November.
“I think that’s frankly going to be an easy race,” declared Trump from the stage of a banquet hall at Mar-a-Lago, his palatial residence and private club here, where the New York billionaire also congratulated Ted Cruz on winning Texas and dismissed Marco Rubio’s viability.
Trump’s optimism came on a night in which he once again demonstrated his strength across broad swathes of the Republican Party, winning seven of 11 Super Tuesday contests — including blowouts in Alabama and Massachusetts — and in the running to win two more by the time he left the stage on Tuesday night…
“I feel awfully good,” said Trump, flanked by 10 American flags and facing two large, artificially aged Versailles-style mirrors built into the wall at the back of the room. But many leaders of the party Trump seeks to unify did not feel so good about the day’s results…
Trump’s romp was dominant enough to alarm and depress many in the mainstream wing of the party, which was hoping that Marco Rubio would do well enough to blunt his momentum heading into the heart of the GOP primary calendar.
And though Trump appeared to be “sanding off the rough edges,” as former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau put it, of his usual sharp-edged vows to keep out Mexicans and torture America’s enemies, Republicans in key states saw their party’s new standard-bearer as a threat to their survival.”
