4 hot news today Thursday 3 March 2016

super tuesday results

Alabama Alaska Arkansas Georgia Massachusetts Minnesota Oklahoma Tennessee Texas Vermont Virginia Delegates
Republicans 50 delegates 28 40 76 42 38 43 58 155 16 49 (March 2)

Donald J Trump 43% 34% 33% 39% 49% 21% 28% 39% 27% 33% 35% 285 (+203)

Ted Cruz 21% 36% 31% 24% 10% 29% 34% 25% 44% 10% 17% 161 (+144)

Marco Rubio 19% 15% 25% 25% 18% 37% 26% 21% 18% 19% 32% 87 (+71)

John Kasich 4% 4% 4% 6% 18% 6% 4% 5% 4% 30% 9% 25 (+19)

Ben Carson 10% 11% 6% 6% 3% 7% 6% 8% 4% 4% 6% 8 (+3)

1,237 to win

Alabama Alaska Colorado Georgia Massachusetts Minnesota Oklahoma Tennessee Texas Vermont Virginia Delegates
Democrats 60 delegates 37 79 116 116 93 42 76 252 26 110 (March 2)

Hillary Clinton 78% 66% 40% 71% 50% 38% 42% 66% 65% 14% 64% 544 (+453)

Bernie Sanders 19% 30% 59% 28% 49% 62% 52% 32% 33% 86% 35% 349 (+284)
2,383 to win
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON Democrats are falling

in line. Republicans are falling apart.
The most consequential night of As Trump rolls up dential nominee, Senator Ben Sasse, a
Republican from Nebraska, just wrote
an open letter to Mr Trumps support-

voting so far in the presidential cam-
paign crystallised, in jarring and pow-
erful fashion, the remarkably diver-
gent fortunes of the two major parties
vying for the White House.
The steady and seemingly inexora-
ble unification of the Democratic Par-
ty behind Mrs Hillary Clinton stands
in striking contrast with the rancour-
ous and widening schisms within the
Republican Party over the dominance
of Mr Donald Trump, who swept con-
tests from the North-east to the Deep
South yesterday.
Now, as the parties gaze ahead to
the autumn, they are awakening to the
advantages of consensus and the per-
ils of chaos.
If the Republican Party were an
airplane, and you were looking out a
passenger window, you would see sur-
face pieces peeling off and wonder if
one of the wings or engines was next,
said Mr Tim Pawlenty, the former
Governor of Minnesota and a Repub-
lican candidate for President in 2012.
Even as he rolled up commanding
victories in seven states yesterday,
Mr Trump confronted a loud and
persistent refusal to rally around
him as leading figures in his own par-
ty denounced his slow disavowal of
white supremacists, elected officials
boldly discouraged constituents from
backing him, and lifelong Republicans
declared that they would boycott the
election if he is their nominee.
I could not in good conscience vote
for Trump under any circumstance,
said Mr Blake Lichty. If this becomes
the Trump Party, were going to lose
a lot of people, he added.
victories, Republican
split widens to a chasm
Not since the rupture of 1964, when
conservatives seized power from their
moderate rivals and nominated Bar-
ry Goldwater of Arizona, has a major
party faced such a crisis of identity.
History is repeating itself, said
historian Richard Norton Smith. The
party changed then as permanently
and profoundly as can be in politics,
effectively becoming two parties.
Even as Mr Trumps performance
yesterday illustrated his strength,
Senator Ted Cruzs success in Texas,
Oklahoma and Alaska underscored
the broader Republican dilemma:
There is no consensus among Repub-
licans about who could be Mr Trumps
most formidable opponent, and there
is probably not enough time for one
to emerge.
The cultural and ideological fis-
sures opening in the party could take
a generation to patch, according to
Republican leaders, historians and
strategists and many are convinced
that Mr Trump will guarantee Demo-
crats another four years in the White
House.
Nominating Donald Trump would
be the best gift the Republican Par-
ty could give to Hillary Clinton, said
MrBobby Jindal, a former Louisiana
Governor, in an interview.
Democrats are now poised to
e xploit a fortuitous intersection of
forces: An improving economy with
low unemployment; a Democratic
President with a nearly 50 per cent
approval rating; a Supreme Court
battle in which Republicans are
energising liberal voters with vows
of obstruction; and now, what is likely
to be a relatively smooth nomination
process that will give Mrs Clinton a
chance to bring together the partys
disparate strands.
Officials in both parties acknowl-
edge that Democrats are now better
positioned to capture the presidency
in November. The Democrats are
having a loud squabble, but the par-
ty is broadly unified behind certain
themes, said Democratic strategist
David Axelrod.
I think its a The Republicans are engaged in a
sad day for the full-out civil war, fundamentally riven
Republican by mistrust, and it is very hard to see
Party. If he how they put the pieces back together
(Trump) were once this fight is done.
the nominee, With every nasty turn of the
I would R epublican nominating contest,
probably vote MrsClintons position seems to
for Hillary. strengthen. Day by day, the anti-
Mr David Phillips Trump forces are marshalling, vow-
an executive ing to drag the primary process out
recruiter and until the convention in July.
longtime Republican
from Avon, In an ex traordinar y show of
Connecticut defiance towards a potential presi-
ers, explaining why he could not sup-
port the real estate mogul should he
become the partys nominee. I sin-
cerely hope we select one of the oth-
er GOP candidates, wrote MrSasse
using the acronym for the Republican
Party. But if Donald Trump ends up
as the nominee, conservatives will
need to find a third option.
But any move to deny Mr Trump
the nomination risks further provok-
ing the angry movement that he has
ignited.
Ms Heather Cox Richardson, a
Boston College professor and the au-
thor of a new history of the Republi-
can Party, predicts a violent rupture
that cleaves the party in two: A hard-
line conservatism, as embodied by
Mr Pat Buchanan, Mr Newt Gingrich
and MrTrump; and an old-fashioned
strain of moderate Republicanism that
recalls Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Ei-
senhower and Nelson Rockefeller. It is
going to be really ugly, she said.
For n ow, t h e r e v u l s i on for
MrTrump could produce a nightmare
scenario for Republicans on Election
Day: Abandonment by rank-and-file
voters who, like a growing number
of party leaders, cannot stomach the
concept of the mogul as their stand-
ard-bearer.
I think its a sad day for the Repub-
lican Party, said Mr David Phillips,
an executive recruiter and longtime
Republican from Avon, Connecticut,
who called Mr Trump a tremendous
divider.
If he were the nominee, he said,
reluctantly, I would probably vote for
Hillary. THE NEW YORK TIMES