{"id":25177,"date":"2016-03-10T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T17:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/with-fresh-momentum-trump-tells-gop-to-embrace-his-bid\/"},"modified":"2016-03-10T09:00:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T17:00:25","slug":"with-fresh-momentum-trump-tells-gop-to-embrace-his-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/with-fresh-momentum-trump-tells-gop-to-embrace-his-bid\/","title":{"rendered":"With fresh momentum, Trump tells GOP to embrace his bid"},"content":{"rendered":"

FORT MYERS, Fla. <\/strong>\u2014 His party in chaos, a conciliatory Donald Trump pleaded with mainstream Republicans to unify behind his candidacy on Wednesday as his White House rivals seized on their last best opportunity to block the billionaire businessman from building an insurmountable delegate lead in two key states.<\/p>\n

The often-brash Trump softened his tone hours after securing another three primary victories, praising House Speaker Paul Ryan as a man he respects and encouraging Mitt Romney to promote party unity. The comments marked a sharp reversal in tone, if not substance, from a week earlier when Trump hurled insults at his party\u2019s 2012 presidential ticket.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of fighting it, they should embrace it,\u201d Trump said of his candidacy in a Wednesday interview with Fox News Channel. \u201cIf we embrace what\u2019s happening and if everybody came together … nobody could beat the Republican Party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amid the growing resistance to Trump\u2019s insurgent campaign, a number of former GOP presidential hopefuls have re-emerged in support of his current rivals. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush planned to meet with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on Wednesday, and has scheduled meetings with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Thursday \u2014 but not Trump \u2014 Kristy Campbell, Bush\u2019s former campaign spokeswoman, told the Associated Press. She did not outline any details of the planned meetings.<\/p>\n

Bush and Trump engaged in heated confrontations throughout Bush\u2019s campaign, the two repeatedly referring to each other as \u201closer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cruz intensified his own bid to blunt Trump\u2019s momentum, unveiling on Wednesday an endorsement from former rival, retired business executive Carly Fiorina, who offers Cruz an immediate dose of credibility with his party\u2019s skeptical donor class.<\/p>\n

Acknowledging many mainstream Republicans fear Cruz is too conservative, Fiorina told a Miami crowd that she\u2019s \u201chorrified\u201d by Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are two sides of the same coin,\u201d she charged. \u201cIt is time now to unite behind the one man who can beat Donald Trump, who can beat Hillary Clinton.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the competing calls for unity suggest, the Republican Party\u2019s 2016 contest is far from settled a week before high-stakes contests in Florida and Ohio that could finish off home-state candidates Marco Rubio and John Kasich or resurrect their anemic candidacies.<\/p>\n

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders surprised front-runner Hillary Clinton with a win Tuesday night in Michigan, a victory that breathed new life into his White House bid and forecast a longer Democratic contest. But Clinton, who won Mississippi, padded her delegate lead and is now halfway to the number needed to clinch the nomination.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Tuesday\u2019s contests in Michigan, Mississippi, Idaho and Hawaii signaled bad news for Republican officials across the country who fear that both Trump and Cruz \u2014 the day\u2019s only GOP winners \u2014 are wholly unelectable in a general election. While Fiorina\u2019s endorsement was noteworthy, many Republican leaders hoped Rubio would emerge as the face of the party given his ability to expand the GOP\u2019s appeal beyond its traditional base of older, white men.<\/p>\n

Yet Rubio suffered another brutal drubbing Tuesday, failing to finish better than a distant third in any of the four elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Republican establishment is in its death throes,\u201d said longtime tea party leader Mark Meckler. \u201cThe only remaining candidates are 100 percent anti-establishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Desperately trying to put the focus back on Clinton, the Republican National Committee on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit against the Obama administration to force the release of additional communication between Clinton\u2019s State Department, her campaign and senior aides.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this administration claims to be the \u2018most transparent in history,\u2019 and Clinton the \u2018most transparent person in public life,\u2019 then they should prove it, release these records, and allow the American people to hold her accountable,\u201d RNC chairman Reince Priebus said.<\/p>\n

Yet the 2016 conversation focused largely on Republican infighting on Wednesday as the fight to stop Trump shifted to five states that will vote next Tuesday \u2014 none bigger than Florida and Ohio.<\/p>\n

Trump has won and 15 of 24 Republican nominating contests so far but he still must do better to win the nomination before the GOP\u2019s national convention this summer.<\/p>\n

His lead over Cruz grew by only 15 delegates Tuesday. That\u2019s because all four states awarded delegates proportionally, so even the second-place finisher got some. In the overall race for delegates, Trump has 458 and Cruz has 359. Rubio has 151 delegates and Kasich has 54.<\/p>\n

It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.<\/p>\n

For Democrats, Clinton has accumulated 1,221 delegates and Sanders 571, including superdelegates. Democrats need 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.<\/p>\n

The delegate math highlights the importance of primaries in states like Ohio and Florida, which allocate all of their delegates to the winner.<\/p>\n

While Trump Rubio are calling for party unity on the campaign trail, there was little evidence either had reached out to Republican leaders on Capitol Hill they\u2019d have to work with as president.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had my phone on, but nobody\u2019s called,\u201d said Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., when asked if Trump or Cruz had contacted him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked to him once, a couple years ago,\u201d Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said of Trump.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Bustos reported from Miami. AP writers Donna Cassata, Alan Fram and Andrew Taylor in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FORT MYERS, Fla. \u2014 His party in chaos, a conciliatory Donald Trump pleaded with mainstream Republicans to unify behind his candidacy on Wednesday as his White House rivals seized on their last best opportunity to block the billionaire businessman from building an insurmountable delegate lead in two key states. The often-brash Trump softened his tone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-25177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25177"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=25177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}