There is more than a "50 percent chance" that Donald Trump will be the eventual GOP presidential nominee, who has the momentum heading into Tuesday night's GOP caucuses in New Hampshire and the upcoming Super Tuesday primaries in March, House Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Monday.
"I personally believe it's down to a two-person race," the California lawmaker told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "I thought [Ted] Cruz probably had the best ability . . . but [with] not winning in South Carolina, that's very difficult for him."
McCarthy, saying that he could work with Trump or "anyone who comes out to be the nominee," compared Trump's rise to that of another celebrity candidate, movie star and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"There's a lot of similarities, even down the fact that they replaced Trump with Arnold on "The Apprentice," he told the program. "It's a movement where people have not felt it, they think they didn't see it coming. People are fed up with everything that has gone on so they want to see a fundamental change. And that's what we're seeing in the polls."
McCarthy also had high praise for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a former House Representative, saying that he'd make "an excellent president . . . I always had this philosophy that I think governors is a better training ground to be president.
"They can't print more money, they have to balance the budget. They pick a cabinet, they run agencies they didn't create and make them effective. And you have to make a decision at the end of the day."
At the same time, McCarthy said, there are many people who never became president who he thought would do a good job.
"You have to get elected," he said. "That's our system so maybe you didn't catch on fast enough, maybe you didn't engage fast enough. Donald Trump has taken the oxygen away from a lot of people where they don't have the opportunity and a lot of people through no fault of their own, they ran a conventional campaign when the American public does not want convention."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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