Trump's rivals see chance in Texas debate

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - Republicans are barreling toward Super Tuesday with another debate in the offing and Donald Trump's opponents reaching for perhaps their last best chance to knock him off stride for the presidential nomination.

Expect a nasty turn, Trump warned, as if the roiling GOP race were anything but that already.

The New York billionaire predicted that the relative civility between him and Marco Rubio would fall away in the frantic grasp for hundreds of convention delegates in the 11 states that hold Republican primaries Tuesday.

Even John Kasich, a trailing contender whose calling card has been a positive campaign, went negative Wednesday in a campaign broadside against Rubio, the Florida senator who is soaking up Republican establishment support and thereby threatening to starve Kasich's effort of its remaining oxygen.

Trump exercised bragging rights with trademark gusto after Nevada handed him his third straight victory the night before.

Relaxed on stage at Virginia's Regent University, Trump fielded questions from Christian conservative figure Pat Robertson, ticking off Obama administration executive orders he wants to reverse as president and joking about his recent dustup with the pope.

And what of Rubio?

"So far he's been very nice and I think I've been very nice to him," Trump said on NBC's Today show. "We haven't been in that mode yet but probably it'll happen." He meant attack mode.

The election calendar suggests that if Trump's rivals don't slow him by mid-March, they may not ever. Delegate totals so far: 82 for Trump, 17 for Ted Cruz, 16 for Rubio, 6 for Kasich, and 4 for Ben Carson.

For Republicans, Nevada offered little evidence that Republicans are ready to unite behind one strong alternative to Trump, who many in the party fear is too much of a loose cannon to win in November.

Mainstream Republicans who don't like Trump are also in large measure cool on Cruz. With Jeb Bush out of the race and time short, they have begun gravitating to Rubio, long a man of promise in the race but one who has yet to score a victory.

The Florida senator edged Cruz, a Texas senator, for second place in Nevada. Their debate Thursday night is in Texas, the largest of the Super Tuesday states and one where Cruz has an advantage as home-state senator.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton scored the endorsement of Nevada's Harry Reid, the party's Senate leader, in advance of a primary Saturday in South Carolina.