Trump takes commanding lead, but rivals stay alive in GOP race

Donald Trump won primaries in Georgia, Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee and Massachusetts on Tuesday as he looked to shut down the Republican presidential contest and turn to the general election fight against Democrats.

But Texas Sen. Ted Cruz won his home state and neighboring Oklahoma. And in Vermont, early returns showed Ohio Gov. John Kasich running a close second to Trump.

Trump's rivals hope they can thwart the billionaire insurgent and keep the GOP race alive as it heads into a series of big-state contests starting next week in Michigan.

The cross-country Super Tuesday balloting, from Vermont to Alaska, marked the single biggest day of the 2016 primary season. At stake were 595 delegates in 11 states, or close to half the number needed to secure the GOP nomination at the party's convention in July.

Early returns showed a disappointing electoral map for Marco Rubio, whose best showing was second place in Virginia. Speaking to supporters in Miami, the Florida senator pressed ahead with his case that Trump is a 'con artist.”

'We are going to send a message that the party of Lincoln and Reagan and the presidency of the United States will never be held by a con artist,” Rubio said, predicting his first victory in the March 15 Florida primary.

Once more, signs of an angry electorate abounded.

In Georgia and Alabama, nearly 6 in 10 Republican voters said they felt betrayed by their own party leaders, according to exit poll interviews.

At least half the voters across the 11 states said they believed the next president should be from outside the political establishment, a dynamic that has boosted Trump throughout his improbable presidential run.

The sprawling competition also ushered in a rapid-fire, more expansive phase of the presidential race, with major contests scheduled in the next two weeks in big states including Michigan, Florida, Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina.

With so much ground to cover and so little time, every candidate but Trump - with his command of a national audience - had to make tactical decisions.

Cruz focused mainly on carrying his home state to avoid a campaign-crippling loss in Texas. He also hoped to grab a win in neighboring Arkansas.

Rubio hopscotched among states, picking up Super Tuesday endorsements - from Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchison, former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty - as he sought to rally the party establishment behind him as the stop-Trump candidate.

Kasich, after briefly eyeing his prospects in Vermont, Massachusetts and other more moderate states, set his sights on hanging on until the March 15 primary in his home state.

The fifth candidate still running, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, was not a serious factor in any of the contests.

Trump, the overwhelming front-runner, campaigned as he has throughout the race, swooping into states for big rallies and dominating the discussion by nabbing his first major endorsements - among them New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions - and targeting his opponents, especially Rubio, with a series of scathing personal attacks.

He also weathered yet another controversy after failing to disavow the endorsement of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in a Sunday morning interview on CNN. Trump distanced himself from Duke a day later, saying a 'lousy earpiece” kept him from properly hearing the questions on CNN.

None of that seemed to matter to voters like Texan Shelly Wells, who spurned her home-state senator to vote for Trump.

'He can get things done,” said Wells, 59, an accountant with an oil field services company, after casting her ballot in Katy, a Houston suburb hard hit by the recent decline in oil prices. 'He's the man who can get the job done and change this back to America instead of a third-world country.”

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With candidates fighting for survival, an already harsh campaign assumed an even sharper, meaner and more personal edge. At times, it seemed downright bizarre.

Cruz leveled unsubstantiated charges that Trump had Mafia connections. Trump attacked Rubio over his propensity to perspire. Rubio questioned both Trump's temperament and bladder control.

But the Florida senator, who began his campaign vowing to be an upbeat messenger, did not seem altogether comfortable slipping into Trump mode. He spent days calling him a con man and hypocrite, mocked his 'spray tan” and even made fun of his anatomical attributes.

Then Rubio abruptly changed his tone at a Super Tuesday-eve rally in Oklahoma. When someone in the crowd shouted, 'Donald Trump has small hands!” - picking up on a Rubio double-entendre - the candidate demurred.

'We're not talking about that today,” Rubio said. 'I want this to be a serious election.”