Cruz, Rubio escalate case against Trump

Published 6:23 am Sunday, February 28, 2016

ATLANTA –With Super Tuesday approaching, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz escalated their argument Saturday that Donald Trump is a conservative impostor, trying to make the case to voters they can keep the ascendant billionaire from claiming the Republican presidential nomination.

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">At a rally outside the Georgia Capitol, Cruz went after Trump’s positions on immigration and gun control, criticized his ethics and hammered him for his frequent use of profanity.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“You don’t know what he’s going to say,” Cruz told reporters. “To the parents: Would you be proud of your children if they came home and repeated the words of Donald Trump?”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Rubio kept up a barrage of insults aimed at Trump. Speaking at a football stadium at Mount Paran Christian School in suburban Atlanta, Rubio said Trump has “the worst spray tan in America.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“Donald Trump likes to sue people,” Rubio said. “He should sue whoever did that to his face.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The quip drew laughs. Rubio quickly turned to immigration and kept up his criticism that the real estate mogul has employed people living in the country illegally.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I will do whatever it takes,” Rubio said. “I will campaign as long as it takes.” He said: “Donald Trump, a con artist, will never get control of this party.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Georgia is one of 11 states that will hold GOP presidential primaries Tuesday, when 595 delegates will be at stake.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Super Tuesday is the biggest single-day delegate haul of the nomination contests and, says Cruz, “the single best opportunity to defeat Donald Trump.” Democrats also vote in 11 states, as well as in American Samoa.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Texas senator appealed for each supporter to get nine others to vote for him Tuesday.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In Tennessee, Ohio Gov. John Kasich won the endorsement of former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, now dean of Belmont University’s law school.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Gonzales was White House counsel under President George W. Bush before becoming the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general in 2005. He resigned in an uproar over allegations of torture of terrorism suspects and controversy over politically motivated firings of U.S. attorneys.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Kasich praised Gonzales for his work “in a very difficult time in our nation’s history.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“Sometimes you have to take a stand, and that’s what Judge Gonzales did when he was attorney general of the United States,” he said.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Trump, the GOP front-runner who has won three states in a row after losing in Iowa’s caucuses to Cruz, held a campaign rally in Arkansas with Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor and former presidential candidate who dropped out of the race after a sixth place finish in New Hampshire.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“This guy has a fresh mouth,” Trump said of Rubio. He called him a “light little nothing.” Their raw feud flared in the last debate, when a newly aggressive Rubio went relentlessly after the billionaire, and it hasn’t subsided since. Trump took specific issue with Rubio’s new line that the billionaire is a “con artist.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I built a great business,” he said, adding that he wished his father had given him $200 million as Rubio alleged in the debate. Trump said he got a $1 million loan, which he said he paid back.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Piling on, Cruz said if Republicans nominate Trump, Americans will make Hillary Clinton the next president, a prediction that assumes she wins the Democratic nomination over Bernie Sanders. Cruz slammed Trump’s past support for the Brady Bill, gun control legislation that President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“Anybody who would support Bill Clinton’s ban on some of the most popular weapons in America is not a committed conservative,” Cruz said.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Cruz supporter John Wical, of Lawrenceville, Georgia, a retired law enforcement officer, said the GOP race underscores the frustrations of many Americans but Trump’s backers have settled on the wrong answer.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“He’s a Trojan horse,” said Wical, 54. “He’s just this cult of personality.” He said Trump supporters are “operating on emotion.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Yet if Trump goes on to win the nomination, Wical said, he would support him in November “to keep Hillary-the-liar or Bernie-the-socialist out of the White House.”</span>

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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Beaumont reported from Kennesaw, Georgia. Associated Press writer Erik Schelzig contributed to this report from Nashville, Tennessee.</span>

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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">On Twitter follow Bill Barrow at http://twitter.com/billbarrowap and Thomas Beaumont at and http://twitter.com/tombeaumont</span><div id="prtlt"></div>Jacquelyn Martin