{"id":25527,"date":"2016-04-26T08:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T15:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/at-crossroads-cruz-kasich-defend-anti-trump-pact\/"},"modified":"2016-04-26T08:00:38","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T15:00:38","slug":"at-crossroads-cruz-kasich-defend-anti-trump-pact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/at-crossroads-cruz-kasich-defend-anti-trump-pact\/","title":{"rendered":"At crossroads, Cruz, Kasich defend anti-Trump pact"},"content":{"rendered":"

BORDEN, Ind. <\/strong>\u2014 Declaring the Republican presidential contest at \u201ca fork in the road,\u201d Ted Cruz and John Kasich defended their extraordinary new alliance on Monday as the party\u2019s last, best chance to stop Donald Trump, even as the New York billionaire surged toward another big delegate haul.<\/p>\n

Trump, the Republican front-runner, lashed out at what he called collusion by desperate rivals, intensifying his attacks on the GOP presidential nomination system on the eve of today\u2019s round of primary elections in the Northeast.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you collude in business, or if you collude in the stock market, they put you in jail,\u201d Trump said as he campaigned in Rhode Island.. \u201cBut in politics, because it\u2019s a rigged system, because it\u2019s a corrupt enterprise, in politics you\u2019re allowed to collude.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows how pathetic they are,\u201d he said of his Republican rivals.<\/p>\n

Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland hold primaries Tuesday along with Rhode Island.<\/p>\n

Cruz, a Texas senator, and Kasich, the Ohio governor, announced the terms of an unprecedented agreement late Sunday night to coordinate primary strategies in three of the 15 remaining primary states.<\/p>\n

Kasich will step back in the May 3 Indiana contest to let Cruz bid without interference for voters who don\u2019t like Trump. Cruz will do the same for Kasich in subsequent contests in Oregon and New Mexico.<\/p>\n

The arrangement does not address Tuesday\u2019s primaries, where Trump is expected to add to his already hefty delegate lead. Yet the shift offers increasingly desperate Trump foes a glimmer of hope in their long and frustrating fight to keep him from amassing enough delegates to seal his nomination and avoid a contested national convention in July.<\/p>\n

Ignoring the Northeast on Monday, Cruz insisted, \u201cWe are at a fundamental fork in the road,\u201d as he campaigned in Indiana.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is big news today that John Kasich has decided to pull out of Indiana to give us a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump,\u201d the fiery conservative told reporters. \u201cThat is good for the men and women of Indiana. It\u2019s good for the country to have a clear and direct choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plan carries risks \u2014 especially as Trump bashes a \u201crigged\u201d nomination system. Some would-be Cruz supporters in Indiana agreed with Trump\u2019s criticism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s kind of sneaky,\u201d said Joe Conder, a 75-year-old retired civil engineer from Scottsville, who is deciding between Cruz and Trump. \u201cIt\u2019s more about politics than getting things done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kasich sent mixed messages as he addressed the pact for the first time while campaigning in Philadelphia. Asked what Indiana voters should do next week, the Ohio governor urged them to vote for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never told them not to vote for me. They ought to vote for me,\u201d Kasich said just 13 hours after promising to give Cruz \u201ca clear path\u201d in Indiana. He said he had simply agreed not to spend \u201cresources\u201d in Indiana.<\/p>\n

Trump is the only Republican candidate who can clinch the GOP presidential nomination before his party\u2019s national convention. Yet his path is narrow.<\/p>\n

The front-runner needs to win at least four of the five Northeastern states on Tuesday. He enters the day with 845 delegates, 392 short of the 1,237 needed to represent his party in the general election in November.<\/p>\n

Eliminated from reaching that total in the primaries, Cruz and Kasich can only hope to block Trump from reaching a majority \u2014 and a first-round convention victory \u2014 and thus force a contested convention where delegates could select a different nominee.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is now abundantly clear that nobody is getting to 1,237,\u201d Cruz declared on Monday. \u201cWe are headed to a contested convention. And at a contested convention, Donald Trump is in real trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump was also the target on the Democratic side as Hillary Clinton eyed Tuesday primary victories she hoped would all but seal her victory over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.<\/p>\n

The former secretary of state ignored Sanders as she campaigned in Delaware, assailing Trump as being out of touch with average Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to be president of the United States, you\u2019ve got to get familiar with the United States,\u201d Clinton said. \u201cDon\u2019t just fly that big jet in and land it and go make a big speech and insult everybody you can think of.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Peoples reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kathleen Ronayne in Manchester, New Hampshire, Errin Haines Whack in Philadelphia, Jill Colvin in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and Catherine Lucey in Wilmington, Delaware, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BORDEN, Ind. \u2014 Declaring the Republican presidential contest at \u201ca fork in the road,\u201d Ted Cruz and John Kasich defended their extraordinary new alliance on Monday as the party\u2019s last, best chance to stop Donald Trump, even as the New York billionaire surged toward another big delegate haul. Trump, the Republican front-runner, lashed out at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":25528,"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-25527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25527","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=25527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25527"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=25527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}