The Daily Trail: Trump vs. Rubio is the new normal

Trump himself is trying to make the shift into full-time Rubio antagonist, even if he hasn't quite landed on a sustained line of attack yet (though he may be getting closer: the majority of today's hits were an attempt to paint the Florida senator as, per Trump, a "nervous nellie.")

Chris Christie's decision to back Trump in the Super Tuesday homestretch dominated a day that could have otherwise served mostly as a victory lap of sorts for Rubio after his strong debate performance. The New Jersey governor's decision felt like as much a public rejection of Rubio as an endorsement of the front-runner, whom Christie called "the only choice....the best choice" for president.

“I find it fascinating that somebody who barely shows up for work…is going to talk about somebody being unprepared,” Christie said of Rubio during a news conference with Trump here in Fort Worth.

Bushworld did not take the news of Christie's decision well, with more than one former Jeb hand making comments that included swipes at the New Jersey governor's weight. This nod is blow to the Bushes -- another sign of their fading power -- and the remaining Trump rivals. There are a couple of good reasons Christie would back Trump now, but perhaps the most important is this: He's winning.

While Christie was one of the few candidates on an upward trajectory when he left the race, his backing may not come with many supporters. Still, this isn't a symbolic endorsement: he will act as a senior adviser to the campaign, and Robert Costa reports that his right hand man Bill Palatucci has already led a call urging GOP chairs and power brokers to follow Christie's lead and back Trump. 

Christie will also probably be starring in campaign ads... for Trump's opponents, who have plenty of his prior anti-Trump swipes, insults and attacks to choose from. Like, say, this one, possibly coming to a screen near you:

Gov. Chris Christie on Monday said Donald Trump's call for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" in the wake of the San Bernardino terror attack is "ridiculous," deriding it as "the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don't know what they're talking about."

Or this one, posted by a Rubio supporter:

Rubio's Trump assault -- beta-tested earlier this week and unleashed last night -- continued today, with a relatively fresh approach. Other candidates in the race have said Trump lacks honesty or dignity, or highlighted his vulgarity, or complained about his insults, most of which has only served to highlight his "tell it like it is" appeal. Rubio has adopted one of the front-runner's most successful tactics -- mockery -- and used it against him.

Today he suggested Trump was old, and that he might have bladder issues. He said "every" Trump business had gone bankrupt, reeling off a list that included the defunct Trump vodka and his Atlantic City stumbles. ("This guy bankrupted a casino," said Rubio. "How do you bankrupt a casino?") He questioned Trump’s toughness by calling him “the first guy that begged for Secret Service protection.”

He even read Trump's tweets onstage at a campaign event, trolling him over errors (in the most popular mistake of the day, misspelling "choker" as "chocker.") He could think of only two reasons for Trump's errors, he said: “Number one: That’s how they spell those words at the Wharton School of Business, where he went. Or number two, just like Trump Tower, he must have hired a foreign worker to do his own tweets."

The main line of attack was a modified page out of the Obama 2012 playbook, employing what many Trump critics have called their most promising strategy: the Romney-fication of Donald Trump. "He runs on this idea that he's fighting for the little guy, but he's spent his entire career sticking it to the little guy. His entire career!" said Rubio, who labeled the businessman a "con artist."

While most of the attention was on Trump's big endorsement, establishment lane consolidation continued as the Rubio campaign released a list of dozens of current and former elected officials from Florida now supporting the senator (including many, though not all, of Jeb Bush's former supporters.)

Trump and Rubio didn't have a breakup like Trump and Cruz did, because there was nothing to break -- theirs was less a friendship than a detente based on mutually assured destruction: As long as Rubio doesn't attack me, Trump had long said, I won't go after him. Until this week, he basically didn't.

Now, with Rubio reversing course, Trump is trying to make up for lost time. He ruled Rubio out as a potential vice presidential pick today, calling the senator a "robot," a "clown," a "choke artist," a "wiseguy," a "lightweight," a "nervous nellie," a "total mess," a "liar," a "nasty little guy" ....among other things. (His feud with Mitt Romney also dragged into another day, with the mogul saying the GOP's last presidential nominee "walks like a penguin.")

The litany of insults reflected Trump had yet to quite land on a simple, consistent message, as he had with his "Cruz = liar" attacks of the past several weeks. Today, he seemed to be circling one, with a majority of the hits falling into a single category: Marco Rubio, he said, was an anxious, stress-ridden ball of nerves -- "Mr. Meltdown."

The end of this month has not gone nearly as well for Ted Cruz as it did when it began. The latest series of disappointments kicked into high gear last weekend with his South Carolina loss, continued with Tuesday's third-place showing in Nevada, and hit rock bottom last night, when the Texas senator felt less like a man in control of the debate stage than a spectator at the Trump-Rubio cage match. Today, he was essentially pushed out of the conversation, with Rubio replacing him as top Trump insult generator (and target).

Can it get worse? Of course it can. It isn't just that Cruz has been losing -- it's how he's losing. Based on voting so far, Cruz seems to be losing his grip on the demographics -- strong conservatives, evangelicals, Southerners -- that he'd been counting on to carry him to Cleveland. Next week brings Super Tuesday, when Trump is poised to pad his delegate lead considerably, even threatening to carry away a significant number of delegates from the Texas senator's home state -- where he made a campaign stop today, in Ft. Worth. 

"Right now, Donald Trump has enormous momentum. He’s won three out of four states,” Cruz said at a Christian broadcasting conference in Nashville this afternoon. “If he continues with that momentum and powers through and wins everywhere on Super Tuesday, he could easily be unstoppable." 

Pro-Cruz super PAC Keep the Promise said today it is planning to spend $2.4 million on home stretch advertising. That figure includes roughly $1 million on TV spots, which would slightly exceed the reported Trump Super Tuesday buy.

Donald Trump's latest campaign promise, which came at a Texas rally today, involved the media: Once elected president, Trump said, he would "open up" federal libel laws to make it easier to sue news outlets like The Washington Post and New York Times. (Could he do it? Maybe -- but only if he had a lot of help.) 

The comment came amid reports of possible sabotage of media equipment at an earlier Trump event. The atmosphere for reporters at Trump rallies has shifted again recently, beat reporter Jenna Johnson told Chris Cillizza earlier this week:

...for several weeks it seemed to be getting better. Part of the reason is that we were spending a lot of time in Iowa and New Hampshire, where the rally crowds were often smaller and less rowdy. And Trump seemed to have dialed back his comments about reporters -- he still calls us scum, dishonest and the worst people he has ever met, but he stopped singling out specific reporters at rallies and instructing his crowds to not trust those specific people. In the past week, we are once again spending more time at huge rallies, often in southern states, where it's easier for someone to shout something nasty and then disappear into the crowd.

THE VIEW FROM THE FIELD: TRUMP DOES TEXAS

You'll be able to follow Democratic primary results from the Palmetto State here on Saturday; polls close at 7 p.m. ET.

Saturday's vote serves as two starkly different milestones for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, report Anne Gearan and John Wagner:

Clinton is looking to her expected victory here to prove her strong support among African American voters — and to cement her status as the presumptive front-runner heading toward Super Tuesday three days later, when six of 11 Democratic contests will take place in Southern states with large black voting populations.

Sanders spent much of the past week campaigning in other states — and attacking Clinton on an array of issues with new gusto. He is looking ahead to contests that come after Tuesday, where he has more chance of winning...

Both candidates are girding for a long primary fight that seemed far-fetched only a few months ago.

Sanders has spent the past 48 hours or so on a whirlwind tour through Missouri, Oklahoma, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota before returning Friday afternoon. Several of Sanders’s destinations this week were states with contests on Tuesday. Some hold contests later in March. Sanders’s advisers are hoping to pull off five victories -- all of them in states with relatively small black populations -- out of the 11 contests this Tuesday.

For his closing message, Sanders ripped Clinton for donations from "those who would profit off the destruction of the planet."

THE REVOLUTION ISN'T REACHING DOWN-TICKET: Bernie Sanders “political revolution” isn't just about the candidate at the top of the ballot, notes David A. Fahrenthold. It is also about transforming Congress -- which, in the past, has been happy to ignore Sanders’s proposals for universal health insurance and free college tuition. But in campaigns for the House and Senate, the revolution is not going well:

There are more than 30 Sanders supporters running, including a “Saturday Night Live” alum in Iowa; a former truck driver in South Carolina, who got himself tattooed with a silhouette of Sanders’s unruly crown of hair; and a California hay farmer, who’s so convinced he’s the Bernie Sanders of San Luis Obispo that he has printed bumper stickers that say “Feel the Bill.”

The problem is that only a handful of these “Bernie-crats” — four, at best — have any shot at winning. ... And most of them have received little help — in the form of endorsements, advice or fundraising assistance — from Sanders’s presidential campaign or its allied groups.

The exception: John Fetterman, the tattooed, 6-foot-8 mayor of a former steel town in Pennsylvania running for the Senate in a crowded Democratic primary. He has gotten support from the Sanders campaign -- and appears to have a decent chance.

ON THE GROUND IN SOUTH CAROLINA:

THE WEEKEND TRAIL: Both Rubio and Cruz plan to hold events Saturday in Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama.

Cruz will also spend Sunday in Arkansas and Oklahoma before campaigning Monday in his home state of Texas.

Trump will spend Saturday in Arkansas and Tennessee.

Bernie Sanders is already over South Carolina: he'll be in Texas on Saturday, and Oklahoma on Sunday.

Hillary Clinton will visit Alabama on Saturday, Arkansas on Sunday, and Virginia on Monday.