Cruz & Rubio Gang-up on Trump on Debate Stage in Last Ditch Bid
Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio cornered Donald Trumps in the last GOP debate before Super Tuesday
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U.S. Republican rivals Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz ganged up on front-runner Donald Trump at a raucous debate on Thursday in a last-ditch bid to keep the billionaire from winning victories next week that could set him up to clinch the presidential nomination.
The CNN-hosted debate at the University of Houston was the two first-term senators’ last chance to try to shake up the race for the Republican nomination. The contest is dramatically shifting toward Trump, who is leading in opinion polls in nearly all 11 states set to make their choices on next Tuesday.
Rubio and Cruz landed blows on Trump, took some withering fire in return and may wonder why they did not pursue such a strategy in the debates of past weeks and months when former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, now out of the race, was the lead Trump attacker.
A confident-sounding Trump was unbowed and dismissed the attacks from his center-stage position. He declared Rubio a “choke artist” for a faltering debate in New Hampshire, again labeled Cruz “a liar” and urged his rivals to take their best shot.
Rubio, who got some momentum with a second-place finish to Trump in South Carolina last Saturday and has picked up some Bush supporters, gave his most aggressive performance to date. The senator from Florida wants to be the last Trump opponent standing and perhaps stretch the contest to the Republican nominating convention in July.
He brought up Trump’s four past bankruptcies and his use of imported Polish workers to work at a Florida resort, and pointedly suggested the New Yorker would not be where he is today in the real estate business without a family inheritance.
Significantly, Rubio sought to raise doubts about the depth of Trump’s policy knowledge, a point of attack that Trump’s critics in the Republican establishment have been urging candidates to pursue for months.
When Trump repeated the same point twice, Rubio interrupted.
“Now he’s repeating himself,” said the senator, who was skewered at a debate in New Hampshire last month for robotically repeating his talking points.
Cruz, who needs to win his home state of Texas when it votes on Tuesday, also piled on Trump, saying his rival would be a weak Republican opponent to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the November 8 general election because he had donated to the Clinton Foundation founded by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
Trump ridiculed Cruz for his inability to win more than the early voting state of Iowa and taunted him for being behind Trump in opinion polls in Texas. Since a second-place finish in Iowa, Trump has won New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
Even with his bombast, Trump turned in a more measured performance than usual, defending his moderate positions on Planned Parenthood and retaining popular parts of the Obamacare law, perhaps mindful that he is closing in on a victory in the Republican race.
So far Trump leads the race with 81 delegates, with Cruz and Rubio well behind at 17 apiece. To secure the nomination, a candidate needs 1,237 delegates.
Super Tuesday will be critical because there are nearly 600 delegates at stake in Republican races that day.
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