The hope of Republicans who seek to stop Donald Trump is that as the GOP presidential field shrinks, Trump’s strongest opponents will grab a larger and larger share of the vote until finally, in a one-on-one confrontation, the last remaining Trump alternative — Marco Rubio, most likely — will finally banish Trump. The theory is that Rubio will consolidate his vanquished rivals’ support while Trump bumps up against a “ceiling,” that is, the prohibitively large number of voters who find him unacceptable and whose votes he has no chance of winning.
Trump’s victory in Nevada, his third in a row, suggests there could be a problem with the plan. In the smallest field yet — five candidates — Trump’s share of the vote rose to 45.9 percent, his highest ever. If he has a ceiling, at least in Nevada, it is higher than earlier thought.
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As he did at his South Carolina victory speech last Saturday, Trump mocked the anti-Trump scenario. “Tomorrow you’ll be hearing, you know, if they could just take the other candidates and add them up … the other candidates amount to 55 percent,” Trump told a celebrating audience at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. “They keep forgetting that when people drop out, we’re going to get a lot of votes.”
Meanwhile, Rubio and Ted Cruz finished in a distant second and third place in Nevada, within a few points of each other and far ahead of John Kasich and Ben Carson. True to form, Rubio’s and Cruz’s first instinct upon getting shellacked by Trump was to attack each other.
First, Cruz’s communications shop sent out an email headlined, “Nevada, Rubio’s Firewall: The Place Where He Would Win Big.” The email quoted a story from National Review two months ago that reported, “Marco Rubio is going all in to win Nevada. Though the Florida senator has eschewed the idea that he needs to hunker down in any particular state, his campaign has quietly and steadily poured resources into the Silver State …”
A few minutes later, Team Rubio sent out an email headlined, “Cruz Went Big In Nevada.” It pointed out the money Cruz spent in the state — $807,463, counting campaign and Super PAC — and said, “Check how much Senator Cruz and his allies invested into Nevada for the past year in the air and on the ground, only to be rejected yet again.”
In a strategy that appears insane to outsiders but seems to make perfect sense to campaign strategists, Rubio and Cruz kept shooting at each other while Trump ran away with the race. It’s unclear whether the two senators will keep it up at the Republican debate in Houston Thursday, the last debate before Super Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Trump is showing a new focus on the upcoming contests that give him an opportunity to kill Cruz in Texas, Rubio in Florida, and Kasich in Ohio, one by one. “We’ve had some great numbers coming out of Texas,” Trump said. “And amazing numbers coming out of Tennessee, and Georgia, and Arkansas, and then in a couple of weeks later, Florida. We love Florida. We’re going to do very well in Ohio. We’re beating the governor. That’s good. It’s always nice to be beating the governor.”
By the end of the evening, it was clearer than ever that Trump is aiming to win the nomination, while his rivals are aiming at each other. With a landslide victory in New Hampshire, a double-digit win in South Carolina, and now another big win in Nevada, Trump is systematically closing the door on what could be his opponents’ last chance to stop him.
