Donald Trump is poised for sweeping nationwide wins on Super Tuesday, solidifying his position as the Republican front-runner and intensifying the pressure on his struggling primary rivals to find a way forward. 
 
 Top Republicans — including governors who convened an emergency conference call on Monday on which Trump was Topic A — expect the real estate mogul to carry as many as 10 states on Tuesday night, an outcome that would deal a body blow to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has staked his campaign heavily on the Southern states holding nominating contests, and to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has yet to win a primary and isn’t expected to do so on Tuesday. 
 
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 “If Trump wins 8 or more states on Tuesday, it would take a massive collapse on his and/or his campaign’s part for him not to be the nominee,” said Tony Fabrizio, a longtime GOP pollster and strategist who advised Rand Paul. 
 
 Trump’s march to the nomination has set off a wave of anxiety across the Republican Party establishment as top officials weigh whether to endorse him — or denounce him as anathema to the party's values. Reflecting that angst, on Monday morning, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the heads of the Republican Governors Association, convened fellow governors for an unusual conference call to discuss how the primary was unfolding — and Trump was a central topic of conversation. 
 
 At one point during Monday’s call, which lasted around 30 minutes, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin asked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to discuss last week’s bombshell decision to back Trump. According to two sources familiar with the call, Christie mounted a detailed defense of his endorsement, explaining that he’d known the real estate executive for over a decade and had grown confident in his ability to lead the country. 
 
 The stakes on Tuesday are perhaps highest for Cruz, who had once hoped to establish a stranglehold on Super Tuesday, carefully tailoring his evangelical image to the conservative states that are voting that day and campaigning heavily in towns throughout Tennessee and Oklahoma. He has described March 1 as the most important day of the Republican primary calendar. 
 
 Yet, with Trump rampaging throughout the South, it’s now possible that Cruz will only emerge with a win in his home state of Texas, a contest the senator has begun likening to the Alamo. Trump has made deep inroads into Cruz’s evangelical base, portraying himself as a steadfast Christian while casting Cruz as “the single biggest liar I’ve ever seen.” Jerry Falwell Jr., an influential evangelical leader and Trump supporter, has recorded a robo-call for the Trump campaign which is being sent to households throughout Virginia. In the call, Falwell, the president of Liberty University, tears into Cruz and accuses him – four times – of using “dirty tricks.” 
 
 “Politicians can’t wait to tell us about their values, but I care more about the choices they make when no one is looking,” Falwell says in the call. “Ambition must never be a substitute for character. Please vote for Donald Trump.” 
 
 The Cruz campaign has not yet released its post-Super Tuesday schedule. But in the immediate days ahead, Cruz is likely to campaign heavily in a trio of deeply conservative states – Idaho, Louisiana, and Kansas – that hold their nominating contests over the next week. 
 
 Rubio, meanwhile, will immediately pivot to his home state of Florida, where he will spend much of his time ahead of the do-or-die March 15 primary. With polls showing him badly trailing Trump, Rubio is expected to launch an all-out effort to win the state, where a defeat could be fatal. His top aides have vowed in unequivocal terms that they will not lose Florida, which awards its 99 delegates on a winner-take-all basis. 
 
 Rubio’s planning for the Florida primary has been long in the works. He recently dispatched Clint Reed, a former Republican National Committee political director, to Florida help guide his efforts to secure his home state, according to two sources familiar with the move. Reed also played key roles for Rubio in Iowa and South Carolina. 
 
 Rubio’s aides are convening top donors to a national finance meeting to coincide with the March 9 debate in Miami. On March 10 and March 11, he will embark on a fundraising tour that will take him to Palm Beach, Naples, and Ocean Reef. One of the events will be held at the home of Gerald and Darlene Jordan, prominent South Florida socialites who were major benefactors to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. 
 
 No matter what happens on Tuesday, Cruz and Rubio’s allies point out, Trump will be nowhere close to securing the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the GOP nomination. The 595 delegates up for grabs will be distributed proportionately, meaning that Cruz and Rubio are expected to rack up a substantial number even if they do not succeed in winning many states. Going into Super Tuesday, Trump has won 82 of the 133 delegates that have been awarded so far. 
 
 That means the primary race could well go on for weeks or months longer without any candidate meeting the threshold for securing the nomination. 
 
 “Donald Trump is the clear front-runner, and he’s in a very strong position,” said Steve Munisteri, a former Texas Republican chairman who has closely studied the delegate allocation process. “But it’s not over.” 
 
 Yet there’s little question that the structural dynamics of the primary favor Trump. Assuming he wins most of the states voting on Super Tuesday and his rivals choose to stay in the contest, Trump will be the beneficiary of two major advantages: a lead in the delegate count, and a splintered Republican field. 
 
 With Rubio likely to be blown out on Tuesday, his allies are latching on to the notion that he could still keep Trump from amassing a majority of delegates and then win over party insiders at the convention in Cleveland, securing the nomination at the 11th hour. 
 
 “There is a very narrow way forward,” conceded Mel Martinez, a former Republican National Committee chairman and past Florida senator who endorsed Rubio on Monday. 
 
 But, Martinez said, there was hope. A majority of the party, he argued, found Trump “increasingly unpalatable,” and they would resist him. 
 
 “How that manifests itself I don’t know, but I believe there is a sense by many, myself included, that he just cannot be the nominee,” he said. “So a convention scenario could begin to develop.” 
 
 Speaking to reporters on Monday, Cruz ridiculed the idea. “All these crazy voters go one way, we’ll step in with all of our money and anoint our white knight to ride in and save the day … That’s not going to happen.” 
 
 The growing ranks of forces looking for ways to stop Trump insist they haven’t lost hope. Our Principles PAC, an anti-Trump super PAC being overseen by former Mitt Romney aide Katie Packer, has launched an aggressive fundraising campaign and is eyeing the possibility of launching ad campaigns against him in four delegate-rich states voting in March: Michigan, Missouri, Illinois, and Florida. 
 
 The group, which has tapped veteran Republican strategist Ed Goeas to conduct polling, has secured donations by a number of prominent Republican Party contributors, including Marlene Ricketts, part of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs, and Stan Hubbard, a broadcasting executive. 
 
 “I don’t think the opposition to Trump is going quietly into the night anytime soon,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “The vast majority of Republicans are horribly dissatisfied with the current state of affairs and there is no sign whatsoever that fundraising or energy is dissipating for an alternative.” 
 
 Some in Rubio’s campaign have privately expressed their frustration that prominent members of the party establishment have yet to gravitate to him. While Romney and Jeb Bush have been loud critics of Trump, neither has endorsed the Florida senator – nods that would open up veins of fundraising dollars and help Rubio consolidate the party around him. 
 
 While many of Bush’s backers have announced their support for Rubio since the former Florida governor dropped out of the race, others have remained on the sidelines. 
 
 One top Bush donor — Mel Sembler, a Florida real estate developer and former ambassador to Italy – declined in an email exchange to say whether he’d support Rubio. He said he was focused on defeating a medical marijuana initiative and “recovering from Jeb’s withdrawal.” 
 
 A few Bush backers are throwing their support elsewhere. In a telephone interview on Monday, Doug Ose, a wealthy former Republican member of Congress who fundraised for Bush, said he was endorsing Trump. Ose, who represented California’s Central Valley for three terms and hails from the mainstream wing of the GOP, said he viewed Trump as a problem solver and that he’d been turned off by what he described as the increasingly negative tone of Rubio’s campaign. 
 
 “I actually think Senator Rubio 10 years from now is going to be our guy,” the former congressman said. “I hope he doesn’t do damage to himself.” 
 
 Authors: ||||| Tiffany Trump, Paul Ryan: Here's what's happening on Day 2 of the GOP convention 
 
 CLOSE Skip in Skip x Embed x Share USA TODAY's Susan Page gives you a preview of what to expect during day two of the Republican National Convention. 
 
 CLEVELAND — We're live in Cleveland for Day Two. On Monday, Donald Trump showed up to introduce his wife (whose speech at times sounded a lot like Michelle Obama's in 2008; the Trump campaign is denying this accusation and blamed the fallout from it on Hillary Clinton), and his supporters toasted to the fact that, while it was a bit messy, the Never Trump contingent was shut down. 
 
 But today is even bigger. Today, Trump will become Republican NOMINEE Donald Trump — no more of this presumptive stuff. 
 
 It's Trump's party 
 
 Tonight, Donald Trump will seal the deal and become the party’s official nominee. There was a moment Monday when that was called into question after Never Trumpers demanded a roll call vote on the rules in an effort to free up delegates to vote for whomever they want, but it got squashed swiftly. So now each state will ceremoniously announce how their delegation will vote, and since Trump has secured enough delegates through the primaries and caucuses (confused on how this works? Check out our convention guide) he’ll be the man in the general election starting Tuesday night. 
 
 This is actually pretty unconventional; in general, the roll call of the states takes place later in the week. But let’s be real: Has ANYTHING about Trump’s candidacy been according to the books? 
 
 The lineup 
 
 You can expect to see House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. — whose coming-to-terms with Donald Trump has played out very publicly and at times awkwardly — and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. 
 
 Tuesday also features two of Trump's former Republican primary competitors, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who may still be a little bit mad at the New York billionaire after he passed him up for vice president. Ben Carson will also speak. 
 
 But in an interview with CNN on Monday night, Christie brushed off questions about not being selected and said everyone would be over it by Tuesday. He, meanwhile, would turn his focus back to his role as head of Trump's transition team should he win the presidency. 
 
 And what to expect for his speech tonight? 
 
 “I’m going to make a case tonight that Donald Trump is ready to be president of the United States, and perhaps his opponent is not," Christie said on NBC's Today Tuesday morning. 
 
 Keeping with Trump’s “showbiz” convention, Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and professional golfer Natalie Gulbis will also speak. 
 
 Who is Tiffany Trump? 
 
 Tiffany Trump listens to a speech on the first day of the Republican National Convention on July 18, 2016. (Photo: Jeff Swensen, Getty Images) 
 
 Two of Trump’s children — Donald Trump Jr. and Tiffany Trump — will take the stage as well. You’ve probably seen Trump Jr. on the trail — he’s been a pretty active surrogate for his dad. But Tiffany has stayed somewhat out of the spotlight. 
 
 A little background on her: Tiffany graduated from University of Pennsylvania this spring (reminder, although it would be hard to forget how often he mentions: Trump went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business). She double majored in sociology (with a concentration in law) and urban studies, according to People. And in 2014, her proud father told the magazine: "She's got all A's at Penn, so we're proud of her." 
 
 This spring she appeared at New York Fashion Week, and she's also dabbled in music. Her single Like a Bird is available on Amazon. 
 
 Latest podcast from Cup of Politics 
 
 More convention coverage from USA TODAY 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/29WD2GF ||||| Donald Trump yanked the Republican Party toward a contested convention over the past 24 hours as he let rip an extraordinary series of statements on abortion, the Geneva Conventions, violence against women and his own commitment to supporting the GOP presidential nominee that seemed to obliterate the notion that the party will unite behind him anytime soon. 
 
 The fallout for Trump has been swift, as Republican rivals denounced the real estate mogul’s escalating attacks on a reporter who accused Trump’s campaign manager of battery and his suggestion that women should be punished for seeking abortions if the procedure is outlawed — a statement Trump quickly tried to walk back. 
 
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 He also freshly rankled leading Republicans around the country for tearing up his previous pledge to support the eventual nominee, saying Tuesday night that “we’ll see who it is.” 
 
 The series of events gave mainstream Republicans new hope that they could prevent him from winning the nomination outright through pledged delegates. But they're also more worried than ever about a fractured party heading into the fall. 
 
 “Trump is an embarrassment for the party. He’s not a conservative, he’s not a Republican, he’s someone who’s simply for himself,” said Ryan Williams, a GOP consultant and veteran of Mitt Romney’s campaigns. “He’s set a new standard and is going to give a number of Republicans pause about supporting him if he’s the nominee. That’s Donald Trump’s fault and Donald Trump’s fault alone.” 
 
 Trump created yet another firestorm on Wednesday afternoon, when he lamented the existence of the Geneva Conventions. “The problem is we have the Geneva Conventions, all sorts of rules and regulations, so the soldiers are afraid to fight,” Trump said at an afternoon town hall. 
 
 But it was his comments regarding women — both his suggestion about criminalizing abortion and his escalating attacks on Breitbart journalist Michelle Fields — that set off the loudest alarm bells. 
 
 In a sign of how damaging his comments on abortion were, Trump swiftly reversed himself. The controversy started when MSNBC’s Chris Matthews pressed Trump on his statement that abortion “is a very serious problem, and it’s a problem we have to decide on. Are you going to send them to jail?” 
 
 After Matthews tried to draw him out on what should happen if abortions are outlawed, Trump responded, “There has to be some form of punishment.” 
 
 Bipartisan criticism was immediate, with Hillary Clinton calling the comment “horrific and telling” and Republican rival John Kasich strongly disputing Trump's assertion: “Absolutely not.” 
 
 The Trump campaign went into damage control mode, emailing out a clarifying statement. “If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” Trump said in the statement. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed — like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.” 
 
 The statement on abortion compounded his inflammatory comments about Fields, the former reporter who accused Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, of roughly yanking her arm as she tried to ask Trump a question earlier this month. Lewandowski was charged with misdemeanor battery on Tuesday. 
 
 On Wednesday, Trump stoked the controversy by accusing Fields of provoking Lewandowski in the incident and brandishing a pen as she tried to talk to him. 
 
 “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade challenged Trump on his account of the incident Wednesday morning, saying that campaign managers like Lewandowski "should not be putting their hands on reporters." He added, "Karl Rove didn’t do it. David Plouffe didn’t do it, David Axelrod didn’t do it. That’s why you have Secret Service, and that’s why you have your own security.” 
 
 Trump shot back, speculating that perhaps the three campaign managers had. “OK, and you don’t know that they didn’t do it, because I guarantee you they did, probably did stuff that was more physical than this," he said. "More physical, because this is not even physical. And frankly, she shouldn’t have her hands on me. Nobody says that. But she shouldn’t have her hands on me.” 
 
 While Trump has become a master at firing off controversial comments and earning kudos from his core supporters for his disregard for political correctness, the real estate mogul is making little headway in his recently stated goal of convincing the Republican Party to unify behind him as the front-runner. 
 
 Trump has a large lead over rival Ted Cruz in the delegate race, 736 to the Texas senator’s 463, but it’s not clear whether he’ll be able to secure the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the July convention. 
 
 Poll numbers out Wednesday for Wisconsin’s primary next week were not encouraging for the real estate mogul. The survey from Marquette Law School, the state’s most reliable pollster, showed Cruz with a 10-point lead over Trump. 
 
 And the front-runner is winning few converts among centrist Republicans. At one point earlier this year, some on Capitol Hill and among the lobbyist crowd on K Street entertained the idea that Trump would be preferable to Cruz. 
 
 They had considered Trump someone with whom they could cut deals, and questioned whether he really believed the fiery rhetoric he employed on the stump. But his repudiation on Tuesday night of his promise to support the eventual GOP nominee — on top of a string of other controversial statements he's made over the past few weeks — made many Republicans deeply uncomfortable, making unity an even more unlikely prospect. 
 
 “As head of the party, it is disturbing for anybody — not necessarily Trump — saying that they may or may not support our nominee,” said Diana Waterman, chairwoman of the Maryland GOP. “At the end of it, we’re supposed to all come together. That includes the people who were not successful in getting there.” 
 
 Another party chairman from a state with an upcoming primary, who requested anonymity to share reservations about Trump, said his theatrics take the party’s focus off members' shared rejection of Clinton and Bernie Sanders. 
 
 “Unfortunately it seems that whenever Mr. Trump is worried he may not become the Republican nominee, he makes these sorts of comments,” the chairman said. “My concern about his latest comments is that it will only make it harder for him to convince longtime loyal grass-roots Republicans of his sincerity and to persuade them to rally behind his candidacy. All of the Republican candidates must always first consider the best interest of this country and not hurt feelings.” 
 
 But there is also risk to Republican leaders in being openly hostile to Trump. In a contested convention scenario, there is no guarantee that Trump supporters would get in line behind another candidate should the real estate mogul fall short, particularly if they feel that he has been treated unfairly by the party — and Trump has already claimed mistreatment. 
 
 “How things are conducted going forward matters, and I’m really personally counting on our party leadership to set an example and come together,” said Steve Munisteri, former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. 
 
 Munisteri said that if Trump ultimately wins the nomination, he would expect supporters of Cruz and Kasich to put aside their differences and back him, regardless of what the candidates themselves do. But, he acknowledged, Trump backers are less predictable and could set the stage for a deeply damaging moment for the Republican Party. 
 
 There is also always the threat of a third-party bid, either from Trump himself if he doesn’t clinch the GOP nomination, or from another candidate brought in as an alternative to Trump, though Republicans well-versed in party rules note that there is limited time, and ballot access constraints could keep that headache in check. 
 
 But as the convention nears with Trump still leading the pack, despite his fiery statements, the Republican Party’s soul-searching will become even more dire. 
 
 “I don’t envy my friends at the [Republican National Committee] right now,” said Williams, the Romney veteran. “It’s going to be a difficult task for the RNC to try to bring the party together.” 
 
 Nolan D. McCaskill, Ben Schreckinger and Eliza Collins contributed to this report. ||||| At the Republican convention, the former secretary of state was graceful and serious. The vice-presidential nominee came off as callow and glib. Reuters TAMPA -- When Paul Ryan was named to the GOP ticket, bolstered by recommendations from conservative elites like The Weekly Standard and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, the idea was that he would bring it gravitas. His charts full of numbers and penchant for policy, the narrative went, would imbue with intellectual responsibility a Romney campaign derided even on the right for its vacuousness and lack of specificity. At the Republican convention Wednesday night, there was indeed a lofty, high-minded speech, one that managed to forcefully articulate a conservative world view without cheap partisan attacks or facts stretched to the breaking point. But it wasn't Ryan's -- it was delivered by Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state. Rice's address had a sophistication, ease, and grace almost never found in modern political speeches. It was a speechwriter's speech, the kind you could imagine reading in a history book. She spoke with a diplomat's formality and the teleprompter turned off, glancing only occasionally at her notes on the podium. 
 
 Most of the speech was a policy argument, starting with foreign policy and moving to economics, but at the end, Rice, more circumspect than emotive, struck a personal note. "A little girl grows up in Jim Crow Birmingham, the segregated city of the south," she said. "Her parents can't take her to a movie theater or to a restaurant. But they have her absolutely convinced that even if she can't have a hamburger at the Woolworth's lunch counter, she can be president of the United States if she wanted to be -- and she becomes the secretary of state." The crowd, rapt throughout her remarks, came to its feet and roared, and you could practically feel the Condi for President buzz sweeping through the collective hearts of the Republican elites. Being pro-choice, Rice's actual presidential prospects might prove tricky, but that's a matter for another day. For now, she has clearly -- and by no accident -- established herself as a political voice. After another strong speech from New Mexico's governor, Susana Martinez, Ryan took the stage to close the night. He seemed nervous, his eyes wide as a deer's, his Adam's apple cranking up and down in the sinews of his neck. Combined with his too-big jacket and too-wide tie, the 42-year-old vice-presidential nominee seemed like a kid. It quickly became clear that that was the point. Ryan, in his speech, played the part of the glib, ambitious student, his youth underscored with sentimental riffs about his mom and dad and their lives -- there was fairly little about his own experiences -- and references to his buddies from high school. "College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life," he said. Ryan even mocked his running mate's taste in music: "I said, 'I hope it's not a deal-breaker, Mitt, but my playlist starts with AC/DC and ends with Zeppelin.'" The casting of the Romney-Ryan ticket as a father-son pairing rather than a team of equals couldn't have been more explicit.
– Tuesday was "Make America Work Again" day at the Republican National Convention, though there was easily as much talk about Hillary Clinton as there was about the US economy. Still, the convention seemed to run far more smoothly than on Monday—it was as if they "had brought in an entirely new team of organizers," according to Politico—and the GOP was unified enough to deal with the matter of choosing its nominee. Among the winners in another eventful day at the Quicken Loans Arena: Donald Trump. New York state's delegation put Trump over the top, making him the official GOP nominee 13 months after he launched what was seen as a long-shot bid. He "did the unthinkable on Tuesday night. And, whether you like him or hate him, he deserves a massive amount of credit for that," writes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post. Donald Trump Jr. He "brought down the house" with a speech that put him on the national stage and added a personal touch to his father's business successes, the Hill reports. It briefly looked like there might be a repeat of the Melania plagiarism controversy, but it quickly emerged that a Francis Buckley line in the speech had been put there by Buckley himself, a friend of Trump Jr.'s who worked on the speech with him. Chris Christie. The New Jersey governor may still be smarting from VP rejection, but the crowd loved how he denounced Clinton from the point of view of a former federal prosecutor. They chanted "Guilty!" and "Lock her up!" as Christie made the case against Clinton. Avocado growers. Discussion of jobs largely fell by the wayside, but soap opera actress Kimberlin Brown, who has an avocado farm in California, managed to deliver both an in-depth discussion of jobs and a passionate call to help US growers by restricting avocado imports, Politico reports. Among the losers: Party unity. Trump won the nomination, but some 721 delegates voted against him in the evening roll call, making it the most divided vote of its kind since the contested convention of 1976, the New York Times notes. Never Trump. The movement "succumbed to multiple causes of death" on Tuesday, with many rebels deciding they had no choice but to support the nominee, the AP reports. The Utah delegation announced that all its 40 votes were going to Ted Cruz, but they ended up going to Trump because Utah GOP rules require ballots to be cast for active candidates only. Paul Ryan. The House speaker has been trying to signal to party elites that he's uncomfortable with Trump and is "still the smart conservative they've come to love," but the balancing act fell apart on Tuesday, according to Dylan Matthews at Vox. "When the chips are down, when the nomination was being decided, Ryan was out there in front, pushing Trump forward," he writes. Ben Carson. He "quickly went off script—and not in a good way," writes Cillizza at the Post. His linking of Clinton to Lucifer via Saul Alinsky was a strange moment, writes Tina Nguyen at Vanity Fair, though since Carson has "accidentally" insulted Trump numerous times over the last few months, the campaign must have been relieved "that Carson's meandering thoughts went straight to hell, and not somewhere closer to home."