Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton kept up their march towards presidential nomination by their respective parties, with both easily winning the Arizona primary on Tuesday, even as their rivals Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders prevailed in Utah. Sanders additionally picked up Idaho, keeping alive his campaign, despite Clinton’s virtually unbeatable delegate tally.
Given his aggressive stance against illegal immigration, Trump was widely predicted to capture Arizona, the key winner-take-all State along the US-Mexico border, just as Cruz was expected to win the Utah caucuses. Trump picked up Arizona’s all 58 delegates and Cruz collected Utah’s all 40 delegates.
After this latest round, Trump leads the delegates table with 738, followed by Cruz’s 463 and John Kasich’s 143. Trump still needs another 499 delegates to reach the magic figure of 1,237 to clinch the nomination.
Cruz, meanwhile, is garnering more and more support from the Republican establishment, with former Florida Governor and presidential hopeful Jeb Bush endorsing the hardcore Senator on Wednesday. In recent days, Cruz has won the backing of 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, South Carolina’s Indian-American Governor Nikki Haley and Senator lindsey Graham.
Anxious to stop Trump’s march, Bush came up with his endorsement of Cruz, saying: “Ted is a consistent, principled conservative who has demonstrated the ability to appeal to voters and win primary contests…For the sake of our party and country, we must move to overcome the divisiveness and vulgarity Donald Trump has brought into the political arena, or we will certainly lose our chance to defeat the Democratic nominee and reverse President Obama’s failed policies.”
In the backdrop of Tuesday’s terror attacks in Brussels, some analysts believe that Trump’s sharp rhetoric against ISIS and his strong advocacy of torture of terror suspects may well boost his prospects in the remaining primaries.
Just hours after the attack, Trump renewed his call for torture methods to extract vital information from terror suspects caught by the Belgian authorities in recent days. He went on to say that that Tuesday’s attacks could have been thwarted if tools like waterboarding had been used on Salah Abdeslam, the Paris attacks suspect who was caught by the Belgian authorities last week.
Cruz does not support waterboarding, but he came up with a call to step up policing of Muslim neighbourhoods in the US in the wake of the Brussels attacks. And Trump wasted no time to endorse his rival’s suggestion.
On the Democratic side, Clinton dismissed the extreme torture methods advocated by Trump as ineffective, commenting: “We have to be absolutely strong and smart and steady in how we respond. We’ve got to work this through consistent with our values.”
Speaking after her Arizona victory, Clinton attacked Trump, calling him a “demagogue” who was “inciting bigotry and violence”. “We live in a complex and dangerous world, and we need a commander-in-chief who can provide leadership that is strong, smart and above all, steady,” she said. Sanders, reflecting on the day’s results, said: “These decisive victories in Idaho and Utah give me confidence that we will continue to win major victories in the coming contests.”