Triumphant Trump does it again with a hat trick 

Washington, Feb 24 (IANS) Riding on voters' anger, Donald Trump scored his third consecutive victory in the Nevada caucuses to cement his frontrunner status in the Republican presidential race with his rivals failing miserably to arrest his winning streak.

To the chagrin of the establishment, the real estate mogul won with a huge margin garnering about 45.9 percent of the total vote in Tuesday night's fourth nomination contest with his two main rivals Marco Rubio at 23.9 and Ted Cruz at 21.4 percent together falling short of his vote share.

In a stunning show of momentum for his campaign, Trump swept almost every category of the electorate to build his dominance in the delegate count virtually paving his way to the Republican nomination at the party's convention in July.

"If you listen to the pundits, we weren't expected to win too much - and now we're winning, winning, winning the country," a triumphant Trump declared to supporters at his Las Vegas victory party.

Basking in his success across demographics, he said: "We won the evangelicals. We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated."

On Wednesday morning, he looked ahead to a Trump presidency, detailing the three things he'd do on Day 1 if he wins the White House.

"First thing is knock out some of the executive orders done by our president," Trump told ABC. "One, on border where people can pour into (the) country like Swiss cheese. I would knock out Obamacare. Take care of our vets and military," he said.

For Trump, "the outcome in Nevada is another sign of his campaign's durability and the breadth of his appeal", said the influential New York Times.

But "this latest triumph may only encourage Mr. Trump in the brash campaign style that has alienated many Republican officials and mainstream voters," it said.

The Washington Post attributed his victory to "an angry electorate hungry for a political outsider in the White House."

The billionaire mogul "used visceral rhetoric to tap into anxieties about the economy, terrorism and illegal immigration," it suggested even as it acknowledged the "staggering breadth" of Trump's support.

The Nevada results demonstrated the power of Trump's appeal in this anti-establishment year, said CNN.

"It also underscored his ability to use his media savvy and enormous popularity to sweep a state with complex caucus rules and where rivals were far more organised," it said.

(Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in)