SC Gov. Nikki Haley to endorse Marco Rubio for president

Haley would join two other major elected officials in the Palmetto State to rally behind the Florida senator, following South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy’s hitting the campaign trail for Rubio this week and an endorsement from Sen.

“Torture works”, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump declared Wednesday, repeating his vow to bring back waterboarding and approve other, tougher interrogation techniques. Cruz follows with 17.8 percent, and Rubio is in third with 16.0 percent.

(CNN)Donald Trump continues to hold a commanding lead in the Republican primary race, according to a national CBS News poll released Thursday. While she took stabs at Obama, she also used the opportunity to make some implied attacks against Donald Trump.

Some analysts predicted that Trump’s anti-Bush broadsides would undercut his support in SC, whose Republican primary is Saturday and where many GOP voters are military veterans.

The Republican governor of SC will endorse Senator Marco Rubio for president three days before the state’s primary, USA media report.

But another recent poll, by Morning Consult, has Trump where has been for months, on top.

Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released on Wednesday showed Republican Cruz 28% now leads nationally ahead of Trump’s 26%. But like the NBC poll, it showed that Trump had a slight drop (3%) in popularity in the past week.

Marco Rubio, meanwhile, has won the much sought-after endorsement of Nikki Haley, the popular governor of SC who is often floated as a likely vice-presidential nominee.

But Cruz’s 2-point edge is within the poll’s margin of error, and it’s not clear if the survey captures real movement in the race or is simply an outlier.

Republican strategists opposed to Trump have held out hope that a “ceiling” on his potential support might allow a rival to best him for the nomination once the Republican field thins.

“He’s done that most of his adult life…This letter really pressed the bounds of the most frivolous and ridiculous letters I’ve ever seen”.

Sam Clovis, Trump’s national co-chairman, told Boston Herald Radio yesterday the campaign has already started to look at suggestions for vice-presidential candidates he could name early.

On Tuesday, Rubio spoke very highly of the Haley saying, “She embodies and exemplifies what I want the Republican Party to be known as in the 21st century: vibrant, reform-oriented, optimistic, upwardly mobile”. He added, “Donald Trump does not want to be under oath answering questions about his own record”. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley is serving in her second term as governor and earned wide praise for her leadership in the wake of the Charleston church massacre and her efforts to remove the Confederate battle flag from the State Capital grounds.

“It’s just a pattern of people around his campaign that have continuously done things like that”, Rubio said.