Divide and conquer

Four days before Donald Trump won a bevy of states in the Super Tuesday primary contests on March 1, Carol Swain shook hands with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, at a campaign event in Nashville, Tenn.

The Vanderbilt University law professor is an outspoken Christian, an African-American, and a Cruz supporter. On Twitter, Swain said she offered Cruz advice during the campaign encounter: aggressively seek support from black voters.

Two days later, former Ku Klux Klan grand master David Duke endorsed Trump for the GOP nomination.

Trump initially refused to disavow Duke’s support, though he later rejected it. By Super Tuesday, the flare-up hadn’t singed Trump’s prospects: He won the Tennessee primary by 14 points—and grabbed six other states—solidifying his position as the Republican front-runner.

If Duke’s endorsement (he told his radio listeners it would be “treason to your heritage” not to vote for Trump) brought a moment of racial tension, it also overshadowed a racial reality: In a Trump-dominated contest, the significance of the most diverse Republican field in presidential history gets scant notice.

Indeed, after Super Tuesday’s results, two Cuban-American senators (Cruz and Marco Rubio) were still battling to go head-to-head with Trump for the nomination, and an African-American neurosurgeon (Ben Carson) was still hanging around in a contest he once led.

At Rubio’s campaign events in South Carolina, he often stood arm-in-arm with Sen. Tim Scott, the U.S. Senate’s only black Republican; Nikki Haley, the state’s Indian-American governor; and Rep. Trey Gowdy, a popular white congressman from South Carolina. (Haley said the diverse lineup looked like “a Benetton commercial.”)

Meanwhile, days before Super Tuesday, Bill Owens, head of the conservative Coalition of African American Pastors, endorsed Cruz. Owens called Democratic policies “destructive” to the black community and said, “For too long, Democrats have taken the African-American vote for granted.”

While Democrats likely will win the majority of African-American and Hispanic voters in the general election—and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton won strong support from black voters in the South—Republicans could risk taking for granted a notable opportunity to make a conservative case to minorities, as the quest for a two-man race drags on.

For Trump, the protracted contest is an ideal scenario. As long as Cruz and Rubio continue splitting votes for second place, Trump can keep a comfortable first-place lead.

After Cruz grabbed victory on Super Tuesday in his home state of Texas—as well as wins in Oklahoma and Alaska—the senator had a strong case for claiming he’s the candidate to challenge Trump in a two-way race for delegates.

But Cruz still faces stiff challenges as the contests now move to more moderate states where he might find less support. His big losses in states like Alabama and Tennessee were a blow to his strategy to pick up delegates across the conservative South.

Meanwhile, Rubio picked up his first victory with a win in Minnesota and nearly claimed a victory in Virginia, giving him fuel to stay in the GOP race until the primary contest in his home state of Florida on March 15.

Polls show Rubio trailing Trump in the Sunshine State, but the senator claims he can sway voters over the next two weeks. If he doesn’t, Rubio’s quest for the nomination could end in the state that sent him to the Senate.

March 15 will also be a day of reckoning for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. The distant-fourth candidate has said if he doesn’t win his home state, he’ll drop out of the GOP race.

Some pundits point out all the candidates still have a long way to go before gaining the 1,237 delegates required to win the nomination. After Super Tuesday, The Associated Press reported Trump had 316 delegates, Cruz had 226, and Rubio had 126. (Those numbers could change as states assign delegates.)

If a three-way contest continues after March 15, another scenario arises: It’s possible no candidate will win enough delegates to claim the nomination before this summer, leading to a brokered Republican convention in Cleveland.

At least one congressman hopes the contest doesn’t drag on that long. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., penned a letter asking Cruz or Rubio to drop out of the race to create a two-man contest with a greater likelihood of preventing Trump from winning the nomination.

Franks urged the senators to “decide between yourselves” which one should drop out—a scenario that seems unlikely but highlights the urgency some Republican leaders feel about stopping Trump from winning the nomination. Still, Franks said he would support Trump if he won the GOP nod.

One Republican senator says he won’t: Ben Sasse of Nebraska said he wouldn’t vote for either Trump or Hillary Clinton in a general election. (After Super Tuesday, Clinton’s pathway to the Democratic nomination appeared wide open, though Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., pledged to stay in the race.)

Sasse, an ardent Trump critic, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “If the nation that put a man on the moon can’t do any better than nominating two fundamentally dishonest New York liberals, I think the American people deserve a better choice than that. …”

For now, Trump seems as confident as ever in his ability to continue winning: He says he has “millions and millions of people,” and there may be a basis for such braggadocio. Larry Sabato, a longtime political observer, pointed to Trump’s wins in Alabama (45 percent) and Massachusetts (50 percent) to note the “depth and breadth” of Trump’s appeal: “One would be hard-pressed to find two more dissimilar states—the Bay State is one of the strongholds of the modern Democratic Party, while the Yellowhammer State is deeply conservative,” Sabato wrote.

Trump didn’t win in one notable place: Liberty University.

Despite a controversial endorsement from President Jerry Falwell Jr. (see “Trumping Liberty”), students at the evangelical university in Lynchburg, Va., favored Rubio, who grabbed nearly 44 percent of the votes. Cruz gained 33 percent.

Trump garnered less than 8 percent.