Trip Gabriel

Right-wing radio hosts are flaying Trump, Gov. Scott Walker and other elected Republicans have endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz, and a new poll showed Cruz with a 10 percentage-point lead in the state before Tuesday’s primary.

Republicans desperate to stop Donald Trump from capturing the presidential nomination increased the pressure Wednesday on Gov. John Kasich of Ohio to quit the race, with Jeb Bush joining the growing number of party figures throwing their weight behind Sen. Ted Cruz.

This parallel campaign is to select the individual delegates who will go to Cleveland in July for what could be the first contested convention in American politics in more than 60 years. Chosen through a byzantine process in each state, most of the delegates will become free agents if no one wins a majority on the first ballot.

Although the 11 states that voted two weeks ago on Super Tuesday received much attention, the contests this week are potentially even more important.

In foreboding conversations across the political world this past year, a bipartisan chorus warned that the 2016 presidential campaign was teetering on the edge of violence.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas surged to a 10-point lead in a new poll released Saturday of likely Republican caucusgoers in Iowa, a sign his campaign is gathering momentum and suggesting a long nominating fight is ahead.

Ben Carson’s remarks on foreign policy have repeatedly raised questions about his grasp of the subject, but never more seriously than in the past week, when he wrongly asserted that China had intervened militarily in Syria and then failed, on national television, to name the countries he would call on to form a coalition to fight the Islamic State.

Here in West Virginia, residents were still reeling from the chemical spill that left more than 300,000 people without usable water for days, many of them still frightened and unsure whether official assurances that they could once again drink tap water or bathe their children were true.