Rubio and Kasich are a part of the "Stop Trump at any Cost" coalition of Republicans. Since Trump cannot win on the first vote at convention I think people should just get used to the idea that either Rubio or Kasich are the likely Republican nominee for President. In fact, it could be either of them as the nominee with either of them as the vice presidential nominee too. So, the fireworks at the RNC might be beyond belief if this thing really blows up in public.
Begin quote from:
Marco Rubio Campaign Urges Supporters to Back John Kasich in Ohio
| New York Times | - |
A
top aide to Senator Marco Rubio on Friday urged his supporters in Ohio
to back Gov. John Kasich in that state's primary on Tuesday, giving
fresh momentum to efforts stop Donald J. Trump a day after a debate in
which his rivals declined to take a ...
Marco Rubio Campaign Urges Supporters to Back John Kasich in Ohio
A top aide to Senator
Marco Rubio on Friday urged his supporters in Ohio to back Gov. John
Kasich in that state’s primary on Tuesday, giving fresh momentum to
efforts stop Donald J. Trump a day after a debate in which his rivals
declined to take a swing at the leading Republican presidential
candidate.
Alex Conant, Mr.
Rubio’s spokesman, made the comments in an interview with CNN. He said
that he hoped supporters of Mr. Kasich and of Senator Ted Cruz would
support Mr. Rubio in his home state primary in Florida, and that he
would suggest Mr. Rubio’s backers in Ohio do the same by supporting Mr.
Kasich there.
“I’m just stating the
obvious,” Mr. Conant said. “If you are a Republican primary voter in
Ohio and you want to defeat Donald Trump, your best chance in Ohio is
John Kasich, because John Kasich is the sitting governor, he’s very
close to Donald Trump in some of the polls there.”
He said the reverse
was true in Mr. Rubio’s home state, suggesting that supporters of Mr.
Kasich and Mr. Cruz back Mr. Rubio there.
The remarks dovetail
with a strategy proposed by Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 nominee, who
urged Republicans opposing Mr. Trump to coalesce around the leading
non-Trump candidate in upcoming nominating contests to deny the
nomination to the Manhattan businessman.
Mr. Conant said that
“John Kasich is the one candidate in Ohio that can beat Donald Trump.
That’s stating the obvious, that is indisputable.”
In a press conference
in West Palm Beach, Mr. Rubio echoed the sentiment, but did not go as
far in urging his supporters to back Mr. Kasich in Ohio.
“Clearly John Kasich
has a better chance than winning Ohio than I do,” Mr. Rubio told
reporters. And if Ohioans concluded that the best way to stop Mr. Trump
was to vote for Mr. Kasich, the Florida senator said, “I expect that’s
the decision they’ll make.”
Asked directly if he
was urging his people to vote for Mr. Kasich in Ohio, he said of his
spokesman, “I’ll leave it for John to make that argument.”
And Mr. Cruz, speaking in Orlando on Friday, dismissed the strategy, indulging in a laugh when asked about it.
“It’s the Washington
establishment’s last gasp: ‘Let’s divide things up, let’s play games,’”
Mr. Cruz said in a taped interview with Fox News. “It’s real, real
simple. How do you beat Donald Trump? You beat him.”
He argued, as he has for weeks, that he was the only candidate still capable of doing so.
Those hoping to defeat
Mr. Trump acknowledge that if he wins either Ohio or Florida, it
becomes much harder to deny him the nomination.
Matt Flegenheimer contributed reporting from Orlando.
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