Donald Trump consolidated his status as the Republican presidential front-runner, winning the South Carolina primary in style on Saturday night, even as Jeb Bush bowed out unceremoniously from the race after yet another disappointing finish.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton bounced back after her huge defeat in New Hampshire by winning the Nevada caucuses in a contest with Senator Bernie Sanders that proved to be much closer than had been predicted till a couple of weeks ago.
Polling 32.5 per cent of the votes, Trump won decisively by a 10 per cent margin, disproving those who thought that his face-off with Pope Francis would cost him dearly in a deeply religious State like South Carolina.
Marco Rubio, who got a timely boost with Indian-American Governor Nikki Haley endorsing him, managed to finish second with 22.5 per cent, narrowly overcoming fellow-Senator Ted Cruz who polled 22.3 per cent.
From the look of things, the Republican race is now all set to be a triangular affair involving Trump, Rubio and Cruz, with two other remaining contestants, Ohio Governor John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, expected to fade out in due course.
Bush’s exit from the race was not unexpected. Yet there was a suddenness to it, brought on by the fact that he not only failed to finish a decent second or third in South Carolina, but ended way behind as a distant fourth with a mere 7.8 per cent, followed by Kasich’s 7.6 per cent and Carson’s 7.2 per cent.
For someone who had started out as the presumed Republican front-runner a year ago and raised $150 million, with pundits even projecting a possible Jeb-Hillary battle at that time, Bush’s decline had been continuous and painful. His belated bid to tap his brother, George W. Bush, and mother, Barbara Bush, failed to turn things around for him.
One of the early victims of Trump’s aggressive campaign, dubbing him a “low-energy” individual, Bush made an emotional speech on Saturday night as he quit the race. “The people of Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina have spoken and I really respect their decision, so tonight I am suspending my campaign,” he announced. Both his wife, Columba, and mother did not want him to run, but he opted to take the plunge.
Trump, brimming with a new-found confidence, disagreed with pundits who felt the going would be increasingly tough for him in a narrowing Republican field. Those “geniuses”, he commented, don’t understand that as people drop out, he would also be getting a lot of those votes.
Even while revelling in the back-to-back victory, Trump conceded that running for president is a hard business. “It’s tough, it’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s vicious,” adding in the same breath: “It’s beautiful. When you win, it’s beautiful.”
Clinton, meanwhile, had reasons to heave a big sigh of relief as she overcame a spirited challenge from Sanders in Nevada, winning 52.7 per cent to 47.2 per cent.
“The truth is we aren’t a single-issue country,” Clinton said in her victory speech, painting Sanders as someone who spends all his time railing against an egregious Wall Street. “We need more than a plan for the big banks, the middle class needs a raise and we need more jobs,” Clinton said, asserting she is better equipped to deliver on these fronts.
Sanders, however, took the Nevada setback in his stride, commenting: “We have come a very long way in nine months. The wind is at our backs. We have the momentum. And I believe that when Democrats assemble in Philadelphia in July at that convention, we are going to see the results of one of the great political upsets in the history of the United States.”