Republicans look to dethrone Trump

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Republicans are barreling toward Super Tuesday with another debate in the offing and Donald Trump’s opponents reaching for perhaps their last best chance to knock him off stride for the presidential nomination.

Expect a nasty turn, Trump warned, as if the roiling GOP race were anything but that already.

The New York billionaire predicted that the relative civility between Marco Rubio and himself would fall away in the frantic grasp for hundreds of convention delegates in the 11 states that hold Republican primaries Tuesday.

Even John Kasich, a trailing contender whose calling card has been a positive campaign, went sharply negative Wednesday in a campaign broadside against Rubio, the Florida senator who is soaking up Republican establishment support and thereby threatening to starve Kasich’s effort of its remaining oxygen.

Trump exercised bragging rights with trademark gusto after Nevada handed him his third straight victory the night before.

Relaxed on stage at Virginia’s Regent University, Trump fielded questions from Christian conservative figure Pat Robertson, ticking off Obama administration executive orders he wants to reverse as president and joking about his recent dustup with the pope.

He said earlier he might tone down his contentious rhetoric if he makes it to the White House — or not, since “right now it seems to be working pretty well.”

And what of Rubio?

“So far he’s been very nice and I think I’ve been very nice to him,” Trump said on NBC’s “Today” show. “We haven’t been in that mode yet but probably it’ll happen.” He meant attack mode.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton scored the endorsement of Nevada’s Harry Reid, the party’s Senate leader, in advance of a primary Saturday in South Carolina, where she looks strong. She prevailed in the Nevada Democratic caucuses days before the GOP contest there, dulling rival Bernie Sanders’ drive and making Super Tuesday of crucial importance to him.

On Tuesday:

—Republicans will award 595 delegates in 11 state races, with 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

—Democrats will award 865 delegates in 11 states and American Samoa, with 2,383 needed for the nomination.

The election calendar suggests that if Trump’s rivals don’t slow him by mid-March, they may not ever. Delegate totals so far: 82 for Trump, 17 for Ted Cruz, 16 for Rubio, 6 for Kasich and 4 for Ben Carson.

For Republicans, Nevada offered little evidence Republicans are ready to unite behind one strong alternative to Trump, who many in the party fear is too much of a loose cannon to win in November.

Mainstream Republicans who don’t like Trump are also in large measure cool on Cruz. With Jeb Bush out of the race and time short, they have begun gravitating to Rubio, long a man of promise in the race but one who has yet to score a victory.

The Florida senator edged Cruz, a Texas senator, for second place in Nevada, and it’s clear his time is at hand — if he’s to have one.

With Bush gone, the GOP debates have lost a prime Trump critic, though Cruz has been a fierce antagonist at times and Rubio faces pressure to confront the billionaire more directly before it’s too late.

Their debate Thursday night is in Texas, the largest of the Super Tuesday states and one where Cruz has an advantage as home-state senator.

Trump’s provocative proposals to build a massive border wall with Mexico and to deport all people in the country illegally are sure to feature in the debate, which has Spanish-language Telemundo as a partner with CNN.

Health care issue, longtime uniter of Democrats, now divides

WASHINGTON — Health care for all. It’s a goal that tugs at the heartstrings of Democrats, but pursuing it usually invites political peril.

Now Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are clashing over this core question for liberals, making it a wedge issue in the party’s presidential primary.

It’s a choice between his conviction that a government-run system would be fairer and more affordable, and her preference for step-by-step change at a time of widespread skepticism about federal power.

The late Sen. Edward Kennedy once championed a Sanders-like “single-payer” system, yet during nearly 47 years in office Kennedy also embraced less sweeping and more politically feasible ideas. Health care realists greeted President Barack Obama’s law as vindication. But with 29 million still uninsured and deductibles of over $3,000 for taxpayer-subsidized coverage, some Sanders supporters call it the “Unaffordable Care Act.”

Health care for everyone remains the aim for Democrats. The differences are over the best way to get there.

“It’s compelling to see the longstanding argument over big, revolutionary change versus more incremental change personified in two candidates, Bernie and Hillary,” said John McDonough, an aide to Kennedy during the Obama health overhaul debate.

The worry is about provoking a fatal backlash from the political right.

“Bernie speaks to the hearts of Democrats, and Hillary speaks to the head,” added McDonough, now a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s about who is more in tune with the actual opportunity and possibility of the time.”

Both candidates seem to be struggling to clearly frame the issue.

Sanders sees the destination, but hasn’t been able to lay down a roadmap for getting there. Clinton can’t seem to fit her menu of tweaks into a persuasive vision. They’re talking past each other, said Yale professor Ted Marmor, in a “dialogue of the deaf” that leaves voters confused.

Signed almost six years ago, Obama’s health overhaul is the starting point for Democrats who would succeed him. About 16 million people have gained coverage, and the uninsured rate has fallen to 9 percent, a historic achievement. Economic recovery helped, but the biggest increases in coverage came after the health law’s insurance markets and Medicaid expansion got going in 2014.