Rubio’s bruising loss to Trump marks final straw for senator once hailed as savior of the Republican party

Marco Rubio, the Florida senator hailed in the aftermath of the 2012 election as the Republican party’s likely “savior”, suspended his bid to become the first Latino president of the United States on Tuesday.



Speaking in his hometown of Miami, Rubio congratulated Donald Trump on his victory in the Florida primary while nodding to the grassroots uprising that had propelled the brash billionaire to frontrunner status.



“People are angry and people are very frustrated,” Rubio said, before criticizing the political establishment as being out of touch with the American public.



“There are millions of people in this country that are tired of being looked down upon … tired of being told by these self-proclaimed elitists that they don’t know what they’re talking about and need to instead listen to the so-called smart people,” he added.



At the same time, Rubio delivered an indictment of Trump’s tactics and rhetoric without mentioning his opponent by name.

“This nation needs a vibrant and growing conservative movement,” he said, “but one that’s built on principles and on ideas, not on fear, not on anger, not on preying on people’s frustrations.”

“The politics of resentment against other people will not just leave us a fractured party. They will leave us a fractured nation,” Rubio added.



Although not unexpected, Rubio’s inability to carry his home state served as the final nail in the coffin of a campaign caught perennially on the cusp of breaking through, but falling under the weight of its own expectations. Rubio had, in recent weeks, suffered bruising losses in key primary contests that placed the senator well behind rivals Trump and Texas senator Ted Cruz.

Florida marked the last stand not simply for the 44-year-old senator, but also for a party seeking a consensus alternative to Trump. It was a mantle Rubio himself embraced in the final weeks of his campaign, although in part to his detriment.

A series of personal attacks Rubio made against Trump, while hardly the sole reason for his failure, helped propel the senator’s campaign into a downward spiral from which he never quite recovered. As Floridians took to the polls, Rubio expressed regret over his uncharacteristically lowbrow tone and acknowledged he had embarrassed his wife, children and the supporters who looked to him as a role model.

When Rubio’s campaign launched last April, he drew immediate comparisons to another young orator: Barack Obama.

He, too, had the chance to make history and, in a nod to his roots as the son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio chose to make his announcement speech at the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami.

Standing 11 months ago in the building that once served as the landing place for millions of refugees fleeing Cuba in the 1960s, Rubio entered the race with the tale of his parents’ humble background as a bartender and a maid.



He returned to their personal story when suspending his campaign on Tuesday, recalling how his mother had arrived in the US from Cuba in 1956 with little education and neither money nor connections.

“In this country, on this day, my mother, who’s now 85 years old, was able to cast a ballot for her son to be the president of the United States of America,” Rubio said.

As Rubio spoke, his supporters looked on with a blend of shock and dismay upon their tear-stained faces. There were audible chants of “No” when he announced his campaign would not continue. Rubio himself grew emotional at times, with his wife and four children at his side.



For those who stood in the room clutching signs that bore his name, Rubio’s loss was stunning. To his supporters, Rubio still represented the future of his party – a future now more uncertain than any time in recent memory with the rise of Trump.



Speaking to the Guardian on the evening before his presidential bid arrived at its close, Rubio forewarned of a dire road ahead if Republicans failed to recognize the perils of a Trump nomination.

“If we’re going to be the party of fear, we’re going to spend some time in the wilderness,” Rubio said. “If we’re the party of fear, with a candidate who basically is trying to prey upon people’s fears to get them to vote for them, I think we’re going to pay a big price in November and beyond.”

If elected, Trump would not have the respect of allies around the globe, Rubio cautioned.

“I think he’s already an embarrassment,” Rubio said. “People around the world are watching this debate and this campaign and wondering what’s happening here, because the things he says are nonsensical.

“When you’re the most powerful and important nation on earth, you’re not always going to be popular,” he added. “But the question is, are you respected? And I don’t think Donald Trump is going to be respected.”

He added: “I don’t know how this is all going to end. This is uncharted territory. But from my mind, the Republican party has a very important decision to make: are we going to be the party of fear or the party of optimism?”



As he confirmed his departure from the race on Tuesday, Rubio made a direct appeal to the American people.



“Do not give in to the fear. Do not give in to the frustration,” he said. “For we are a hopeful people, and we have a right to be hopeful.”



Hillary Clinton: ‘That doesn’t make Trump strong, that makes him wrong’

Hours before Hillary Clinton took the stage in West Palm Beach – even before polls in the state closed – her election night party pulsed to the Latin rhythms blaring over the loudspeakers. The cheered and chanted “Hillary” and “I’m with her”, growing louder as the night unfolded.



Then came Clinton’s first big win of the night: Florida. The crowd erupted into deafening applause. Wins in North Carolina and Ohio, where the race between her and opponent Bernie Sanders was expected to be close, followed.



Then the crowd erupted in wild cheers and chants as Clinton emerged on stage. She smiled brightly, turned and waved to the crowd that encircled the podium.



“This is another Super Tuesday for the campaign,” Clinton says. “Thank for Florida, thank you North Carolina, thank you Ohio.”



The crowd went wild again. By the end of the night, Clinton said, her campaign expected to expand its lead over Sanders to more than 300 pledged delegates – nearly enough to block his path to the nomination.



With Tuesday night’s wins, her campaign can confidently say it swept the south while rebutting the argument that she is a regional candidate whose wins are concentrated in states that Democrats don’t win in a general election. At this stage, she’s won the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia and Nevada.

The backdrop of the event – from the Latin music to the Spanish signage – worked as a reminder of the diverse coalition that has so far powered her biggest wins yet. Latinos, and especially black voters, have been at the heart of her string of major victories. While Sanders has made marginal gains among Latino and black communities, he has been unable to draw these voters away from Clinton in large enough numbers to make a difference.

During Clinton’s victory speech, she trained her fire on Donald Trump, who after big wins on Tuesday is increasingly likely to be the Republican nominee.



“This may be one of the most consequential campaigns of our lifetimes,” she said. “The next president will walk into the Oval Office next January …”



“Yes she will!” someone in the crowd shouted.



Clinton continued: “... sit down at that desk and start making decisions that will affect the livelihoods of everyone in this country, indeed everyone on this planet.”



In the past week, Clinton has attempted to distinguish herself from Trump on an international stage, noting in the CNN debate earlier this week that she had world leaders reaching out to her about the tone and tenor of the election.



“Our commander in chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass,” Clinton said in her remarks on Tuesday night. Clinton railed against Trump’s most controversial proposals, including his calls for mass deportations of all undocumented immigrants and barring Muslims from entering the US, as well as his embrace of torture.



“That doesn’t make him strong, that makes him wrong,” she declared.



Though results were still pending in two states by the time her speech ended, Tuesday night clarified and all but cleared Clinton’s path to the nomination, pushing her campaign into a new and unpredictable stage of the race.

John Kasich: ‘I will not take the low road to the highest office in the land’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Kasich celebrates his victory in Ohio.

At the end of John Kasich’s victory speech in Berea, Ohio, confetti cannons blasted from behind the bleachers at the rear of the stage, pelting those in the rear row with bits of red, white and blue paper and sending up huge bursts of air that couldn’t have been comfortable for the candidate.



It didn’t dampen the mood.



After all, Kasich was celebrating his decisive home state victory in front of a friendly hometown crowd – save one pro-Trump protester who interrupted the start of his victory speech but was led out, without incident, by security. Kasich cracked a joke, though – “When you went to college in the 1970s, you appreciate a good peaceful protest every once in awhile” – and went back to his message of positivity.



Megan Carpentier (@megancarpentier) The Trump supporter, red hat and all, who interrupted Kasich's speech. pic.twitter.com/lCHUhiyB3F

It is that message of positivity – even the repetition of the line he has ended almost every other recent event with: “I will not take the low road to the highest office in the land” – that managed to break through for Republicans, in Ohio at least. But as he regaled the crowd with some stories of personal sacrifice and neighborliness that he said defined America, some of his supporters wondered if that would be enough in an election cycle so seemingly dedicated to negativity.



“It’s clear that he has a connection, a personal connection, to Ohio,” said supporter Mike Harlow from the southern town of Portsmouth. “But it could be tough for him to make that a national thing, these personal connections.”



His friend SV – who asked not to be identified by name to avoid difficulties at work – disagreed. “It’s a personal win,” he said. “It’s hard for him to spread his personal stories, to talk about the personal connections he’s made in this state to people like my family.



“But it’s that personal connection that could help him elsewhere.”



A few feet away, Marty and Cathy Baron, who live in Berea, sat waiting for the crowd to clear out a bit. Marty was Kasich’s roommate at Ohio State University and is, according to Marty, partially responsible for his long marriage. “He’s a really wonderful guy,” said Marty.



“I’m so happy he came out for Ohio, and Ohio came out for him” said Cathy.



A younger supporter, Lauren Wojtowicz – who smiled coyly and refused to answer when asked who she voted for on Tuesday but admitted she wasn’t a Republican – said that she came away from Kasich’s victory speech “quite impressed”.



“I’m really hoping he wins the nomination,” she said, “so I can vote for him in November.”



That might not scare Trump and his supporters, but it might well strike a chill into the hearts of Democrats if Kasich makes good on his promise to take his campaign out to the remaining primary states and then back to Cleveland for a contested convention.

Bernie Sanders: ‘Don’t let people tell you that you can’t think big’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bernie Sanders speaks at a campaign rally at the Phoenix Convention Center on Tuesday. Photograph: Ricardo Arduengo/AP

Bernie Sanders did not mention the night’s dismal results during a rally for 7,200 supporters in Phoenix, Arizona.

It felt like a surreal end to a surreal few months for a campaign that has gone further than any expected yet may finally have run out of road.



“Don’t let people tell you that you can’t think big,” the Democratic contender told the crowd in what proved to be a standard rendition of his stump speech.



The only difference was far fewer mentions of Hillary Clinton than usual – a figure Sanders mainly referred to as “his opponent” – rather than the more direct attacks of recent days.



Shortly after bad news from the east started flooding in, the campaign showed its determination to keep running by announcing a new rally on Friday in Idaho, another small state that has a primary election next week.



In the meantime, the Vermont senator and his exhausted team are planning a couple of days of recuperation in Sedona – a resort town in the desert north of Phoenix famous as a New Age hangout.



There is likely to be much reflection on why the momentum this campaign felt after Michigan failed to translate into success in Ohio or Illinois.



A win in Missouri will buoy some spirits, but there is no doubt that the campaign is moving slowly to the next phase: finding ways to capture the undoubted energy and passion of its supporters and turn it into something longer lasting, rather than focusing on the increasingly thankless job of counting delegates.



Donald Trump: ‘We’re going to make our country rich again’

Donald Trump seemed deflated and unable to conjure his usual showbiz in a speech that lasted little more than 15 minutes and failed to congratulate John Kasich on his victory in Ohio. He took no questions at what had been billed as a press conference.

All week Trump had been telling supporters that, should he win Florida and Ohio, the Republican race would be over and he could concentrate his fire on Democrat Hillary Clinton. He changed his schedule at the last minute to intensify his campaign in Ohio but the prize got away.

So a night that was intended to be a coronation before hundreds of bejewelled guests in the ostentatious, Versailles-style ballroom of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, fell a little flat. The jaded billionaire ignored shouted appeals from the media as he left amid his well-heeled supporters.

Despite Trump’s multiple successes in Florida and elsewhere, Kasich’s win could give the Republican establishment a glimmer of hope that he can be stopped and his candidacy rejected at a contested convention. Trump did not deal with that prospect specifically but made another appeal for unity in the party. He said he had received a “tremendous call” from the House speaker, Paul Ryan, recently and had had a “great conversation” with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, earlier in the day.

“We have to bring our party together,” Trump went on. “The Republican party is the biggest political story anywhere in the world. Everybody’s writing about it. All over Europe, all over the world, they’re talking about. Millions of people are coming out to vote … People that have never voted before.”

In a rambling speech, Trump also said he was “disgusted” with companies that are leaving the US, called for better care for veterans and insisted that Isis would be destroyed, although he referred to the San Bernardino attacks as having happened in “Los Angeles” before correcting himself. Some of his applause lines did not land quite as spontaneously as usual, although the crowd enjoyed his swipe at “disgusting reporters”.

He promised: “We’re going to make our country rich again. We’re going to make our country great again. And we need the rich in order to make it great, I’m sorry to tell you.”

While making no reference to Governor Kasich of Ohio, Trump described the margin of his victory in Florida as “phenomenal” and congratulated Florida senator Marco Rubio on having run “a really tough campaign. He’s got a great future.

“But I have to say, nobody has ever in the history of politics received the kind of negative advertising that I have.” Trump described the ads as “vicious, horrible” and “mostly false” – estimating the falsehoods at 90%.

Ted Cruz: ‘The media want Trump as the nominee’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ted Cruz and family. Photograph: Bob Levey/Getty Images

The Ted Cruz campaign finally achieved a longstanding goal on Tuesday night of getting Marco Rubio out of the race. However, the persistent presence of John Kasich, who one top Cruz aide described a “spoiler”, loomed over the Texas senator’s effort.



On Tuesday night, with Donald Trump having won three states and Missouri still too close to call, Cruz took the stage to redouble his assault on the billionaire. Preceded by top surrogates who bashed Trump – Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick who said the real estate mogul was “a populist” and not a conservative, as well as former candidate Carly Fiorina who said Trump “doesn’t represent me” – Cruz described Trump as a man “who has spent decades opposing your values”.

Cruz, who started off by paying tribute to Marco Rubio and said “his passion inspires me”, segued to bash Trump as a weak candidate foisted by a pro-Clinton media on the Republican electorate. “The mainstream media network suits want Donald Trump as the Republican nominee … They are partisan Democrats ready for Hillary.”

The Texas senator, however, was less enthusiastic about his tortured path to the majority of delegates needed to clinch the nomination in Cleveland: “We continued to gain delegates on our march to 1,237.”

The Cruz campaign was optimistic that with many forthcoming primaries only allowing Republicans to vote, the Texas senator would fare better. The campaign has already written off Arizona’s winner-take-all contest next week where a majority of voters has already cast ballots and instead is looking ahead to win coming races in Utah and Wisconsin.

However, Cruz is ready for a contested convention if it gets that far. When asked if he was confident that all of the pledged Cruz delegates would support the Texas senator on a second ballot, top Cruz strategist Jason Johnson said with a smile, “All of them and more.”