Donald Trump scored decisive wins across the country on Super Tuesday— from Alabama to Massachusetts to Virginia— racking up delegates as he threatened to leave his Republican counterparts gasping for air. Ted Cruz kept a hold on his home state of Texas and won neighboring Oklahoma. But overall, the Manhattan mogul continues to annihilate the competition, as he wages a hostile takeover of the Republican Party—despite GOP leadership that is fervently trying to prevent it.

“This has been an amazing evening,” Trump declared during a Tuesday evening press conference in Palm Beach, Florida. “If this were winner-take-all we would be celebrating tonight.”

In Vermont, John Kasich was in yet another surprise second, not far behind Trump at all. In Arkansas, Cruz put the fight to Trump, albeit to no avail. It was not a good night for Marco Rubio, who is still winless after one month of contests and who was flirting with failure to meet the 20 percent threshold to win delegates in several key states in early returns, including Alabama, Tennessee, Texas and Vermont. Nonetheless, Rubio has vowed to remain in the race until his home state of Florida votes on March 15th, even if he remains winless until then. Trump currently holds a lead in Florida hovering around 20 percent.

Prior to the official projections of a handful of states on Super Tuesday, Senator Rubio delivered a speech to his fellow Floridians, saying: “The pundits say we’re underdogs, I’ll accept that. We’ve all been underdogs. This is a community of underdogs. This is a state of underdogs. This is a country of underdogs, but we will win.”

Trump’s victory that week occurred as yet another controversy swirled about him. Having recently refused in a television interview Sunday to immediately denounce the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist David Duke, he continued to stir the pot. Afterward, Mr. Trump almost immediately rebuked the man on Twitter once the interview was over, but some feel that it might have been too little too late.

Trump’s early victories on Super Tuesday in the South— winning Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama easily— were particularly bad news for Cruz, who has called that day “the single most important day in the entire Republican primary.” A slate of southern states voted on that Tuesday, led by Cruz’s home state of Texas, each with significant conservative and evangelical Christian populations that were supposed to be Cruz’s bulwark. Cruz carried Texas by a decisive margin, which he had declared a must-win, and finished a clear first in next door Oklahoma, as well.

Before the polls even closed on Tuesday, Rubio’s campaign had called for Cruz’s withdrawal from the race since it appeared that he wouldn’t win many states from Trump. Cruz and Trump, meanwhile, have said that a winless Rubio should drop out.

The Republican race has become increasingly coarse in recent days, devolving into an insult-hurling affair. Cruz has likened Trump to “P.T. Barnum” and the “dancing bears” of the circus. Trump has mercilessly mocked “little Marco.” And Rubio has rolled out more than a dozen new attacks on Trump, insulting his alleged spray tan, suggesting Trump urinated on himself in the last debate and teasing Trump for the size of his hands. Those barbs netted Rubio live cable news coverage of his rallies for the first time, as he has sought to redefine Trump as a “con artist.”

Ben Carson, who has become a bit player in the campaign, called for a cease-fire, asking all five remaining candidates to gather ahead of the next debate, on Thursday in Detroit, to “not succumb to the media’s desire for a fight on the stage.” The retired neurosurgeon said Tuesday night that he was not dropping out and that politicians have woven a complicated web. “It will be very, very difficult to untangle it. But I’m not ready to try to quit untangling it yet,” he said.

Democrats seemed downright gleeful about Trump’s impending success and the state of the GOP race. Campaigning in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton said of Trump, “He could be on the path” to the nomination. Trump’s rash of victories on Super Tuesday gave extra urgency to the anti-Trump forces within the GOP, some of whom gathered on a Tuesday evening conference call as they have mobilized slowly to defeat him — months after many GOP operatives believed such a campaign was necessary.