ALASKA: South Carolina on, Donald Trump invited a woman to stroke his golden hair. In another, Marco Rubio lectured students on eradicating poverty.There’s only one slot for the Republican Party’s (RP) 2016 presidential nomination, but there are two completely different campaigns taking place to claim it. On Thursday in the Southern early-primary state, they collided.
One is the chest-beating Donald Trump extravaganza, playing to packed houses as the billionaire tramples political rules and casts a spell over huge crowds with extended policy-free diatribes and boasts that he is out of sight in the polls.Established GOP stars such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, his protégé Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had expected to be dueling for the top spot in the race.
Instead, they are looking on in envy and hoping that sooner or later conventional political logic will kick back in.About 1,400 Trump supporters had lined up for hours outside a vast conference center. When the doors opened, they stampeded into a cavernous auditorium, packed with candlelit tables for a Chamber of Commerce, luncheon.Some 100 miles to the southeast, the traditional presidential contest was playing out, as Rubio wooed a room full of students at the University of South Carolina.
