CLEVELAND — In a Republican presidential primary filled with extraordinary moments, a 24-hour stretch that began Friday night stands above them all.
Opponents of Donald Trump were so committed to keeping him from speaking in Chicago that they aggressively clashed with supporters, forcing the GOP front-runner to abruptly cancel his rally before it even began.
The next morning, two of the candidates still fighting to defeat Trump, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, said they were so disgusted by the chaos that they may not support the billionaire businessman if he clinches their party’s nomination.
And when Trump appeared at a rally Saturday morning in Ohio, he was suddenly pulled midspeech into a protective ring of U.S. Secret Service agents charged with guarding his life after a man leapt over a barrier and rushed the stage.
“Thank you for the warning,” Trump told the crowd after he resumed his speech. “I was ready for them, but it’s much better if the cops do it, don’t we agree?”
Each moment has virtually no precedent in modern presidential politics. Taken together, they exposed anew the remarkable anxiety ripping through a country dealing with profound economic and demographic changes, as well as the anger roiling inside one of America’s great political parties.
For those cringing at the discord and Trump’s unanticipated political rise, there were no easy answers Saturday.
Republican traditionalists kept whispering in private conversations about longshot options for stopping Trump, either at a contested convention or by rallying around a potential third-party option. Trump, meanwhile, could put the Republican nomination out of reach to others in Tuesday’s slate of five delegate-rich primaries.
Trump’s rivals have spent months tiptoeing around his provocative comments for fear of alienating his impassioned supporters. Even in Thursday night’s debate, all three of his remaining rivals — Rubio, Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — sidestepped a question about whether outbursts of violence at Trump’s rallies and his statements encouraging supporters to aggressively take on protesters concerned them.
But the images spilling out of Chicago, with young people angrily confronting one another, often divided by racial lines, appeared to be too much.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Rubio said he may not be able to support Trump if he’s the GOP nominee, citing the way he’s “dividing both the party and the country so bitterly.”
The Florida senator wouldn’t say whether he’d look for a third-party candidate to support if Trump does become the Republican standard-bearer, but added, “The fact that you even have to ask me the question shows why (Trump) is a problem.”
Kasich, who has largely avoided tangling with Trump until now, said the real estate mogul has created a “toxic environment” that makes it “extremely difficult” to envision supporting him as the Republican nominee.
Only Cruz, who is closest to Trump in the delegate count, said he would unequivocally support the businessman if he emerges from the primary victorious.
Still, Cruz — eager for Rubio and Kasich to get out of the race after their home-state primaries on Tuesday so he can take Trump on in a head-to-head contest — blamed his rival for encouraging the kind of “nasty violence” that occurred in Chicago.
