Five Republican presidential candidates will gather here Thursday night for a final showdown before Super Tuesday.
Four of them have a shared goal on the CNN debate stage: stop the man behind the center podium.
Donald Trump heads into the March 1 contests with remarkable momentum, after consecutive victories in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. The two men who will flank him on the stage — Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — so far have been unable to step out of Trump’s shadow.
With hundreds of delegates up for grabs, next Tuesday has the potential to make Trump’s candidacy a runaway train.
“It’s going to be an amazing two months. We might not even need the two months, folks, to be honest,” Trump told supporters at his Nevada victory party this week.
With so much riding on that day, Thursday’s CNN debate, moderated by Wolf Blitzer, is likely to be a heated affair. The drama began hours before candidates took to the stage as Trump sparred with Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, over tax returns.
Rubio, under pressure to show that he can take Trump on, offered a preview of his line of attack during an event here.
“We cannot have a commander in chief that is not ready the first day in office, because Vladimir Putin is not going to wait for the next president to catch up,” Rubio said. “There is no honeymoon period in foreign policy.”
Trump, meanwhile, is facing calls to release his tax returns. Romney told Fox News on Wednesday that there could be a “bombshell” in Trump’s tax returns, a line that signaled anxiety inside the GOP establishment that the billionaire businessman might become the nominee.
Trump struck back in a series of tweets and told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “there is no bombshell at all other than I pay a lot of tax and the government wastes the money.”
The last GOP debate in South Carolina quickly spiraled into an ugly brawl, with accusations of dishonesty and personally charged attacks flying in all directions. Cruz, in particular, is trying to fight off allegations that he is using dirty campaign tactics to get ahead.
The conservative firebrand senator came in first-place in the Iowa caucuses but has not been able to notch another win since, and has been forthright about the ramifications of Super Tuesday, especially the significance of his home state of Texas, where there are 155 delegates at stake.
A Monmouth University poll released Thursday put Cruz 15 points ahead of Trump in Texas.
“One week from today will be the most important night of the campaign,” Cruz told supporters Tuesday night after coming in third place behind Trump and Rubio in Nevada.
Rubio heads into next week with his sights set on the establishment mantle. But the Florida senator has yet to win a single state and has stumbled over criticism that he is unprepared for the presidency.
Meanwhile, John Kasich is starting to come under pressure from establishment Republicans to drop his White House bid to clear the way for Rubio. He’s given no indication that he’ll be getting out — certainly not before his home state of Ohio holds its contest on March 15.
Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, also insists he’s in it for the long haul, even as it appears increasingly unlikely that he will regain his footing in the race.
