Trump all but clinches US nomination with Indiana win

Trump all but clinches US nomination with Indiana win

Donald Trump speaks at his Indiana primary night event at Trump Tower in New York May 3. (New York Times photo)
Donald Trump speaks at his Indiana primary night event at Trump Tower in New York May 3. (New York Times photo)

Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday with a landslide win in Indiana that drove his principal opponent, senator Ted Cruz, from the race and cleared the way for the polarising, populist outsider to take control of the party.

After months of sneering dismissals and expensive but impotent attacks from Republicans fearful of his candidacy, Mr Trump is now positioned to clinch the required number of delegates for the nomination by the last day of voting on June 7. Facing only a feeble challenge from governor John Mr Kasich of Ohio, Mr Trump is all but certain to roll into the Republican convention in July with the party establishment's official, but uneasy, embrace.

Mr Trump's victory was an extraordinary moment in American political history: He is now on course to be the first standard-bearer of a party since Dwight D Eisenhower, a five-star general and the commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, who had not served in elected office.

Mr Trump, a real estate tycoon turned reality television celebrity, was not a registered Republican until April 2012. He has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats, including his likely general election opponent, Hillary Clinton. And, at various points in his life, he has held positions antithetical to Republican orthodoxy on almost every major issue in the conservative canon, including abortion, taxes, trade, and gun control.

But none of this stopped him. With his ability to speak to the anxieties of voters, and his shrewd use of celebrity and memorable put-downs, Mr Trump systematically undercut veteran politicians in a field of candidates that many in the party had hailed as the strongest in at least three decades. He was underestimated by leading Republicans and Democrats time and again, and he succeeded while spending far less money than most of his rivals and employing only a skeletal campaign staff.

After Mr Cruz exited the race Tuesday night, Mr Trump appeared subdued and projected a more sober than usual mien as he absorbed the ramifications of the Indiana victory.

"It has been some unbelievable day and evening and year - never been through anything like this," Mr Trump said. Putting aside the venom he has spewed at Mr Cruz this year, Mr Trump said of the senator, "He is one hell of a competitor." He even veered toward empathy for Mr Cruz, saying he knew how "tough it is" to be brought low by a brutal defeat.

Republican US presidential candidate senator Ted Cruz hugs his wife Heidi after dropping out of the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination during his Indiana primary night rally in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Reuters photo)

Out of the 17 Republicans who ran for president this cycle, Mr Cruz -- a one-time ally of Mr Trump's -- proved to be his strongest and most tenacious rival, winning 11 primaries and caucuses. But the first-term senator's appeal among traditional conservatives was no match for Mr Trump's fiery and uncompromising vow to fight for the interests of average Americans who have lost faith in the country's political leadership.

Mr Cruz, speaking to supporters in Indianapolis, said he could not fight on without "a viable path to victory."

"Tonight I'm sorry to say it appears that path has been foreclosed," he said, as some admirers called out for him to reconsider. Without mentioning Mr Trump by name, Mr Cruz said: "We gave it everything we got. But the voters chose another path."

As remarkable as Mr Trump's achievement is, his expected nomination also poses undeniable peril to the party he is poised to lead. Republican leaders, who have been reluctant to embrace his candidacy, are watching him with great trepidation, and on Tuesday night they seemed to be grappling with the implications of Mr Trump's emergence as the new face of their party.

No candidate since the dawn of modern polling has entered the general election with the sort of toxic image Mr Trump has in the eyes of large groups of voters. Facing a race against the country's first female major-party nominee, Mr Trump is burdened with disapproval ratings as high as 70% among women, who make up a majority of voters in presidential elections.

He is also an unpredictable voice on policy. At Trump Tower on Tuesday night, amid his litany of thank-yous, Mr Trump demonstrated the degree to which his nomination represented an astonishing break from political precedent. In denouncing Mrs Clinton's past support for the North American Free Trade Agreement and saying it had caused "carnage" for American workers, he signalled he would run to her left on free trade and upend the decades-long bipartisan consensus on the issue.

Supporters of US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential Donald Trump cheer outside a campaign event in Williamson, West Virginia May 2. (Reuters photo)

Mr Trump starts the general election campaign with a still-unfurling roll of incendiary proposals and provocations that are the stuff of dreams for opposition researchers. He made his name in the last presidential campaign as the country's most prominent birther, fuelling debunked conspiracy theories that President Barack Obama was not born in America; he has used hostile and hard-edged language about Hispanics, suggesting that Mexican migrants are rapists and murderers; and he has not backed off his proposal to ban all foreign Muslims from entering the United States, effectively creating a religious test for immigrants.

No one is more eager to talk about those positions than Mrs Clinton, who made clear on Tuesday that she wanted to sharpen her focus on Mr Trump as soon as possible because the fight against him was likely to be bruising.

"I'm really focused on moving into the general election," Mrs Clinton said during an interview on MSNBC. "And I think that's where we have to be, because we're going to have a tough campaign against a candidate who will literally say or do anything.''

While the Democratic race has turned relatively civil, the Republican fight in Indiana grew bitter in the final hours. With Mr Cruz on edge Tuesday morning about the future of his candidacy, Mr Trump baited him by suggesting - with no evidence - that Mr Cruz's father had joined Lee Harvey Oswald in passing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans shortly before Oswald assassinated President John F Kennedy.

Mr Cruz, unburdening himself after a campaign in which Mr Trump also mocked his wife's appearance, responded with a flourish, called Mr Trump a "pathological liar" and delved into his rival's personal life.

"Listen, Donald Trump is a serial philanderer and he boasts about it," Mr Cruz said, directly raising Mr Trump's marital history for the first time. "I want everyone to think about your teenage kids. The president of the United States talks about how great it is to commit adultery. How proud he is. Describes his battles with venereal disease as his own personal Vietnam."

But the appeal did not work. Indiana Republicans proved willing to embrace Mr Trump, the once unimaginable but now virtually certain nominee, regardless of the personal flaws and political shortcomings that would have once derailed would-be presidents.

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