Clinton Wins Big, Jabs Trump's Slogan
KING: Welcome back. Let's continue the conversation. Here's the question: is there a plausible strategy for anybody but Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination? If you look at the calendar through the end of March, by the end of the month, 63 percent, 64 percent of the Republican delegates will have been chosen. So if you're going to get him, you have to do it in the next 30 days. And he's going to have -- it looks like he'll have a very big night on Tuesday. He could win everything but Texas, which would start to stretch him out. Then you get into the what I'll call the home court days. Cruz has to win on Tuesday if his home state. Then the 15th is Kasich and Rubio. At that point, are we going to get a two-map race, or Cruz isn't going to get out if he wins, right?</s>RAJU: This is such a gain of momentum, the presidential race. Even if some of these candidates are looking down the calendar and think they can do better in some of these states, Trump runs the table on Tuesday, he's going to carry a head of steam into March 8th and March 15th. It's going to be very hard to stop him, which is one reason why Chris Christie came out and endorsed Donald Trump. They don't have any sort of longstanding relationship. It's about the fact that he thinks Trump's going to win and the fact that he does not like Rubio very much, two reasons. But it really shows there's a belief now within the party establishment that Trump could be the nominee.</s>KING: A belief -- a belief and a huge debate, both publicly and privately. You've got the #NeverTrump. We have people who say, we will never vote for Donald Trump. And Marco Rubio embraced that yesterday. He wouldn't directly answer the question what if he's the nomination? He says he won't be. But you have conservatives who say never. Which begs the question, would we have a conservative independent candidacy if Trump wins the nomination? But in the meantime, you guys have a great story, as I said today, this has been building for a long time. But suddenly, the establishment wakes up and says, oh, this is real. This guy's about to succeed in a hostile takeover of our party. The Maine governor in your story is quoted at this private meeting of going crazy. We can't have Trump. We've got to stop Trump. What are we going to do to stop Trump? What, a week later, he endorsed Donald Trump, as a man of principle?</s>MARTIN: Paul LePage, who is the fascinating governor of Maine, was at the governors meeting here in Washington earlier this month and he was very fired about the fact that something must be done. We have to take on Donald Trump. This is going to be terrible for our party. Well, he's a big Chris Christie guy. And when Christie got on board late last week, LePage followed suit. There's no more revealing in the party than those ten days where Paul LePage goes from adamantly against Trump to signing up. Look, there have been folks in the party who have been sounding the alarm for months about this, who have been pleading with --</s>RAJU: Jeb Bush?</s>MARTIN: Yes, Jeb Bush.</s>PACE: Scott Walker.</s>MARTIN: Pleading with folks to raise money to try to go after Trump to create some kind of a sustained organized campaign against him. It fell on deaf ears time and time and time again. And now you've got the specter of the Senate GOP considering not just separating themselves from Trump but actively running ads against him to provide space for their own candidates who are going to be on the ballot this fall. Mitch McConnell is a very wily old pro is apparently determined to do whatever it takes to hold the majority. And that includes possibly running ads against his own party's nominee.</s>KING: What do you do at the convention? What do you do at the convention? The Republican Party is supposed to come together. Paul Ryan, the speaker of the house, is the chairman of the convention. Is he not going to --</s>HENDERSON: Yes, what does it look like?</s>PACE: Here's the problem for Republicans. Whoever they nominate doesn't solve this problem. If they go with Rubio or they go with Trump, it doesn't answer the question of what kind of party this is. You're still going to have these two disparate wings. And whoever the nominee is is going to need both of them. And if you talk about senators who were running, we were talking about this a little bit earlier. If you're Rob Portman, if you're Kelly Ayotte and Trump is the nominee, it may sound easy to run an ad against him or distance yourself from his positions, but you need that chunk of voters for support.</s>MARTIN: Totally agree.</s>PACE: But this is not as easy as it may sound.</s>KING: Right. He brings new voters to the process. His people are clearly motivated. That's what you want in an election. But you have this break. And Rubio is trying to become the vehicle for this. He's trying to say, you know, it might be late, but it's not too late. He's trying to make the case -- listen to Rubio on the campaign trail saying I'm going to do anything I can to stop Donald Trump.</s>RUBIO: He bankrupted a casino. How do you bankrupt a casino? The house always wins. He says to people, I am going to take on illegal immigration. He's the only one running for president that's ever hired illegal immigrants to work for him. The stakes are not just a fake degree. The stakes are giving control of the Party of Lincoln and Reagan, of the conservative movement and ultimately of the United States over to a con artist. That will not happen. I make this promise to you today. I will do whatever it takes. I will campaign as long as it takes.</s>MARTIN: How do you put that back in the bottle, John? How do you put that, quote, "back in the bottle" at the convention in Cleveland saying you know what? I may have called him a con artist, but now I'm on board.</s>KING: There's a couple of big questions -- there's a couple big questions. How do you campaign as long as it takes? The man saying that happens to be losing at the moment in his state of Florida to Donald Trump. So, number one for Rubio, he has to. It is imperative. He has to change that or else. Then to your point -- let's assume somebody catches steam and we get to a convention, you know, either Trump -- if Trump comes up short, the Trump delegates are going to support one of these other guys? He's still going to have a boatload of delegates.</s>HENDERSON: Yes. I mean, it looks like Rubio -- there's kind of a frantic nature to what he's doing. All of a sudden --</s>KING: Some would say desperate.</s>HENDERSON: Yes. I think Chris Christie --</s>KING: You're being kind.</s>HIENDERSON: You know, now he has a cause, right? I mean, he's leading the charge against Donald Trump. The problem is that people are rallying around Donald Trump. That he's got no "Ws" on the board. It doesn't look like he's going to win any states possibly on Super Tuesday. He's got to wait until Florida. I mean, this is the Rudy Giuliani strategy.</s>RAJU: Rubio is really sending a message to his donors that don't abandon him because he does want to stay in the race while his campaign has been saying for a long time, this is going to be a long race, and they openly float the idea of possibly a brokered convention. Actually put some wins on the board.</s>MARTIN: To get there.</s>RAJU: To get there. So, it's not enough just to make these arguments.</s>PACE: Think about this scenario: even if Trump doesn't hit the delegate total that he needs to become the nominee, if he's ahead and Rubio is somewhat significantly behind and you go into a convention, how can you argue to Trump voters who have come out and supported him and given him these states that he can't be the nominee? What does that say in the party?</s>HENDERSON: If you want to be the leader of the party that does that? I mean, do you run a general election where you've alienated these hundreds of thousands, millions of voters, who cast a ballot for Donald Trump?</s>KING: If you are a floor reporter at the Republican convention and that happens, wear a helmet. Can you imagine? You know, I -- can you imagine if Trump shows up with the most delegates but not enough to clinch, and then they try to say somebody who came in behind you --</s>HENDERSON: Right.</s>KING: If that happens -- we're getting ahead of ourselves because right now Trump is poised, we've got to stop him, slow him down first. If that were to happen, you have to be somebody who didn't lose to him. It's a kamikaze mission essentially for these guys to stop from getting the majority.</s>RAJU: I think the dream for the party establishment is Paul Ryan. I mean, we've asked him that question which he openly dismisses. So, it's really hard to see how that play out.</s>MARTIN: How do you get the people back out in the fall if you --</s>HENDERSON: You don't. You do not. You do not.</s>MARTIN: Because then you turn off the Trump supporters. Conversely, if Trump is the nominee, you raised this earlier, John, you're looking at the possibility of a third-party candidate running against, and you will see a lot of folks in this country who are conservatives who, to use the phrase of Marco Rubio, are not going to sort of enable the Party of Lincoln, the Party of Reagan basically being turned over to Donald Trump, and they're not going to vote for him.</s>KING: Yes. Conservatives are making the case now to Trump supporters saying if you stay on this path, if you help him win the nomination, you are electing Hillary Clinton. They are trying to blame Trump supporters. Well, Republicans need those votes. We're at a fascinating moment. Tuesday, if Trump runs up the score on Tuesday, it's going to put a lot of pressure on this Republican Party. Do I say, OK, fine, and back him holding your nose, or do you say, never Trump, and fight him? It's very interesting up next, though. We turn back to the Democrats. Hillary Clinton says she's subjected to a double standard. But we'll pose this question. Aren't there $150 million plus reasons she should be more open to replacing transcripts of her paid speeches?