Jeb’s out and Trump triumphs

Photo+courtesy+of+Gage+Skidmore+via+Flickr

Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Yousuf Fahimuddin,
Conributor

Peyton Manning said he’d vote for him, but the endorsement of the Super Bowl champion quarterback wasn’t enough and now Jeb Bush’s out of the race.

With Bush finally out, all eyes are on three of the remaining candidates to take up the mantle of the Republican establishment and dump popular candidate Donald Trump.

Jeb was the most well funded candidate in the Republican race as he has received $152 million according to OpenSecrets, center for responsive politics. By contrast Trump has raised $27 million. Now that Jeb is out, his handlers, namely the Right to Rise Super PAC, need to pick someone else to back, but some think it’s too late.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” he believes Trump has the upper hand. “He’s got the momentum. I think there’s more [than] a 50 percent chance he’s the nominee.”

The Republican establishment is essentially now forced to face the insurgency within their party. Marco Rubio is technically a Tea Partier in mainstream politician clothes; he’s ranked as the third most conservative person in Congress and according to conservative activists Heritage Action, John Kasich isn’t viable. Exit polls suggest Trump is beating Kasich in his home state of Ohio.

Ben Carson has essentially imploded over the last few months, as reports say he’s been out of funding for about a month now. Trump has now taken three states by significant leads, including Nevada on Tuesday with 45.9 percent of the vote, cementing his status as frontrunner.

So far, according to Fox News, some former Jeb donors are flocking toward Rubio. There’s a unanimous sense amongst these donors that Rubio is the natural choice after Bush’s dropping out of the race. They cite Rubio’s electability and “vision,” meaning his demonstrated willingness to appeal to everybody and not be as divisive as Trump, as being major reasons for backing him.

“What’s happened here is that a lot of mainstream Republicans realize if they want to stop Trump, their best bet is Marco Rubio, even over Ted Cruz,” said GOP strategist Ford O’Connell to The Washington Times. “As of today, Rubio gives the Republicans the best shot of winning in November.”

The problem is there’s no longer a candidate as solidly liked and part of the establishment as Bush was, according to The Guardian. Purchasing the support of the next establishment candidate won’t be easy. Cruz is too anti-Washington and in bed with the Tea Party movement. Ultimately, wealthy donors are asking themselves if they’ll have to make a deal with their party’s devil figure, Trump.

They really only have until Super Tuesday, when 13 states will hold primaries and caucuses to decide and put some plan into action.

In the Democratic race, Bernie Sanders did much better with minority voters than expected — he polled 40 percent in Hispanic majority districts in Nevada. However he performed poorly with Black voters, polling at just 22 percent. Based on his performance with the Black electorate thus far, experts predict Hillary Clinton to win South Carolina this Saturday and the rest of the southern states on Super Tuesday, when seven southern states will have primaries.