Steve Peoples

As politics turn to the 2016 race for president, the GOP’s most ambitious are clashing over the nation’s role in global affairs.

A half-dozen potential Republican presidential contenders spent last week peacocking across the sprawling grounds of a pink-hued luxury resort, schmoozing with donors and sizing up the competition in the party’s most fractured field in decades.

The nation’s Republican governors on Wednesday lashed out at President Barack Obama’s plans to unilaterally protect millions of immigrants from deportation, but clashed over whether their congressional colleagues should threaten a government shutdown in response.

Now that their party has seized the Senate and faces the pressure of governing, an ambitious group of first-term Republicans may try to use that new majority status, and the opportunities it brings, as a springboard to the presidency in 2016.

He is not on the ballot, but Republicans on Sunday assailed President Barack Obama in a final-weekend clash between candidates and party leaders, as an increasingly confident Republican Party eyes control of Congress two days before Election Day.

Party leaders are predicting victory for their side in Tuesday’s election that will determine Senate control as candidates in crucial contests enlist support from political heavyweights and clash over women’s issues and the economy.